Most Universities Are Now Leftist Brainwashing Factories
By John J. Duncan Jr.
duncanj@knoxfocus.com
I and many others have said it is unfortunate, but most of our major universities have become little more than leftist brainwashing factories.
As the old saying goes, the proof is in the pudding, and one proof is shown by four recent hirings.
Hillary Clinton, still bitter over her loss for president, will at least become a “Presidential Fellow” and will help spread the leftist gospel as a professor at Columbia.
Lori Lightfoot, who was called “America’s Worst Mayor,” has been hired to teach a “leadership” course at Harvard after running a poor third in her campaign to be re-elected as Mayor of Chicago.
Another very unpopular former mayor, Bill de Blasio, has just finished teaching at Harvard. He will now teach at New York University and I am sure gloss over his failures as mayor of New York and explain away his less than one percent in his far-left campaign for president.
Then there is Chesa Boudin. After George Soros poured in huge money to get him elected as district attorney in San Francisco, Boudin made a decision, among others, to not prosecute shoplifting crimes of less than $950 in value.
Boudin was too extreme even for that very liberal city and after so many stores left San Francisco, the people voted in a landslide to recall him (kick him out of office). No worry. He has now been hired to teach at the University of California at Berkeley Law School.
This is probably just a very partial list of losing or retired liberal or left-wing Democrats who have been hired to teach (brainwash) students at universities all across the country.
It is amazing how fast the term (fad) Diversity, Equity, Inclusion spread to almost every college and university in this nation.
The longtime African-American columnist and author Thomas Sowell once wrote that if a university brags about its diversity, ask the school how many conservatives are on its faculty.
Students usually parrot back either consciously or subconsciously what they believe or know their professors want to hear. They know almost all the professors are very liberal, very politically correct, very woke.
As a result, George Will wrote a column in the Washington Post entitled “Colleges Have Free Speech On The Run.” He wrote there is less diversity and free speech on college and university campuses than any place else in this country.
Brilliant professor, columnist and TV commentator Victor Davis Hanson wrote a recent column in which he said it is “tragic” that Dr. Martin Luther King’s “plea for an integrated, assimilated society, in which race became incidental… has mostly been abandoned by the Left in favor of racial stereotyping, collective guilting, and scapegoating by race and gender.”
He added: “‘White’ followed by a string of subsequent oppressive nouns — ’rage,’ ‘supremacy,’ ‘privilege’ — has become a twitch on campus. Diversity, equity, and inclusion deans and provosts cannot write a memo, issue a communique, or sign a directive without a reference to ‘white’ something or other.”
Black students are now not only treated as they should be, admitted to every college and university but they are also sought after, recruited and often given big scholarships.
I think it is a fair statement to say that conservative white students have clearly become the new minority on most college and university campuses.
Conservative students know it is probably better to remain silent or at least not become too outspoken in challenging liberal or left-wing professors.
Conservative students have become the new pariahs in higher education today, and they are really the ones most in need of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Conservative leaders are not only not hired to teach at most universities or asked to give commencement speeches, but they also have to have extra security if a conservative student organization asks them to speak on campus.
A federal court of appeals judge was recently not even allowed to give his full speech at the Stanford Law School, being rudely and arrogantly shouted down by students there.
Left-wing students apparently feel that they are the only ones who should be allowed to have free speech in this country and possibly will be more popular with the faculty if they become known as radical activists.
I hope those who are making huge contributions to colleges and universities will start demanding that more than just a token conservative professor be hired every now and then and that conservative students be treated more humanely on campuses.
Many years ago, I had an uncle (long deceased) who was a very proud Duke graduate. He even served for a period of time on the Duke Board.
A few years ago, his grandson came to my Washington office to volunteer to work for free for one month just to get the experience of working in a Congressional office.
The young man was a student at Wake Forest. I expressed my surprise that his grandfather had not encouraged him to go to Duke. He said, “Oh, Granddad thinks Duke has gone way too liberal.” He was right.
The most far-left students today often come from very wealthy families, attend very expensive schools like Duke, Stanford and Harvard, and can very accurately be described as spoiled brats.
I am proud that conservative students do not scream and shout at left-wing speakers and are not filled with as much hate as leftist students seem to have.
