The news story "Top Schools Get Subpar Ratings" in the Dec. 2 Cavalier Daily does not mention - but readers ought to know - that the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which criticized U.Va.'s curriculum and that of so many others, is an organization dedicated to the promotion of conservative values in academe. Its board of directors is dominated by conservative activists. The organization campaigns against "political correctness" in universities; it promotes the fiction that conservative professors are routinely fired for speaking their minds, while warning darkly that there are many "Ward Churchills" on American faculties - the implication being, it seems, that leftist professors ought to be fired for their views, just as Churchill was fired from the University of Colorado after making inflammatory remarks about the 9/11 attacks. ACTA also campaigns in favor of curricular rigidity, favoring broad courses required of all students; in the humanities it advocates such requirements as Shakespeare courses for English majors while deploring the proliferation of courses in such subjects as theory, children's literature, media studies and gender.
Readers interested in understanding the ideological biases of ACTA's "What Will They Learn?" report can find all the information they need on the organization's website, https://www.goacta.org/.
Peter Baker\nEnglish professor
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