Those wondering why America has aggressively lurched to the Left on social matters in recent years need only look to
universities
for their answer. Higher education has become a cesspool of left-wing radicalism, in which students are encouraged to focus more on activism than academics, and faculty are expected to conform ideologically or jeopardize their careers. Indeed, it’s hardly accurate to call what’s happening on college campuses today “
education
.”
The ideological capture of universities profoundly affects every other part of society. The students who emerge from these
schools
go on to fill the ranks in influential corporations, law firms, and government agencies, and they bring their bad ideas with them. These ideas often include disdain for the institutions they serve and the values they represent. For example, a poll in 2020 found that just
35%
of college students said they were proud of their country and that
31%
said they think speech with which they disagree or find objectionable should be protected.
HOUSE GOP LEADERS SIGNAL POSSIBLE FUNDING BREAKTHROUGH WITH CONSERVATIVE HOLDOUTS
This week, the Washington Examiner is partnering with important organizations — including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Independent Women’s Forum, and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni — to draw attention to this problem and point to possible solutions.
We recognize the sentiments expressed by students are in large part due to the course material they spend four years learning. For instance, at Loyola University in Chicago, administrators have pledged to “decolonize” the courses offered, which, according to its website, means “resisting and actively unlearning the dangerous and harmful legacy of colonization, particularly the racist ideas that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color people are inferior to White Europeans.”
Curricula often become worse the higher up the academic ladder one looks. At Harvard Law School, which produces hundreds of future lawyers and judges every year, students are offered a class on “feminist utopias,” which encourages them to examine the questions: “What difference will feminist governance make in society? Is it most effective to reform the current system or to imagine, and then build, an alternative one?” The course description continues, “Students will have the opportunity to develop their own concepts for utopian ideals in a sex-equal society.”
College faculty, at least those who still value academic rigor and independent thought, also have to endure indoctrination. Many universities in the past several years have rolled out diversity pledges that applicants are required to make if they wish to be hired or given tenure. The Goldwater Institute
reported
earlier this year that 80% of faculty job openings at Arizona’s public universities required applicants to pledge allegiance to liberal ideology. One
report
found that in 2018-19, of 893 qualified applicants for a life-sciences faculty post at the University of California, Berkeley, “679 were eliminated solely due to insufficiently woke diversity, equity and inclusion statements.”
In total, 40% of job openings in America’s top 100 schools require similar oaths, according to AEI.
Though Arizona’s university officials at least appear to have rolled back this requirement following blowback, commitments to leftist activism are still enforced in other ways, usually through opportunities and promotions being withheld. For example, in 2021, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology rescinded its invitation to University of Chicago geophysics professor Dorian Abbot to speak at its prestigious lecture series because Abbot said he believed the Left’s DEI agenda “violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment.”
The result is an environment of fear and self-censorship on college campuses, which has led to a significant drop in academic seriousness. In fact, 1 in 6 professors report having been disciplined or threatened with discipline for their speech, according to the FIRE, and 1 in 3 reported having been pressured by colleagues to avoid researching topics that could be deemed controversial.
College students, too, are self-censoring at alarming rates, with 42% of conservative students saying they refrain from sharing their thoughts inside and outside the classroom for fear of backlash from their peers or college administrators.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
This is a dire picture — one that demands immediate correction. Higher education is supposed to be a bastion of free thought and academic pursuit that pushes students and professors to wrestle with ideas that will make them not just better learners but better people. Instead, it has become a repressive monoculture dominated by a single ideology.
Reform is needed, lest we lose our universities and their students for good.
