Public Universities: Proliferation of Leftist Dogma at Taxpayer Expense (Issue #463)

The next sit-ins on campuses across the country really need to be staged by rightists.  Of course, “right-wing” in the context of the modern public university could simply mean an individual who doesn’t entirely despise his parents or America.  A “right-wing bigot” then is someone who doesn’t intuitively understand why universities should erase the names off of buildings, because those names belonged to people whose opinions and attitudes in their time do not conform to the in vogue truths of today.  Rename them all Freak-side, just to be inclusive.

As one University of Texas professor and administrator informed the state legislature recently, even “The name ‘Western Civilizations and American [Traditions]’ sounds really right-wing.”  So does ham and eggs; and red, white and blue.  The administrator made no attempt to reconcile his assertion with the stated commitment of the university to “advance a free society” or prepare “educated, productive citizens” through academics that “enrich and expand the appreciation and preservation of our civilization.”  As if we had a civilization—heck, who are you fooling?  Imagine instruction that provides students with knowledge about the country in which they live!  What will right-wing nutcase teabag rednecks think of next—Shakespeare?

We all know that words mean nothing anymore, not in the Constitution and certainly not in some university’s charter or propaganda to parents for “PR” purposes.  Most public institutions of higher learning trace their heritage to land grant legislation in the 19th century and still rely on legislative funding to some degree.  Beyond the taxpayer money, however, their link is severed between education and the health of American democracy.  Their mission no longer has to be consistent with creating an informed citizenry.  Just give them your money and shut up!

Regarding U.S. history, the past decade has featured aggressive schemes to “re-vision” U.S. political and diplomatic history around themes of race, class, and gender, the same pedagogy that already dominates contemporary humanities and social sciences departments.  Increasingly, U.S. history is only taught through the prism of a race-class-gender trinity.  Moreover, the arrogance of universities has reached such a level, that academic freedom now means freedom of the liberal majority in academe to evade all public criticism.  Just leave them alone you stupid moron!

The dirty little secret on campus is that if you want to go somewhere and actually do something with that degree, particularly if you are post-graduate and aspire to a Ph.D., you had better tow the party line.  Only if one does this, might one earn the coveted key to the kingdom and certain access to do damage to the other little minds out there.  Students who do not agree with the liberal ideology of the Prof do not have an appropriate “disposition,” you see, to teach anyone else.

The university curriculum is thoroughly radicalized, and leftists control the academic departments of the major public universities throughout this nation.  Universities no longer serve, as it were, the pursuit and transmission of knowledge but of leftist dogma.  To reach into history—that poorly overlooked oblivion, today’s public universities smack of the kind of corporate corruption that Montesquieu described in The Spirit of the Laws (1748), in which those who govern renege on the fundamental principles of that system they were empowered to serve and protect.    

The surest way to destroy a civilization is to erase its collective memory and reduce chronology to the present tense.  After that, well, power brokers and puppeteers of the mind are free largely to mold it to any and everybody’s Progressive dream of Utopia.  The process is just about complete at every level of education in these United States, including at the highest.  Thanks to you and your hard-earned cash, and to a negligent inattention to where that money is going.  Your mediocre representatives and outright corrupt lawmakers are bloated on the swill of debt liquidity.  They have bought you public universities, anathema to learning and averse to the very future of your children and grandchildren.  They shall have bankrupted their minds and pockets simultaneously, the better to lead the next docile generation to a slaughter.  Taxpayers and concerned citizens, all—those who still hold the purse string and pull the lever to vote: it is time now again to sit in.  It is time to listen and to tell a thing or two.  The answer my friend is blowing in the wind, and a hard rain is going to fall.