Sunday, September 14, 2008

Conservatives Need Not Apply

When home, private, parochial, and public schooling is completed, the next step is college. So, parents, before you commit your kids and your money to an institution of higher learning, know what you are paying for.

In the late 1990s the mayor of Milwaukee, John Norquist, made a moderately sound observation in an innocent remark. He said, “You could go Yeshiva University and become a rabbi. You could go to a theological seminary and become a Catholic priest. Or you could go to the University of Wisconsin and become a communist.”

Humor aside, it will probably come as no surprise that university faculty are generally left of center. What may be surprising is how far left they are and in what numbers. On college campuses today, there are multifarious views, opinions, and dogma abounding. However, the diversity of ideas is somewhat one sided. There is plenty of room for diverse ideas as long as those ideas embrace a liberal philosophy.

The extent of the liberalism on college campuses was discussed in a couple of recently published articles. Writing for the “e-zine” FrontPageMagazine.com (www.frontpagemagazine.com), David Horowitz exposed the lie that college campuses are bastions of intellectual diversity. Karl Zinsmeister, writing in the September, 2002 issue of American Enterprise (www.aei.org) echoes Mr. Horowitz’s observations.

Both writers drew upon a 2001 survey of college faculties conducted by Frank Lutz Research for the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. The survey was designed to determine the political affiliation (and ideology) of university faculty members.

The method of determining this information involved student volunteers. The students went through public voter registration records and cross referenced them with faculty rosters. Understandably, some faculty members were not counted in the survey because they were not registered (perhaps because their ideologies would not permit them the luxury of this patriotic responsibility). For example, of the hundreds of faculty members at UC Berkley, only 66 were found by the study to have registered. The results were divided into two categories. Faculty members who were registered with the Democratic, Green, or the Working Families Party were classified as Liberal. Those registered with the Republican or the libertarian parties were classified as Conservative. The results of the survey reveal objective evidence of the ideologies prevalent on college campuses today.

Are universities today the incubators of diversity, pursuing the principles and ideals of fee inquiry and academic freedom? Read on. A sampling of 11 of the universities in the study revealed that of 1156 faculty members registered, a shocking 92% (1069) claimed liberal party affiliation. The remaining 8% (87 individuals thinly distributed among 11 universities) were of a conservative party affiliation. The academic departments represented in the survey included Economics, Political Science, Sociology, History, Women’s Studies, Journalism, and English. Of the 11 universities in the sample, the percentage of liberals ranged from a high of 97% at both Cornell and UCLA to a low of 86% at Penn State and the University of Texas at Austin. On the other hand, the percentage of conservatives was lowest at both Cornell and UCLA at 3% and highest at Penn State and Austin at 14%.

What, then, are the implications of a liberal majority on college campuses?

Teaching: Universities with a liberal focus, says Robert Locke writing in FrontPageMagazine.com (sic), “serve as a vast training and recruitment system for the hardcore liberal activist class.” These universities expose students to leftist ideologies, make extreme radical ideas seem normal, and make students “accept political correctness when it is imposed on them later in life.” Liberal professors profess liberal dogma and personal agendas. The first to point out inequities, liberals will shut out anything that threatens them. They promote fairness as long as ideas and opportunities counter to theirs are not permitted. To them, fairness means liberals only. Rather than being sanctuaries of “diversity,” universities have become cesspools of far left views, opinions, and extreme liberal philosophies.

The Young America’s Foundation has recently completed its “Dirty Dozen” list of politically correct courses offered by some of the nation’s most distinguished universities. For example, Brown University offers a course called “Seeing Queerly.” “Who is Black?” is offered at Harvard. The University of Minnesota has “Language and Sexual Diversity” as a course offering. Other courses on the list include “Black Feminism, Geography of Inequality, Cultural History of Rap, Ecofeminism, and Black Marxism.” One Harvard professor, Noel Ignatiev, openly advocates, in the name of racial tolerance, the abolition of the white race.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz teaches a course called “The Sexuality of Terrorism” at Cal State. She tells her students that American bomber pilots are routinely shown pornographic videos prior to missions. She further tells them that “in (Bush’s) administration are some of the most documented terrorists on the face of the Earth.” In this same course, Dunbar-Ortiz advocates that we (the U.S.) “would be better off if the feminist values (were) part of the patriarchal system.”

Young people, marinating for four or five years in these kinds of ideas, graduate as raised fist, banner carrying, slogan spouting ideologues who perpetuate the insanity and become the next generation of fanatical faculty with even more harebrained ideas.

Hiring: In the name of diversity, individuals with radical views were invited into the universities. Once in, Horowitz explains, they “excluded peers whom they perceived as obstacles to their politicized academic agendas.” The hiring doors were slammed shut behind them. Hiring practices and policies that had invited them into the inner sanctum of academia were ignored. The process of “ideological conformity” and the promulgation of “overt political agendas” became standard operating procedure. University faculty search committees are now discouraged from selecting candidates who do not share or espouse a liberal philosophy. The new unwritten hiring policies, that blatantly violate tradition and the law, serve to dissuade conservative candidates from pursuing academic careers. Thus, there has been created a poverty of conservative ideas and viewpoints on college campuses today. The traditions of intellectual diversity and free inquiry that characterized the university campuses a generation ago have been altered to reflect the agenda of a radical oligarchy.

Take for example the fine print included at the bottom of a recent position posting from Indiana University: “The university actively encourages applications and nominations of women, persons of color, applicants with disabilities and members of other underrepresented groups.” This message, or variations of it, are included with all university faculty position announcements regardless of the institution. It is bolstered by affirmative action legislation and has the weight of law behind it. As the number of conservative professors continues to decline through attrition, the term “liberal education” is taking on a whole new meaning.

What Can Parents Do? To counter the liberal threat to higher education and the survival of the culture, responsible parents must begin early to instill sound moral judgment and values in their children. It is not intrusive, it is a parental obligation to be on top of every aspect of a child’s life, especially when it comes to schooling. Just as when they were in grade school, it is important to know what is going on at the university. When it is time to send the kids off to college, know who the teachers are at the schools your kids have chosen. Do your homework. Find out what courses are required. Read course syllabi. Furthermore, internet searches will turn up the work of most professors by name.

When Johnny or Janey come home on break from college, it is vital to talk about what they are learning. Ask about how the professors are shaping the opinions of their students. Ask about the content of the classes and the ideas that are discussed. Encourage them to explore other points of view and not to blindly accept the academic jargon of the professors simply because they are in front of the class. Remind them that most professors have little or no real world experience, but operate from a purely theoretical standpoint.

Furthermore, in a capitalist economy, the same economy that is so despised by the liberal university elite, money talks. Parents refusing to allow their children to attend a university because of an overwhelming liberal faculty bias will have a profound effect upon university administration and subsequently upon faculty composition. The threat to a university’s cash flow will impact the future of the liberal agenda on college campuses.

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