Our Un-American Colleges and Universities

Our Un-American Colleges and Universities

© David Burton 2020

King David
 


     In days gone by, America’s colleges and universities were bastions of creative thinking, innovative ideas and freedom of expressions. They were the training grounds of America’s future, taught by America’s best and brightest – taught by open-minded professors who welcomed open discussions from all points of view - NO LONGER!

     These days, America’s colleges and universities are being controlled by closed minded liberal elite and by leftist Democratic progressives. During the past decades, Americas has sat back and watched while radical leftists have taken control over our college campuses.

     Today, America placidly watches the trashing and burning of campus buildings by college anarchists. Our supposedly best and brightest are taught by left-leaning progressive and radical college professors.

     During and after the Vietnam War, radical college graduates were recruited by colleges as teachers, professors and administrators. Today, these disciples of anarchy are in control of many of our institutions of higher learning. What these new college teachers brought with them is rage and hatred toward their country and this is being passed on to a new generation.

     “Now leftist propaganda, twisted U.S. history and radicalism is the norm in colleges across the country. Healthy political debate has all but vanished on campuses where conservative professors and speakers have become extinct.
      - - -
     “{Today’s} college students {are all too often} ignorant about U.S. history. The teachers don’t know much either. What they do teach is distorted to fit a progressive narrative that sees the founding of the country as an act by evil racists.
     “The truth is that the United States is the best, freest and most successful country in the history of the world. But that is not taught.
     “That is why demonstrators in their ignorance can tear down a statue of the great black abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass in Rochester, N.Y., or of President Ulysses S. Grant in San Francisco, both of whom did more for Black civil rights than the Marxist militants destroying our cities will ever accomplish.” (Ref. 1)

     “Higher education is teaching students to think critically all right -- about their own country. Turns out, this growing anti-American sentiment boiling over in our cities is no accident. Academia is . . . turning young people against their own country. [Emphasis mine]
     "The media {has increasingly engaged in the} universal pooh-poohing of education's role in the dimming pride our kids have in their country. ‘Against every law of society and nature . . . our children are taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but were villains. The radical view of American history is a web of lies -- all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted, and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition.’
     “Turns out . . . what we all know to be true: higher education is nothing but a recruiting ground for the Left. And conservatives, if their beliefs survive, will be punished. ‘Young Americans . . . become less patriotic after attending college. [Emphasis mine]
     “Now, after decades of sending children to liberal echo chambers, the far-Left's goal has paid off. College students, by and large, don't respect or appreciate their country. They may view America somewhat favorably . . . but they aren't proud to be Americans. . . ‘When asked whether they consider themselves to be patriotic, . . . only 35 percent of college students felt {they were}’
     “And in a study published earlier this year by the National Association of Scholars, it's clear that the campus environment isn't going to change any time soon. In a country where college professors donate to Democrats over Republicans by a 95-to-one ratio, [Emphasis mine] parents have to be even more vigilant about grounding their children in truth.” (Ref. 2)

     Today, all too many American universities demonstrate excessive campus intolerance of any views deviating from their dominant left-wing campus progressive perspective. Many of us find such an atmosphere uncomfortable, almost un-American. [3]

     Instead of many Americans finding the liberal college atmosphere uncomfortable, all Americans should find the Marxist and intolerant liberal elitist takeover of our colleges and univrsities un-American and unacceptable.

     Besides the outright hostility of all too many of America’s liberal left-leaning colleges and universities to good-old American conservatism and capitalism, our institutes of higher learning have now become bastions of still another form of Un-Americanism - anti-Semitism

     “Seventy-five years after the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, Jewish college students across the U.S. don’t just learn about anti-Semitism in their classes or history books. Unfortunately, far too many are directly confronted and victimized by this ancient hatred on their campuses today.
     “Anti-Semitism is spreading across college campuses around the U.S. at a growing and alarming rate. According to the Anti-Defamation League, acts of campus anti-Semitism last year {2019} rose to 201 reported incidents – an 86 percent increase in just two years. No doubt far more incidents go unreported.
     “The reported incidents included not just harassment and vandalism, but assaults against Jewish students. . .
      - - -
     “The Washington Post recently reported that neo-Nazis and other anti-Semitic groups are moving from spreading hatred of Jews online to taking action against Jews on campuses . . .
     “{The} executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks online hate group activity, said the groups ‘place special emphasis on . . . campaigns at college campuses throughout the country’ . . .
     “Today’s {campus} anti-Semitism is especially difficult to deal with because it is often cloaked as opposition to the policies of the state of Israel. [Emphasis mine] There is nothing wrong with criticizing governmental policies, of course. Israelis, Americans and the people of many nations frequently criticize the policies of their own governments and other governments.
     “But anti-Semites go far beyond criticizing Israeli policies. . .
     “Questioning Israel’s right to exist or promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – the anti-Semitic campaign designed to isolate and crush Israel economically to end its existence as the world’s only Jewish state - is a call for economic warfare. It is an expression of deep-seated hatred not just for Israel, but for the Jewish people and people of other faiths who feel any connection to Israel.
      - - -
     “On college campuses across the U.S. today those who claim that growing anti-Zionism has no relationship to growing anti-Semitism are making an equally illogical argument. Hatred of Israel leads to hatred of Jews, and Jewish college students are experiencing the results. [Emphasis mine]
     “To cite just one of many examples of anti-Semitic incidents on U.S. campuses, during the week of mourning for the 11 Jewish worshippers murdered at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, memorials that were set up in four different schools– the University of Tennessee, Pomona College, Eastern Michigan University and Duke University – were all defaced with swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti.
     “{There are} dozens more incidents where Jewish students are made to feel uncomfortable at U.S. colleges and universities – singled out for criticism, denied college credits for study abroad programs in Israel, accused of being more loyal to Israel than the United States, and attacked for ‘oppressing’ the Palestinian people. . .
      - - -
     “The problem of anti-Semitism on college campuses should be of concern to all Americans, not just Jews. And thankfully, many non-Jews . . . are at the forefront of fighting this ancient evil that has no place {on American college campuses and} in modern society.” (Ref. 4)

     Anti-Semitism at America’s colleges and universities has increasingly become part of the curriculum being foisted on the students by the elite liberals teaching there. Along with the attack by these elitists on America’s very basic foundation and ideals, the campus assault on Jews and Israel is vile, ugly and un-American.

     So, what to do about the rise of un-American behavior on our college campuses? One proposed solution: Defund the universities!

     “We hear much these days about defunding the police force, about cutting budgets or taking chunks of the public money allotted to our men and women in blue and giving it to social workers and inner-city projects.
     “Here’s a better idea.
     “Let’s defund our colleges and universities. Let’s cut their funding to the bone.
     “I don’t mean in all academic departments, of course. American universities still lead the world in scientific research. We still produce fine mathematicians and excellent engineers, though not enough of the latter. Our colleges and universities still graduate skilled nurses and doctors, business professionals, and computer scientists.
     “But many other departments, particularly in the humanities, yearly churn out political radicals, graduates wishing to transform the laws, politics, and economy of the United States. They leave their ivory towers with degrees in gender studies, political science, history, and literature, thoroughly indoctrinated in such concepts as Marxism, socialism, and deconstructionist thought. Some of them join our government and our corporations. Taught to despise traditional American values – the family is evil, the culture abhorrent, the country racist and sexist, its history one of oppression and bloodshed – these young people act as a virus in the body politic.
     “The professors and administrators who inculcate such ideas in their students claim the right to do so because of academic freedom, yet again and again they have cold-shouldered colleagues who refused to march in lockstep with their views, suppressed them, and in some cases, forced them to leave their profession and the campus. On some campuses, teachers, administrators, and like-minded students pounce on any who deviate from the party line, leaving others silenced, fearful of similar reprisals.
     “What’s worse, our state and federal governments keep pouring money into these intellectual gulags. Alumni of both public and private universities follow suit, giving their dollars to people who regard most of these donors with utter contempt.
     “Meanwhile, these same institutions pump out students who, having paid tens of thousands of dollars for tuition, boarding, and various fees, have never read the Constitution of the United States or the plays of Shakespeare, who studied history without reading a single book about their own country, and who often seem dumb as posts about the workings of capitalism.
     “The language they use, the Marxist slogans and demands for ‘social justice,’ can reasonably assure us that many of this summer’s rioters are graduates of such programs.
     “Let’s step back and look at a different way we might educate our young.
      - - -
     “. . . Why must someone pay $50,000 a year to read English literature or study Russian history? Why do we support institutions where full professors teach so few students, where administrators, some of them highly paid, outnumber professors, where diversity is preached unless you’re a white male or a conservative, where so many students seem more bent on partying and entertainment than on enlightenment and education?
     “Above all, why are Americans paying taxes to support institutions which advocate radical changes to the country they love? Why are we paying teachers to undermine the system that has brought freedom and prosperity to so many?
     “. . . our illiberal colleges and universities have become ‘cults manned by leftist and identity fanatics’ . . .
     “. . . Let’s defund the universities. ” [Emphasis mine] (Ref. 5)

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References:

  1. Radicals turning U.S. cities into college campuses of the ’60s, Peter Lucas, Boston Herald,
    Page 13, 15 July 2020.
  2. U.S. Colleges: Proud to Be UnAmerican, Tony Perkins, Family Research Council,
    8 July 2020.
  3. The Decline Of The American University, Richard Vedder, Forbes, 22 June 2020.
  4. Anti-Semitism spreading across college campuses at alarming rate, Elizabeth Pipko,
    Fox News, 14 February 2020.
  5. Let’s Defund Our Universities, Jeff Minick, Intellectual Takeout, 19 June 2020.

 
 
  14 August 2020 {Article 428; Suggestions?_47}    
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