Posted on 04/29/2003 2:42:20 PM PDT by Lando Lincoln
Universities celebrate diversity in all but ideology
Friday, March 28, 2003 - Volume 92 Number 49
Universities were designed to be institutions of academic knowledge. Some liberal professors might say that universities' intentions should be "the disinterested pursuit of knowledge."
Fine. That being said, what were universities not designed to be? They were not intended to be "agencies of social change," or to promote a particular political agenda.
These ideas are no longer popular among the faculties and administrations of today's universities, particularly in the social sciences.
Today's more popular doctrine is illustrated in the words of Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy at the University of Virginia:
"The power base of the left in America is now in the universities, since the trade unions have largely been killed off. The universities have done a lot of good work by setting up, for example, African-American studies programs, Women's Studies programs, and Gay and Lesbian Studies programs. They have created power bases for these movements."
Should the transformation from academic institution to political "power base" be celebrated? Surely not. An Education Department textbook at California State University reads, "We cannot afford to become so bogged down in grammar and spelling that we forget the whole story ... the onslaught of antihuman practices that this nation and other nations are facing today: racism, and sexism, and greed for money and human labor that disguises itself as 'globalization.'"
This is in a chapter called "Spelling and Social Justice." These examples may not resonate powerfully since they didn't occur at UT. Let me relate a few experiences from here on campus. I sat in a philosophy class and was told by the teacher that "George Bush has never read a book in his life."
My English 101 teacher informed the class that Malcolm X did some really positive things for our country. (In her defense, we spent more time reading about radical feminism and gay rights than writings that promoted the indiscriminate killing of white people.)
We are taught in my political science class that we have a "living constitution." (Even Tom Daschle knows better than to talk this way in public.) Last semester, I had a friend taking feminist anthropology. One imagines Jeff Foxworthy's voice, "If you believe in something called feminist anthropology, you might be a liberal."
Some may say, "You're just picking out isolated examples. There not representative."
Good idea! Let's look at some larger facts. In 2002, the American Enterprise Institute conducted a poll of several campuses' professors to determine their party affiliation. Those registered with Democrat, Green, or Working Families Parties were classified as liberal, while those registered with Republican or Libertarian Parties were classified as conservative. Professors were also categorized by department. What were the results?
At the University of Colorado, a Republican state, 94 percent of liberal arts professors were liberal. Four percent were conservative. Of their 85 registered English professors, none were conservative. One out of 39 registered history professors was a conservative. Two out of 28 were conservative in political science.
University of North Carolina: 91 to 9 percent liberal. Even in a state that kept Jesse Helms in office, Republicans are a fringe group amongst college faculty.
University of New Mexico: 89 percent Democrat, 7 percent Republican, 4 percent Green. Ten out of 200 professors were conservative, but zero in political science, history and journalism, and one each in sociology, English, women's studies and African-American studies. The rest were in the hard sciences.
Stanford has a reputation as being more conservative. There seems to be some truth to that. A whopping 11 percent of professors were conservative.
This trend continues, but should we be surprised? No. Everyone seems to understand that if a school is funded by the Catholic Church, then it will feature Catholic teachers promoting Catholicism. Should we then be surprised, that if a school is publicly funded, it will be taught by liberal elitists? Of course not.
Why are professors so left wing? Liberals might say that it's because they're smarter than conservatives. Dinesh D'Souza, academia watchdog and author of "Illiberal Education," offers a better explanation:
"Conservatives tend to go into business because they care more about money; liberals tend to go into the academy because they care more about power ... conservatives are practical people - they emphasize what works - liberals are theoretical people - they emphasize what ought to work."
This holds scary implications. Except within hard sciences there's no penalty for a bad idea. Marxists can teach Marxism without anything in the real world to serve as a check on its legitimization as a science.
While universities boast diversity in superficial areas like skin color, they demand a homogenous culture in ideology.
We can post incidences of liberalism from professors or textbooks on www.NoIndoctrination.org. Or we can be spoon-fed Noam Chomsky, anti-globalization, radical feminism, environmentalism, revisionist history, Keynesianism and anti-Americanism.
- Sukhmani Singh Khalsa can be reached at sukhmanisingh@yahoo.com
This is a fine catch, LL...our thanks.
There a reason why Mr. Helms wanted to build a fence around the University. I know of one faculty member who was conservative while I was there. He didn't have tenure, so he wouldn't tell us his name or department. Unfortunately, since I don't know his name or department, I don't know if he's still around...
MD
Someone must have forgotten to tell this to the administrators and faculty at the vast majority of so-called "Catholic" institutions.
The only 'reality check' on Marxism and other false ideologies comes a few years after their revolutions are consolidated. Too late by then, of course.
While universities boast diversity in superficial areas like skin color, they demand a homogenous culture in ideology.
This 'diversity' movement is really a rush toward conformity. It relies on the old Marxist principle that 'we know what needs to be done. The only problem is to incite the masses in the proper direction.' There is truly no place for honest debate within liberalism or traditional Marxism. The fact that profs talk about using universities as political power bases demonstrates the liberal's abandonment of objectivity and intellectual respectibility for ideology-mongering.
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