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Let's take back our universities from 60's crowd
Houston Chronicle ^ | January 5, 2003 | DANIEL PIPES

Posted on 01/05/2003 11:31:40 AM PST by Dog Gone

American universities have turned into hotbeds of opposition, and it's time to take them back.

Take the issue of Iraq. Americans generally focus on the regime's brutal behavior toward its own population and the threat it poses to the outside, while disagreeing over how to respond. Yet ask professors what the problem is, and they are most likely to reply that the United States, not Iraq, is the main menace and that oil, not nukes, is the Bush administration's central concern.

Two professors of history typify this outlook. Eric Foner of Columbia University asserts that a pre-emptive war against Iraq would take us back "to the notion of the rule of the jungle." He preposterously finds Washington, D.C.'s argument today "exactly the same" as that used by the Japanese to justify their assault on Pearl Harbor.

Glenda Gilmore of Yale University sees U.S. imperialism in Washington's confrontation with Iraq. It's "the first step in Bush's plan to transform our country into an aggressor nation that cannot tolerate opposition." She has also stated: "We have met the enemy, and it is us."

Views like these echo through the campuses, confirming that universities remain, as they have been since the mid-1960s, the most radical, adversarial and alienated major institution in American life.

That's not to suggest censorship; professors have full privileges to freedom of expression. But it does point to the need to raise some difficult questions:

Why do American academics so readily see their own country as the problem?

Why do universities hire people who relentlessly apologize for U.S. enemies?

Why do professors consistently misunderstand the most important challenges facing the country, such as the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Persian Gulf War and now the war on terror?

What long-term impact does a radicalized and repressive university atmosphere have on students?

The country needs its universities to become more mature, responsible and patriotic. To achieve this change means taking the wayward academy back from the faculty and administrators who now run it.

It's important to remember that universities, built over decades and even centuries, do not belong -- legally, financially or morally -- to the employees who happen to staff them. The latter do not have a right to hijack these vital institutions out of the mainstream of American life.

Outside stakeholders -- board members, alumni, parents of students and, in the case of state institutions, state legislators -- need to start worrying more about politics than about football.

They must take steps to re-create a politically balanced environment, as it was before the 1960s, in which sound scholarship and sound teaching can again take place.


Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, writes a weekly column for The New York Post, where a version of this article appeared.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: academialist; highereducation
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1 posted on 01/05/2003 11:31:41 AM PST by Dog Gone
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To: Dog Gone
Here's a blueprint:

Hillsdale College

2 posted on 01/05/2003 11:36:44 AM PST by leadpenny
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To: *Academia list
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list
3 posted on 01/05/2003 11:42:25 AM PST by Libertarianize the GOP
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To: Dog Gone
Outside stakeholders -- board members, alumni, parents of students and, in the case of state institutions, state legislators -- need to start worrying more about politics than about football.

They could start by instituting a quota system to ensure diversity in viewpoints. The tenured monolithic liberal faculty hacks could be put out of the classroom doing useful work like, say, planting flowers on campus medians.

4 posted on 01/05/2003 12:06:02 PM PST by Vigilanteman
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To: Dog Gone
I agree with leadpenny.

As long as higher education is funded by the state, it will serve the interests of state power.
5 posted on 01/05/2003 12:06:54 PM PST by Carry_Okie
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To: Dog Gone
Why do professors consistently misunderstand the most important challenges facing the country...

Because, as with all liberals, real truth is irrelevant.

When you create your own 'truth,' you invent your own universe.

When God commanded having no other gods before Him, I'm sure he was speaking of these stupid liberals who consider themselves gods of their own universes.

6 posted on 01/05/2003 12:10:12 PM PST by jigsaw
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To: Dog Gone
This article by Benjamin Stein is somewhat related. Point 1 in his article is especially true. Just scroll down a bit.

http://www.lundian.com/forum/view.shtml?p=PS200212150110589480&l=english
7 posted on 01/05/2003 12:15:15 PM PST by ladylib
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To: jigsaw
Long term baby boomer---bust...

Creation/God...REFORMATION(Judeo-Christianity)---secular-govt.-humanism/SCIENCE---CIVILIZATION!

Originally the word liberal meant social conservatives(no govt religion--none) who advocated growth and progress---mostly technological(knowledge being absolute/unchanging)based on law--reality... UNDER GOD---the nature of GOD/man/govt. does not change. These were the Classical liberals...founding fathers-PRINCIPLES---stable/SANE scientific reality/society---industrial progress...moral/social character-values(private/personal) GROWTH(limited NON-intrusive PC Govt/religion---schools)!

Evolution...Atheism-dehumanism---TYRANNY(pc/liberal/govt-religion/rhetoric)...

Then came the SPLIT SCHIZOPHRENIA/ZOMBIE/BRAVE-NWO1984 LIBERAL NEO-Soviet Darwin/ACLU America---the post-modern age...

To: f.Christian

Dakmar...

I took a few minutes to decipher that post, and I must say I agree with a lot of what you said.

fC...

These were the Classical liberals...founding fathers-PRINCIPLES---stable/SANE scientific reality/society---industrial progress...moral/social character-values(private/personal) GROWTH(limited NON-intrusive PC Govt/religion---schools)!

Dakmar...

Where you and I diverge is on the Evolution/Communism thing. You seem to view Darwin and evolution as the beginning of the end for enlighted, moral civilization, while I think Marx, class struggle, and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" are the true dangers.

God bless you, I think we both have a common enemy in the BRAVE-NWO.

452 posted on 9/7/02 8:54 PM Pacific by Dakmar

8 posted on 01/05/2003 12:16:05 PM PST by f.Christian
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To: Dog Gone
Why do professors consistently misunderstand the most important challenges facing the country

It depends a lot on their field of study. Certain professors like engineering professors actually held jobs in the real world or could have. Philosophy and history professors are often very sheltered types who have never left the campus. They were students of the 60's, that's all they've ever learned, they never left their Ivory Towers and faced any kind of reality.

9 posted on 01/05/2003 12:22:59 PM PST by FITZ
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To: Vigilanteman
At this point, if they are really interesting in regaining any resembelance to the rest of the world, they will institute a policy of hiring ONLY radical conservatives for all positions for the next twenty years. Furthermore, universities should strive to put radical conservatives in high offices in their institutions, so that the decisions about who gets tenure and who gets what budget is in conservative hands for a change. Hmm, I wonder if they'll find money in the budget for "Diversity Studies 101"?

These liberals are always squalling about how important "diversity" is, let's see if they can "tolerate" some "diversity" among their own staff by hiring conservatives for a change. Then we'll finally see how commited to "diversity" they really are!
10 posted on 01/05/2003 12:29:23 PM PST by Billy_bob_bob
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To: Billy_bob_bob
"At this point, if they are really interesting" S/B "At this point, if they are really interestED", of course. Sheesh. My proofreading skills stink.
11 posted on 01/05/2003 12:31:14 PM PST by Billy_bob_bob
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To: Dog Gone
In a follow-up to this article in the LA Times, Pipes got thoroughly blasted in one of the most biased forums of them all, letters to the editor that actually find their way into print. For once, diversity was not liberalism's clarion call to battle. This time the magic word was "dissent," which brings to mind one question: When campus 'dissent' becomes monolithic, lock-step leftist orthodoxy, shouldn't it forfeit the right to define itself as dissent?
Pipes is absolutely right. I returned to UCLA on the day Laura Bush was disinvited to be the commencement speaker for the School of Education. It was like entering enemy territory.
12 posted on 01/05/2003 12:47:23 PM PST by gabby hayes
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To: Dog Gone
The quickest way to get a response from these anti-American, anti-family, anti-Christian university professors is to pull their federal funding.

All God-fearing Americans should contact their elected representatives and demand to know why their tax dollars are being used to give aid and comfort to the enemy and work against everything we believe in.
13 posted on 01/05/2003 1:21:41 PM PST by wdkeller
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To: Dog Gone
Why do American academics so readily see their own country as the problem?

Every day it becomes more and more obvious. Liberals despise the U.S. I doubt they would give you a reason, and most would deny it's true. Buit when the US is attacked, and they first say the response will create an inescapable quagnire, and that proves wrong, what does that leave? Well, in truth, the problems we face in the world must be our fault. It's easy to hate a society at fault.

Furthermore, it's quite painless. If you can blame us for the problems of Arabs trying to kill us, you can absolve yourself of the responsibility of trying to do something about it.

14 posted on 01/05/2003 1:37:33 PM PST by stevem
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To: Dog Gone
The Liberal Arts faculties are teaching generally useless subjects, and these branches of the Universities should simply be closed down.

As for the faculties in Science, Engineering, Medicine, etc, a high proportion of them are immigrants and can find jobs in more congenial environments overseas.

15 posted on 01/05/2003 1:49:52 PM PST by Lessismore
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To: Lessismore
Yeah, but they won't close as long as there's financial aid in the form of Fed money used by the underqualified to get a piece of paper in the diploma-mill branches of better universities.

Just the same way guv-subsidized medical destroyed the medical industry, so too has the "free money" destroyed academe.

No way out: we reached critical mass for meltdown a long time ago.

16 posted on 01/05/2003 2:09:01 PM PST by dasboot
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To: Dog Gone
Having taught in the liberal arts sector of American universities since 1965, I couldn't agree more. What's happened in most English, history, politics, philosophy, comparative literature, and similar departments is despicable.

But fixing it won't be easy. When you let things go to the point where the inmates are running the asylum, it's extremely difficult to cure the situation. You have no one you can trust to do sensible hiring. You have few sensible graduate students coming out of the system to hire. You have few people you can trust to run the departments and improve them. This mess will take a long, long time to straighten out, if indeed it can be straightened out at all.

Hillsdale never went that way, and there are other exceptions. But all the formerly "best" universities are now, in this regard, among the worst. It's a very sad situation.
17 posted on 01/05/2003 2:19:40 PM PST by Cicero
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To: Dog Gone
Why do radicals see the U.S. as evil? You might as well ask why do poisonous snakes bite. The simple answer is that Marxist radicals will never tolerate a capitalist democracy. To these leftist nuts conservatives and Republicans are the Great Satan. Under this theory, they are willing to side with religious dictatorships to try and
defeat the U.S. Obviously is we were a Marxist country, all this talk about us being imperialist aggressors would vanish in a blizzard of articles justifying invading non-Marxist religious states.
18 posted on 01/05/2003 2:26:48 PM PST by driftless
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To: Dog Gone
"...professors have full privileges to freedom of expression."*
__________________________________________

*Except: Conservative professors, God-fearing professors and pro-life professors.

19 posted on 01/05/2003 2:29:55 PM PST by Bonaparte
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To: Dog Gone
The"SICKSTIES",America's worst decade.
20 posted on 01/05/2003 2:30:13 PM PST by INSENSITIVE GUY
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