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"Political Correctness" and the "Desert Storm Law"
Stephen R. Shalom

Conservative pundits and their frequent liberal allies have been complaining
for years about "Political Correctness" -- the intrusion of left-wing
ideology into the academy, supposedly subverting academic standards. 
Affirmative action, we are told, rather than redressing historic and
present-day systemic discrimination, simply undermines the merit principle,
allowing the unqualified to slip by. Women's studies and ethnic studies
programs are denounced as insufficiently rigorous, not real disciplines,
where students get easy grades for having the right attitudes instead of for
displaying mastery of any substantial body of knowledge. 

John K. Wilson, in his wonderful book, <i>The Myth of Political
Correctness</i> (Duke, 1995), has debunked the conservative attack on higher
education. Further evidence of the hypocrisy of the critics of "political
correctness" is provided by a long-running case in New Jersey. 

In June 1991, the NJ State Legislature passed a piece of legislation known
as the "Desert Storm Law" (L. 1991, ch. 167). The law provided that any
student called to active duty as a result of the Gulf War was "entitled to
receive a grade in each course for which the student has completed a minimum
of 8 weeks' attendance and all other academic requirements during that
period. The grade shall be based upon the work which the student had
completed up to the time when the student was called to active service."

This was a rather remarkable law. The NJ Legislature (then controlled by the
Democratic Party) was telling faculty members how to grade and, in
particular, telling them to assign a grade representing a full semester's
work for half a semester's work. 1991 was the year that attacks on
"political correctness" began to flood the media -- there was a ten-fold
increase in mentions of the term from 1990 to 1991 -- but nary a word of
protest over this legislation was expressed by the supposed champions of
keeping politics out of the academy. 
William J. Pascrell, then the chair of the State Assembly's Higher Education
Committee and a co-sponsor of the legislation (and now a U.S. 
Congressperson), called the law "a very thoughtful, very sensible approach
to students called out of the classroom to defend their country." But there
was obviously another agenda here. One of the great myths of the Vietnam War
was that protesters had directed their ire at GI's, going so far as to spit
at returning veterans. In his important book, <i>The Spitting Image: Myth,
Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam</i> (NYU Press, 1998), Jerry Lembcke has
shown not only that the popular image is false, but that it was encouraged
by supporters of the war. 
There are, of course, a thousand and one reasons why a student might have to
miss classes and a reasonable professor would surely want be to
accommodating. In the event that a professor acted unreasonably, colleges
and universities have procedures whereby students can appeal unfair
treatment. During the Gulf War, nowhere in the country was there a report of
a student who had been called up to service being penalized or harassed by
faculty. Only in New Jersey did the Legislature feel obliged to dictate how
student-soldiers should be graded. 

Seven months before the Legislature acted, James Lloyd, a Marine reservist
and a student at Montclair State College, was called up to service. One of
the courses that Lloyd was enrolled in was "The Sociology of Rich and Poor
Nations" taught by Barbara Chasin. When Lloyd received his call-up notice,
he met with Chasin and signed an "Incomplete Contract" in which he agreed
that upon his return he would either take a make-up final exam or write a
paper. 
By the time Lloyd did return, the Legislature had passed its Desert Storm
Law. Lloyd told Chasin that he wanted her to change his incomplete grade to
an A without his having to do any additional work. Lloyd argued that before
he left he had taken a quiz and the midterm and had an A average and that
therefore he was entitled to an A for the course. "The law was passed,"
Lloyd declared, "so I wouldn't have to rack my brain remembering all that
stuff from a year ago." (Imagine if Lloyd had been an African American
defending affirmative action: what a field day conservatives would have
had!)

The Desert Storm Law was actually quite vague. Students, said the law, had
to meet all academic requirements up to the time of their departure, but how
were they to demonstrate that they had in fact mastered material they were
supposed to have learned during this period? What if a course had only a
single exam at the end? What if a course had one quiz early in the semester
and a final? Should a student who got an A on the quiz and learned nothing
more in the course be given an A? As Chasin's lawyer argued, it would be
rather unfortunate if a student in a chemistry class were declared competent
in <i>making and controlling</i> nitroglycerine when all the student had
been tested on was <i>making</i> the explosive. 

In Lloyd's case, he had left two weeks before the end of the semester and
Chasin told him, quite generously, that she would not ask that he be tested
on material from those final two weeks, but only that he demonstrate
competence in the material for the classes he had attended since the date of
the midterm. Thus, she was prepared to give him a grade for the full
fifteen-week course based only on his mastery of thirteen weeks' material. 
Lloyd refused this offer. 

Chasin was an opponent of the Gulf War, but she insisted that her political
position was irrelevant to the issue. What mattered, she argued, was the
Legislature's attempt to intrude on matters of academic freedom. As an
editorial in the <i>Bergen Record</i> put it: legislators "have no business
telling professors how to award grades. Those kinds of decisions should be
made by educators, not politicians." The editorial continued by noting:
"Like Ms. Chasin, Montclair State College officials object to the law
regarding grades policy. Unlike Ms. Chasin, they are unwilling to fight the
Legislature. It's good that somebody is willing to fight for principle." But
though the College was unwilling to defend Chasin or principle, Chasin's
union local, AFT Local 1904, did support both her and academic freedom
throughout. 

Lloyd brought his complaint against Chasin to Montclair State's Grade
Grievance Committee, and when the Committee found against him, he went to
court, seeking his grade and damages. The case was dismissed on the grounds
that Lloyd had not exhausted all his administrative remedies and the issue
was sent to the Office of Administrative Law, where the matter was settled. 
The College gave Lloyd a grade of A-, but noted on his transcript that this
grade was not awarded by the professor, but administratively assigned by the
College, pursuant to the Desert Storm Law, after he had attended 13 weeks of
class and been tested on eight weeks worth of material. 

The case was not over, however, because Chasin -- actually her Union -- had
incurred legal fees of some $12,000. Since Chasin is a state employee, and a
law provides that the state should pay the legal expenses of its employees
except where they are guilty of "actual fraud, willful misconduct, or actual
malice" -- and no one had so alleged this regarding Chasin -- Chasin sought
indemnification for the legal costs. Various courts ordered the state to
pay, but the state appealed to the State Supreme Court which finally decided
the matter this past summer (156 N.J.L.J. 893). 

The Court ruled 5-2 that since Chasin had ignored the Attorney General's
advice to give Lloyd his grade, she was not entitled to have the state pay
her expenses. But, as the dissenting judges noted, surely an employee
shouldn't have to follow wrong advice from the Attorney General. Since
Chasin was never made to assign a grade, following the Attorney General's
advice would have meant an unnecessary compromise of academic freedom. 

As Justice O'Hern declared in dissent, "I have a sense that there is
implicit in the Court's decision a determination that it was an unpatriotic
act not to award the requested grade to a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf
War." Indeed. Where were the watchdogs protecting the academy from
ideological pressures when they were needed in this case? In short,
"political correctness" remains alive and well, but it is a tool of the
right, not the left. 

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