FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 5, 2005

CONTACT: Daniel P. Finney, (515) 271-2833, daniel.finney@drake.edu

FORMER NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS RESEARCHER TO DISCUSS READING ISSUES, HIGHER EDUCATION BIASES IN DRAKE VISIT

An avid supporter of lifelong reading habits and a critic of liberal bias on American college campuses, Mark Bauerlein, will visit Drake University on Tuesday, Oct. 11.

Bauerlein, the former director of research for the National Endowment for the Arts and a professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, will address the charge that most college campuses have a liberal bias during a panel discussion at 7:30 p.m. in the Cowles Library Reading Room, 27th Street and University Avenue.

In November, Bauerlein wrote an essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education that noted that nine out of 10 college professors belonged to the Democratic or Green party and a survey of Americans last year noted a majority of Americans believed “campuses are havens for left-leaning activists.”

“Academics shun conservative values and traditions, so their curricula and hiring practices discourage non-leftists from pursuing academic careers,” Bauerlein wrote.

Bauerlein will outline his views on the topic and members of the Drake faculty, including Mark Kende, law professor and director of the Drake Constitutional Law Center, Kathleen Richardson, assistant professor of journalism and executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, and Joe Lentz, professor of English and chairman of the department, will respond.
The discussion is free and open to the public.

Earlier in the day, Bauerlein is scheduled to discuss the results of NEA’s Reading at Risk survey with Drake first-year students in Drake Provost Ron Troyer’s seminar at 12:30 p.m.

The survey found that regular literary reading fell off 10 percentage points from 1982 through 2002, a loss of 20 million potential readers. Further, young people ages 18 to 24 showed the steepest decline, falling 17 percentage points from 59 percent in 1982 to 42 percent in 2002.

“That young people at a time of crucial intellectual and emotional development choose not to read in their leisure time a single poem, play, short story, or novel, or any book at all, for that matter, is a strange and troubling development,” Bauerlein told Enlighten Me, a Web site sponsored by Verizon Wireless dedicated to promoting reading and literacy. “For a growing portion of (young people), reading is a pointless activity.”

Competition with videogames, movies and television – and even chat rooms and Internet access – have turned reading into a chore rather than a pleasure, Bauerlein argues, and this could ultimately pose a threat to the American way of life.

“Because reading is the prerequisite of full citizenship, the Founding Fathers, as well as the 4th century Athenians, knew that democracy thrives only if the citizenry is informed, active and jealous of its prerogatives,” Bauerlein told Enlighten Me. “If people don’t read newspapers and books, they don’t understand the issues being decided in the halls of power. If they skip literature, they miss out on the values and narrative that shape the national identity.”

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