|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
Some excellent colleges that teach not only academics, but also morals and values: Pensacola Christian College, P.O. Box 18000, Pensacola, FL 32523-9160 (http://www.pcci.edu/) 800-PCC-INFO (800-722-4636). Email: info@PCCinfo.com Patrick Henry College, One Patrick Henry Circle, Purcellville, VA 20132 (http://www.phc.edu/) 540-338-1776. Email: admissions@phc.edu You can read John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education free online here: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm The American education system is doing exactly what the industrialists designed it to do - mold naturally curious children into mindless workers who are basically still children, wanting all the latest "toys" out there and wanting them right now! We don't need to spend more $$$ on the current educational system. It's too efficient at what it was created to do as it is. Traditional schools are preparing us to be mindless drones. School is nothing but job training. It prepares us to be working, taxpaying consumers who keep the economy going. Its purpose is not to enlighten us. Is a college degree required for success? Professors seemed to have only two things in common: they were personally ambitious, and they had renounced religion. Universities are our great fall, The 19th century (Age of Enlightenment/Romanticism) and the early 20th century (Progressive Era) saw the ascendancy of the academy, colleges, universities, higher education. With the academy came its attendant associations where the intellectual class, especially since the 1950s and 1960s, increasingly sought to cement its newly exalted position as the controller of society and dictator of culture. Solidifying its education monopoly, the academic class over time would control the very gates of higher education, admissions, course requirements, degree offerings, graduation, licensing, college accreditation, degree certification, tenure – the very access to success in this life. Many people believe that to be "successful" in today's society, one must have a degree. Yet, did you know, dear reader, that long before the academic bureaucracy became entrenched in society ordinary people did extraordinary things without degrees? For example, as late as 1954 there was a man that sat on the Supreme Court of the United States that not only never graduated from a prestigious law school, he only had one year of law school under his belt. He had no judicial experience, yet his legal mind was so superior to his contemporaries, FDR tapped him to become a justice on the Supreme Court (1941), and Truman four years later appointed him to be chief prosecutor for the U.S. at the Nuremberg Trials (1945-46). That man was Robert H. Jackson. Other justices of the Supreme Court were appointed without graduating from law school or taking the bar exam (Benjamin Cardozo) or who lacked impressive judicial experience (Frank Murphy), the latter a lowly circuit court judge from Michigan before he was appointed to the high court by FDR. But how can this be? In art, the correlation between a college degree and artistic genius are nil. As a matter of fact, there appears to be a reverse correlation between not going to art school or getting an art degree with artistic excellence. None of the greatest artists, sculptors or architects whose works we revere today had a "degree" – not Galileo, Rembrandt, Rodin, Bonticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Goya, Picasso, etc. None went to what we today call "art school" or received a degree in "art studies," yet they were able to exercise their gifts without paying homage to some irrelevant, bureaucratic association or certification board that incidentally knows absolutely nothing about who or what makes transcendent art. In classical music, the same is true all of the greatest composers and musicians whose music transcends art, including Josquin, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Chopin, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg and Berg. None graduated from a "school of music" or received a degree in composition, music performance, music education or music business, yet they ascended the very steps of Parnassus in music, and they were able to exercise their gifts without paying homage to some self-aggrandizing, bureaucratic association or certification board who with Pharisee-like fanaticism guard the portals of the academy, to graduate schools and thus to prestigious universities, well heeled positions in society and economic success, affluence and notoriety. This monopoly over the mind of We the People by the academy through higher education must be deconstructed. When an honorary Ph.D. degree was granted to Benjamin Franklin (one of the greatest inventors of the 18th century and a high school dropout), he later wrote in his autobiography that he was loath to publicly acknowledge that honor despite the fact he did path-breaking work in physics and invented bifocals, the odometer, the lighting rod, electricity and many other great innovations we still use today. Franklin also helped write the Constitution, was ambassador to France, founded the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and the American Philosophical Society. Other geniuses of humanity that did not have the Ph.D. or in some cases no degree at all include: These associations, certification boards and accreditation institutions generate billions of dollars in annual revenue to determine college accreditation and fund the test-taking bureaucracy (MEAP, ACT, SAT, MCAT, LSAT, GRE, GMAT, KAPLAN, BAR-BRI, etc.). In this land of milk and honey, it's all about the money, power and control ... not knowledge or wisdom. Thank goodness humanity's best and brightest made their contributions before this entrenched and intractable education bureaucracy we call the academy came along with their degree requirements, academic associations, certification boards, teacher and professorial unions telling them that they had to have their stamp of approval to make such stellar contributions to humanity. If you think that I write from hyperbole, I challenge the reader to take any core curriculum, examine any canon of great works, scrutinize the credentials of any of the geniuses the academic class venerate as the foundation of their disciplines, study and codify in their textbooks or write Ph.D.s about, and you will conclude that the following somber aphorism is most true: A professor is a mediocrity that is an expert on the works of great men. Modern Schooling And The War Against Competition “Competition is a sin” – John D. Rockefeller Sr. In many respects we don’t have a free market economy. We have cartels, which are the escape from free market, not the natural progression of free market. They wage war against competition, not by the traditional means of attracting consumer confidence, but by taking the reigns of power in government itself and wielding it against its adversaries. The Rockefeller dynasty represents the epitome of cartels. Rockefeller’s partnership with Germany’s pharmaceutical giant I. G. Farben in 1929 formed the most powerful cartel in history. Lecturer and Professor of Arts Education Sir Ken Robinson appropriately calls this system a “relic of the industrial age“.Our modern schooling system was crafted as a tool of the Anglo-American Establishment in their quest to remake society. To monopolize thought and human potential is the ultimate form of domination. All of us are potential competition with untapped ability. The question at the forefront of the elite’s mind is this; How is this potential competition dealt with? As John D. Rockefeller Sr. famously proclaimed “Competition is a sin.” How will a pyramidal structure of society be maintained? How will society be standardized to meet the needs of an industrial nation? Our modern schooling system, in the elite’s minds, was an answer to these nagging questions. One of the greatest open secrets of our modern society is that many household names have managed to squeeze out from under the thumb of the system – by dropping out of school or not receiving degrees – and have flourished. These people were able to discover their own personal strengths and weaknesses by testing themselves in the real world. The “one right way” schooling system didn’t dictate what lesson needed to be learned, and especially when. They didn’t wait their turn. The fact that the very architects of our modern schooling system (John D. Rockefeller Sr. and Andrew Carnegie in particular) were dropouts should tell us something. Let’s ask the question; Why would these men – who became the immensely wealthy captains of the industrial era – embark on a crusade to place the nations’ people under a schooling system that they obviously didn’t want or need, and ultimately escaped from? One answer can be found by reading one of the first statements from the General Education Board (1906), founded by John D. Rockefeller Sr. and Fred T. Gates. In it, we read: “In our dreams… people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply.” The “supply” that is referred to in this statement are the individuals that have passed through the social sorting mechanism of modern schooling and are likely not a threat to the establishment. Ordinary people are the competition here; they are the target of the molding hands. French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, in his attempt to explain modern despotism, writes in Democracy in America (1835), “The sovereign, after taking individuals one by one in his powerful hands and kneading them to his liking, reaches out to embrace society as a whole. Over it he spreads a fine mesh of uniform, minute, and complex rules, through which not even the most original minds and most vigorous souls can poke their heads above the crowd. He does not break men’s wills but softens, bends, and guides them. He seldom forces anyone to act but consistently opposes action. He does not destroy things but prevents them from coming into being. Rather than tyrannize, he inhibits, represses, saps, stifles, and stultifies, and in the end he reduces each nation to nothing but a flock of timid and industrious animals, with the government as its shepherd.” Lecturer and Professor of Arts Education Sir Ken Robinson appropriately calls the modern schooling system a “relic of the industrial age“. Robinson recalls in his book The Element, “Some of the most brilliant, creative people I know did not do well at school. Many of them didn’t really discover what they could do – and who they really were – until they’d left school and recovered from their education.” Robinson is describing the natural response to the kind of “education” that the General Education Board sought in 1904, which has continued to the present day. Another open secret that has festered in our institutions is the fact that eugenics molded and infiltrated the education system, along with the intelligentsia of 2oth century America. The very standards by which “intelligence” is often measured, namely IQ tests and SAT’s, were created and promoted by open eugenicists. Such individuals included Lewis Terman, member of the America Eugenics Society, and creator of the modern Stanford Binet IQ Test, and Carl Brigham, inventor of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Lewis Terman writes in the 1919 textbook The Measure of Intelligence, produced while he was a member of the faculty of Stanford University, “Among laboring men and servant girls there are thousands like them feebleminded. They are the world’s ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water.’ And yet, as far as intelligence is concerned, the tests have told the truth…” Nicholas Lemann explains the function of the “Great Sorting” – standardized testing – in The Atlantic Monthly, “Just as important as, or more important than, the effect of the Great Sorting on the composition of the American elite has been its effect on everyone else. We have a different social order now. Henry Chauncey–who, when ETS was beginning, privately compared the situation in testing to that of railroads in the 1850s–helped to create the human equivalent of the standard gauge, which nationalized and systematized the mobility of people instead of goods.” If everyone followed the directives of the education establishment line for line from gradeschool onward, our society would undoubtedly be totally stagnant. If everyone complied totally with the “one right way,” “one size fits all” method, invention, innovation and development would be stifled completely. Some of the most significant developments that contributed to the creation of our modern society were created by individuals who had little to no formal schooling. Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, had around three months of formal schooling. Henry Ford, most famous for his assembly lines and Ford motor company, dropped out in 8th grade. Our system of schooling is good for social sorting and command and control, but the dynamic human spirit and the kaleidoscope of diverse intelligence that inhabits it is absolutely crushed under its dead weight. Everyone knows this intuitively. That’s why there are always individuals within the structure of the system who kick sand into the gears of the machine. Again, this is not by accident. The pyramidal structure of society cannot survive unless the masses are schooled in this way. Economically speaking, it doesn’t make much sense to stifle this untapped potential in humanity. It does make absolute sense, however, when viewed from the eyes of the elite who want to freeze society in order to maintain dominance regardless of the cost. If a true scientific monopoly over human thought and potential were ever created, its founders would wield immense power. Bertrand Russell succinctly explained this scientific method of control through the schooling system in his 1954 book “The Scientific Outlook.” Russel wrote, “…the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play.” Solutions As the political world is trembling and paradigms are shifting, an awareness of the true power structure of the world is spreading. The schooling industry is not immune to the effects of these paradigm shifts. Homeschooling is growing exponentially while warnings of another bubble about to burst in the American economy are sounding – this time from the college industry. The National Inflation Association is warning that 2011 could be the year that the college bubble is set to burst, stating, “College education could possibly be the largest scam in U.S. history.” The sheer number of people that are now going to college has dramatically dropped the value of college degrees, while tuition is skyrocketing. The NIA “…believes that any recent high school graduate with $30,000 saved for college who invests that money into silver and becomes a minimum wage apprentice for the next 4 years, will likely have enough money in 4 years to buy a median priced U.S. home.” As with any entrenched system and ideology, it will fight to stay alive. Students are being fitted with GPS tracking technology to ensure no one is unaccounted for. Inattentiveness and rebellion is medicated into passive acceptance with Ritalin and other psychotropic drugs. Because this system goes against the grain of humanity, it is by its very nature easy to beat. There are plenty of solutions. In seeking these solutions, we must be wary of establishment initiated “reform” that attempts to fix a “broken system” that is doing exactly what it is meant to do. A recent article from the California Teachers Association pointed out the significant influence of large foundations like the Gates Foundation in “reforming” the school system. As the article explains, the funding from these groups comes with strings attached that demand more “…top-down, authoritarian style…” administration and more standardization. John Taylor Gatto is a former award winning schoolteacher from New York. His many books, including The Underground History of American Education and Dumbing us Down, explain from a teachers perspective the modern “schooling” industry. His latest book, Weapons of Mass Instruction lays out a step by step action plan for students to take part in. It’s called the Bartleby Project (http://www.oldthinkernews.com/?p=297) available in PDF form here (http://www.oldthinkernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Bartleby-Project.pdf); Its target – Standardized Testing. If we can begin to make cracks in the system, Gatto explains, one of the best places to start is the standardized testing industry. Gatto writes simply, “Let a group of young men and women, one fully aware that these tests add no value to individual lives or the social life of the majority, use the power of the internet to recruit other young people to refuse, quietly, to take these tests. No demonstrations, no mud-slinging, no adversarial politics – to simply write across the face of the tests placed in front of them, “I would prefer not to take this test.” The Bartleby Project (see below on this page) should allow no compromise. That will be the second line of defense for management, a standard trick taught in political science seminars. Don’t fall for it. Reject compromise. No need to explain why. No need to shout. An old man’s prayers will be with you.” Invitation to an Open Conspiracy: The Bartleby Project The Economics Of College A front-page headline in the New York Times captures much of the economic confusion of our time: "Fewer Options Open to Pay for Costs of College." The whole article is about the increased costs of college, the difficulties parents have in paying those costs, and the difficulties that both students and parents have in trying to borrow the money needed when their current incomes will not cover college costs. All that is fine for a purely "human interest" story. But making economic policies on the basis of human interest stories -- which is what politicians increasingly do, especially in election years -- has a big down side for those people who do not happen to be in the categories chosen to write human interest stories about. The general thrust of human interest stories about people with economic problems, whether they are college students or people faced with mortgage foreclosures, is that the government ought to come to their rescue, presumably because the government has so much money and these individuals have so little. Like most "deep pockets," however, the government's deep pockets come from vast numbers of people with much shallower pockets. In many cases, the average taxpayer has lower income than the people on whom the government lavishes its financial favors. Costs are not just things for government to help people to pay. Costs are telling us something that is dangerous to ignore. The inadequacy of resources to produce everything that everyone wants is the fundamental fact of life in every economy -- capitalist, socialist or feudal. This means that the real cost of anything consists of all the other things that could have been produced with those same resources. Building a bridge means using up resources that could have been used building homes or a hospital. Going to college means using up vast amounts of resources that could be used for all sorts of other things. Prices force people to economize. Subsidizing prices enables people to take more resources away from other uses without having to weigh the real cost. Without market prices that convey the real costs of resources denied to alternative users, people waste. That was the basic reason why Soviet industries used more electricity than American industries to produce a smaller output than American industries produced. That is why they used more steel and cement to produce less than Japan or Germany produced when making things that required steel and cement. When you pay the full cost -- that is, the full value of the resources in alternative uses -- you tend to economize. When you pay less than that, you tend to waste. Whether someone goes to college at all, what kind of college, and whether they remain on campus to do postgraduate work, are all questions about how much of the resources that other people want are to be taken away and used by those on whom we have arbitrarily focused in human interest stories. This is not just a question about robbing Peter to pay Paul. The whole society's standard of living is lower when resources are shifted from higher valued uses to lower valued uses and wasted by those who are subsidized or otherwise allowed to pay less. The fact that the Soviet economic system allowed industries to use resources wastefully meant that the price was paid not in money but in a far lower standard of living for the Soviet people than the available technology and resources were capable of producing. The Soviet Union was one of the world's most richly endowed nations in natural resources -- if not the most richly endowed. Yet many of its people lived almost as if they were in the Third World. How many people would go to college if they had to pay the real cost of all the resources taken from other parts of the economy? Probably a lot fewer people. Moreover, when paying their own money, there would probably not be nearly as many people parting with hard cash to study feel-good subjects with rap sessions instead of serious study. There would probably be fewer people lingering on campus for the social scene or as a refuge from adult responsibilities in the real world. Those who argue that the taxpayers should be forced to subsidize people who go to colleges and universities seldom bother to think beyond the notion that education is a Good Thing. Some education is not only a good thing but a great thing. But, like most good things, there are limits to how much of it is good -- and how good compared to other uses of the resources required. In other words, education is not a Good Thing categorically in unlimited amounts, for people of all levels of ability, interest and willingness to work. Nor is there any obvious way to set an arbitrary limit. These are questions that no given individual can answer for a whole society. The most we can do is confront individuals with the costs that their choices are imposing on others who want the same resources for other purposes, and are willing to pay for those resources. Those who cannot bring themselves to face the tough choices that reality presents often seek escape to some kind of fairy godmother -- the government or, more realistically, the taxpayers. When the idea of conscripting taxpayers to play the role of fairy godmother (like Obama plans to do) for some arbitrarily selected favorites of the intelligentsia, "the poor" are often used as human shields behind which to advance toward their goal. What will happen to the poor if there are no government subsidies for college? If this argument is meant seriously, rather than being simply a political talking point, then there can always be some means test used to decide who qualifies as poor and then subsidize just those people -- rather than the vastly larger number of other claimants for government largesse who advance toward the national treasury, using the poor as human shields. Another option would be to allow students to sign enforceable contracts by which lenders would pay their college or university expenses in exchange for a given percentage of their future earnings. That way, students would be issuing stocks to raise capital, the way corporations do, instead of being limited to borrowing money to be paid back in fixed amounts -- the latter being equivalent to issuing corporate bonds. Not only would this get the conscripted taxpayers out of the picture, it would also make it unnecessary for parents to go into hock to put their children through college. Still, the financially poorest student in the land could get money to go to college, with a good academic record and a promising career from which to pay dividends on the lender's investment. More fundamentally, it would confront the prospective college student with the full costs of all the resources required for a college education. Those who are not serious -- which includes a remarkably large number of students, even at good colleges -- would have to back off and go face the realities of the adult world in the job market. But not as many jobs would be able to require college degrees if such degrees were no longer so readily available at someone else's expense. If individuals issuing stock in themselves sounds impossible, it has already been done. Boxers from poor families get trained and promoted at their managers' expense, in exchange for a share of their future earnings. Even some college students have already gotten money to pay for college in exchange for a share of their future earnings. However, in the current atmosphere, where college is seen as a "right," there has been resentment at having to pay back more than was lent when the recipient's degree brings in large paychecks. What is truly repugnant to some people about college students issuing stocks as well as bonds is that this not only takes the government out of the picture, it takes the intelligentsia out of the picture as prescribers of how other people ought to behave. Reality can be hard to adjust to. The most we can do is see that the adjustments are made by those who get the benefits, instead of making the taxpayer the one who has to do all the adjusting. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com. Is Prestige Worth It? The obsession of many high school students and their parents about getting into a prestige college or university is part of the social scene of our time. So is the experience of parents going deep into hock to finance sending a son or daughter off to Ivy U. or the flagship campus of the state university system. Sometimes both the student and the parent end up with big debts from financing a degree from some prestige institution. Yet these are the kinds of institutions that many have their hearts set on. Media hype adds to the pressure to go where the prestige is. A key role is often played by the various annual rankings of colleges and universities, especially the rankings by U.S. News & World Report. These rankings typically measure all sorts of inputs-- but not outputs. The official academic accrediting agencies do the same thing. They measure how much money is spent on this or that, how many professors have tenure and other kinds of inputs. What they don't measure is the output-- what kind of education the students end up with. A new think tank in Washington is trying to shift the emphasis from inputs to outputs. The Center for College Affordability and Productivity is headed by Professor Richard Vedder, who gives the U.S. News rankings a grade of D. Measuring the inputs, he says, is "roughly equivalent to evaluating a chef based on the ingredients he or she uses." His approach is to "review the meal"-- that is, the outcome of the education itself. The CCAP study uses several measures of educational output, including the proportion of a college's graduates who win awards like the Rhodes Scholarships or who end up listed in "Who's Who in America," as well as the ratings that students give the professors who teach them. Professor Vedder admits that these are "imperfect" measures of a college's educational output, but at least they are measures of output instead of input. Some academic institutions come out at or near the top by either input or output criteria but there were some large changes in rankings as well. Among national universities, the top three are the same-- but in different order-- whether ranked by U.S. News or by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. They are Harvard, Yale and Princeton, according to Professor Vedder's think tank, and Princeton, Harvard and Yale in the U.S. News rankings. Among the liberal arts colleges, however, there were some big changes. Although Williams and Amherst were the top two in both rankings, Washington & Lee moved up from 15th to 6th when ranked by Professor Vedder's group and Barnard climbed from 30th to 8th. Whitman College, which was ranked 37th by U.S. News on the basis of the college's inputs, jumped to 9th when evaluated on its output by Vedder and company. Wabash College jumped from 52nd to 10th. West Point rose from 22nd to 7th. One of my own favorite measures of output-- the percentage of a college's graduates who go on to get Ph.D.s-- was not used by either set of evaluations. Small colleges dominate the top ten in sending their alumni on to get doctorates. Grinnell College, which was not among the top ten on either the U.S. News list or on Professor Vedder's list, sends a higher percentage of its graduates on to get Ph.D.s than does either Harvard or Yale. No given criterion tells the whole story. In fact, the whole idea of ranking colleges and universities is open to question. To someone who is making a decision where to apply, what matters is what is the best institution for that particular individual, which may not be best-- or even advisable-- for that applicant's brother or sister. "Choosing the Right College" is by far the best of the college guides, partly because it does not give rankings, but more because it goes into the many factors that matter-- and which matter differently for different people. What Professor Vedder's study does is provide yet another reason for parents and students not to obsess over big-name schools or their rankings-- or to go deep into hock over them. Education and Entrepreneurship "...we need a completely new stream of teachers to staff a new vision of what our high schools should look like." I have been losing interest in the contests between Democrats and Republicans in Washington. I am more anxious about the outcome of the struggle between innovators and incumbents in the field of education. The incumbent policy is more of the same. Both parties in Washington champion more government involvement in primary education and more subsidies for existing colleges and universities. The innovative policy is to support any alternative to our current education system. Ultimately, we would trust consumers to keep the best alternatives and discard the rest. Wizard-of-Oz Diplomas One politically popular idea is to try to send more young adults to college. This may seem appealing, but in reality we already have too many students in college who lack sufficient basic skills. In November, after grading a batch of papers, I posted the following notice to the web site for an economics course that I teach at George Mason University: Many students did poorly with writing quality. If it were up to me, a lot of you would be taking remedial English classes. I would advise everyone to think twice about using the word "on." For example, it is wrong to say, "The book discusses on economic growth" when the proper sentence is "The book discusses economic growth." My recollection from my career in government and business is that written communication skills still matter. Out of over 100 students in my class at George Mason, no more than a handful could function in any capacity in a job that required writing a memorandum. Over half of the students are utterly incompetent when it comes to grammar and syntax. They have no ability to communicate complex ideas. Yet I do not fail these students. I feel that I must reserve my F's for the students who do not turn in papers at all. I fear that many of the students who pass will go on to earn Wizard-of-Oz diplomas, which signify nothing. Students will claim to be educated, but employers will know otherwise. The phenomenon of the Wizard-of-Oz diploma has discredited the college degree. My oldest daughter discovered that her degree qualified her for secretarial positions. She soon decided to try law school instead. As her experience illustrates, although the average salary differential between college graduates and non-graduates remains high, the marginal college graduate is earning little or no premium. More Differentiation While politicians champion more homogeneity in education (national standards; send everyone to college), my guess is that what we need is more differentiation. Students are heterogeneous in terms of their abilities, learning styles, and rates of maturation. Putting every student on the same track is sub-optimal for large numbers of young people. Some students -- probably more than we realize -- are autodidacts, meaning that they teach themselves at their own pace. One of the brightest students in my high school statistics class simply cannot handle the structure of a school day. He is motivated to learn on his own (he was curious to read my book on health care and asked me for a copy), but he is demotivated by most of his classes. Some students are not suited for academic study. We speak of the proverbial auto mechanic, but in fact the best career path for many of these students in today's economy would be in the allied health fields. Unfortunately, this career path is blocked by occupational licensing requirements, which prevent many otherwise capable students from pursuing careers in dental hygiene, physical therapy, or similar professions. If we had the equivalent credentialism at work in auto repair, you would need four years of college plus two or three years of post-graduate education just to work on a car. Carl Schramm, quoted above, believes that many young adults would benefit from courses in entrepreneurship. Certainly, this would be at least as developmentally beneficial as the community service requirements imposed on so many students today, particularly if the entrepreneurship classes were hands-on and not merely theoretical. If it is difficult to imagine today's educators providing entrepreneurial experiences to students, then Schramm would argue that the solution is to replace many of today's educators. In my economics class at George Mason, the first exercise I give students is to plan a start-up business. My goal, however, is not to teach them to be entrepreneurs. It is to help them appreciate the central role of entrepreneurs in the economy and to understand that a business is not a rich uncle, but an enterprise that wrestles with sales and costs in an attempt to make a profit. Another educational issue that ought to be subject to experimentation is the mix among lectures, small classes, and self-paced instruction. Computers and the Internet create possibilities that did not exist 20 years ago. In theory, I could bring outstanding economics lecturers to my students over the Internet, and then break my class into discussion sections for close personal interaction. Entry Barriers Education suffers from major barriers to entry. Any industry that has strong entry barriers will suffer from a lack of innovation and sub-par productivity. Some of the entry barriers are natural. Reputation is important in affecting the choices of parents and students, and the costs of building a reputation as a school or university are high. However, many entry barriers in education are artificial. One of the biggest entry barriers is that government aid to education is given to incumbent institutions, rather than to parents and students. It is difficult for an entrepreneur to compete with a school or college that receives a hefty subsidy from the government. Changing the form of government aid from institutional assistance to vouchers would be a major step toward removing entry barriers in the field of education. Another entry barrier is the accreditation process, which is controlled by the incumbents. Imagine what would happen in another industry, such as supermarkets or landscaping services, if in order to start a new business in that industry you had to become accredited by a board consisting mostly of incumbents in that industry. Nobody likes competition, and it is easy to think of excuses not to accredit a newcomer, especially an innovative upstart. If we had such an accreditation system in place in other industries, competition would be stifled, and the incumbents would be under no pressure to improve service or reduce costs. Creating a consumer-oriented accreditation board would help to lower this important entry barrier. In my view, the key to improving education is removing entry barriers and allowing alternative schooling experiments (such as apprenticeships, tradeschools, etc.) to flourish. From this perspective, the politicians of both parties who are most strongly "pro-education" are in fact the biggest obstacles to improvement, since their policies serve only to entrench the educational establishment. Preserving liberty and restoring constitutional precepts are impossible as long as the welfare mentality prevails, and that will not likely change until we've run out of money. But it will become clear, as we move into the next century, that perpetual wealth and the so-called balanced budget, along with an expanding welfare state, cannot continue indefinitely. Any effort to perpetuate it will only occur with the further erosion of liberty. The role of the US government in public education has changed dramatically over the past 100 years. Most of the major changes have occurred in the second half of this century. In the 19th century, the closest the federal government got to public education was the Land Grant College program. In the last 40 years, the federal government has essentially taken charge of the entire system. It is involved in education at every level through loans, grants, court directives, regulations, and curriculum manipulation. In 1900 it was of no concern to the federal government how local schools were run at any level. After hundreds of billions of dollars, we have yet to see a shred of evidence that the drift toward central control over education has helped. By all measurements, the quality of education is down. There are more drugs and violence in the public schools than ever before. Discipline is impossible out of fear of lawsuits or charges of civil rights violations. Controlled curricula have downplayed the importance of our constitutional heritage while indoctrinating our children, even in kindergarten, with environmental mythology, internationalism, and sexual liberation. Neighborhood schools in the early part of the 20th Century did not experience this kind of propaganda. The one good result coming from our failed educational system has been the limited but important revival of the notion that parents are responsible for their children's education, not the state. We have seen literally millions of children taken from the public school system and taught at home or in private institutions in spite of the additional expense. This has helped many students and has also served to pressure the government schools into doing a better job. And the statistics show that middle-income and low-income families are the most eager to seek an alternative to the public school system. There is no doubt that the way schools are run, how the teachers teach, and how the bills are paid is dramatically different from 100 years ago. And even though some that go through public schools do exceptionally well, there is clear evidence that the average high school graduate today is far less educated than his counterpart was in the early part of this century. Due to the poor preparation of our high school graduates, colleges expect very little from their students, since nearly everyone gets to go to college who wants to. Public school is compulsory and college is available to almost everyone regardless of qualifications. In 1914, English composition was required in 98% of our colleges; today it's about one-third. Only 12% of today's colleges require mathematics be taught, where in 1914, 82% did. No college now requires literature courses. But, rest assured plenty of social-babble courses are required as we continue to dumb down our nation. (No wonder U.S. students rank 36th in the world!) Federal funding for education grows every year, hitting $38 billion this year, $1 billion more than requested by the administration and 7% over last year. Great congressional debates occur over the size of a classroom, student and teacher testing, bilingual education, teacher's salaries, school violence, and drug usage. And it's politically incorrect to point out that all these problems are not present in the private schools. Every year there is less effort at the federal level to return education to the people, the parents, and the local school officials. For 20 years at least, some of our presidential candidates advocated abolishing the Department of Education and for the federal government to get completely out of the public education business. This year we will hear no more of that. The President got more money for education than he asked for, and it's considered not only bad manners but also political suicide to argue the case for stopping all federal government education programs. Talk of returning some control of federal programs to the state is not the same as keeping the federal government out of education as directed by the Constitution. Of the 20 congressionally authorized functions granted by the Constitution, education is not one of them. That should be enough of a reason not to be involved, but there's no evidence of any benefit, and statistics show that great harm has resulted. It has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, yet we continue the inexorable march toward total domination of our educational system by Washington bureaucrats and politicians. It makes no sense! It's argued that if the federal funding for education did not continue education would suffer even more. Yet we see poor and middle-class families educating their children at home or at a private school at a fraction of the cost of a government school education, with results fantastically better--and all done in the absence of violence and drugs. A case can be made that there would be more money available for education if we just left the money in the states to begin with and never brought it to Washington for the bureaucrats and the politicians to waste. But it looks like Congress will not soon learn this lesson, so the process will continue and the results will get worse. The best thing we could do now is pass a bill to give parents a $3,000 tax credit for each child they educate. This would encourage competition and allow a lot more choice for parents struggling to help their children get a decent education. -- From "A Republic, If You Can Keep It" by Dr. Ron Paul For many students, their desire to go to college has nothing to do with education but rather "for the college experience" -- sex, drugs, and partying -- so-called "fun" and wasted money (and future years of both the parents' and students' lives paying it back). Caroline makes the case that the same money that a good college costs, if wisely invested, will often outweigh any possible differences in wages due to the college degree (especially in these non-serious students who many times never read a book again after they get out of college). This is not to say that for some students attending college for the right reasons who are going into certain fields for which college is required that college will not be a benefit, but going to college has become a "right" today, with students and parents alike not even thinking if it is necessary in their particular case. In many countries, a college diploma is now required for the most menial jobs: it's an additional hurdle to weed out the multitudes of job applicants so that the potential employer doesn't have to decide between so many applicants. A classic example is in the Philippines a bachelor's degree minimum is required to cook the fries at Mc Donald's or to be a cashier at Metro Gaisano's, and a master's degree or Ph.D. is required to progress higher (manager, etc.) -- and it doesn't matter what the degree is in, since it's just an arbritrary hurdle to reduce the number of applicants for any given position. The consequences of this are that many families and students virtually starve, and go into debt for long times, to send their kids for meaningless degrees. This is happening here also, with almost every parent being brainwashed into thinking that they are somehow "depriving" their children if they don't send them to college right after high school. Some colleges, such as Yale University, recognize that many students are not mature enough to know what they want to do in life and suggest that they work for a few years until they know themselves better, rather than waste money and get a meaningless degree in liberal studies or liberal arts. They may also find that they are not suited for college -- wait! Did I say something politically incorrect? Surprise -- some kids are not suited for college. They are much better off spending their parent's money going to trade school and becoming a skilled tradesman (or woman), or becoming an apprentice and learning on the job. A good tip-off is that they hate books and only read glossy dating magazines. Many students do not realize that learning is a lifelong commitment and think that once that get that "piece of paper" that this is the end of it. Employers routinely replace people who feel that way and won't continue to educate themselves through self-education, books (yes, you oftentimes actually have to even spend your own money to buy them, although a growing number of employers will reimburse for them -- but the important part is that you need to have the initiative and drive to ask for them, and then to study them once you get them.) Getting a diploma and then not keeping your knowledge up to date is a complete waste -- a waste of your time, future earnings (paying off student loans) and your parent's money. If you are not a studious person who enjoys or has the drive to keep your newly acquired knowledge current, I strongly advise you to reconsider your motivation for wanting to attend college. Another less-known fact is that going to a state junior college, and then transferring to a state four year university afterwards (if required for your particular occupation) is much less expensive and every bit as good quality-wise; any vocational counselor will admit that if asked. It's what you put into your education that you get back from it (providing you select good teachers and they use good books that you can relate to -- but nothing says you can't buy your own additional books to help you understand the instructor's-chosen book, and I strongly advise you to do so if you cannot understand the required book). Also, once you get your foot in the door and get hired in your chosen profession (with a high school or A.Sc. degree), many employers will reimburse your tuition to continue your education, so that you can use more of your earnings towards a house, car or savings instead of spending many years paying back student loans. Many students cause great hardship to themselves and their parents by refusing to consider less expensive alternatives that are every bit as good. Another thing that both parents and students are usually not aware of is that, although the average salary differential between college graduates and non-graduates remains high, the marginal college graduate is earning little or no premium (see above article "Education and Entrepreneurship" regarding "Wizard-of-Oz Diplomas". Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (Paperback) Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism is Corrupting our Future (Hardcover) Our universities have largely abandoned the search for truth and many former radicals (e.g., "Professor" Bill Ayers and others) seek to brainwash their students. Same sex dorms and bathrooms do demystify relations between the sexes and deter romantic love. Many pop stars are tarts and actively promote alternative lifestyles. Paris Hilton is "a fabulously rich slut" and Rap music is not indicative of black experience in America. Television definitely is a cesspool, Hollywood champions homosexuality in many a film and Pornography has a glamour today it does not deserve. The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom (Hardcover) From the Back Cover Of Knights and Fair Maidens: A Radical New Way to Develop Old-fashioned Relationships (Paperback) "Jeff and Danielle prove that God's plan for relationships is not out-of-date or old-fashioned--it's for the adventurous, courageous and most importantly, romantic Christian single who wants God's best in relationships and marriage." Congressman and Mrs. Jim Ryun I Kissed Dating Goodbye (Paperback) Joshua Harris's first book, written when he was only 21, turned the Christian singles scene upside down...and people are still talking. More than 800,000 copies later, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, with its inspiring call to sincere love, real purity, and purposeful singleness, remains the benchmark for books on Christian dating. Now, for the first time since its release, the national #1 bestseller has been expanded with new content and updated for new readers. Honest and practical, it challenges cultural assumptions about relationships and provides solid, biblical alternatives to society's norm. Tired of the game? Kiss dating goodbye. Going out? Been dumped? Waiting for a call that doesn’t come? Have you tasted pain in dating, drifted through one romance or, possibly, several of them? Ever wondered, Isn’t there a better way? I Kissed Dating Goodbye shows what it means to entrust your love life to God. Joshua Harris shares his story of giving up dating and discovering that God has something even better—a life of sincere love, true purity, and purposeful singleness. Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship (Paperback) From Publishers Weekly The ACLU vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values (Paperback) Academic Cesspools The average taxpayer and parents who foot the bill know little about the rot on many college campuses. "Indoctrinate U" is a recently released documentary, written and directed by Evan Coyne Maloney, that captures the tip of a disgusting iceberg. The trailer for "Indoctrinate U" can be seen here. "Indoctrinate U" starts out with an interview of Professor David Clemens, at Monterey Peninsula College, who reads an administrative directive regarding new course proposals: "Include a description of how course topics are treated to develop a knowledge and understanding of race, class, and gender issues." Clemens is fighting the directive, which applies not to just sociology classes but math, physics, ornamental horticulture and other classes whose subject material has nothing to do with race, class and gender issues. Professor Noel Ignatiev, of the Massachusetts School of Art, explains that his concern is to do away with whiteness. Why? "Because whiteness is a form of racial oppression." Ignatiev adds, "There cannot be a white race without the phenomenon of white supremacy." What's blackness? According to Ignatiev, "Blackness is an identity that can be plausibly argued to arise out of a resistance to oppression." Bucknell professor Geoff Schneider agrees, saying, "A lot of our students, I think, are unconsciously racist." Both Ignatiev and Schneider are white. The College of William & Mary and Tufts and Brown universities established racially segregated student orientations. At some universities, students are provided with racially segregated housing, and at others they are treated to racially separate graduation ceremonies. Under the ruse of ending harassment, a number of universities have established speech codes. Bowdoin College has banned jokes and stories "experienced by others as harassing." Brown University has banned "verbal behavior" that "produces feelings of impotence, anger or disenfranchisement" whether "unintentional or intentional." University of Connecticut has outlawed "inappropriately directed laughter." Colby College has banned any speech that could lead to a loss of self-esteem. "Suggestive looks" are banned at Bryn Mawr College and "unwelcomed flirtations" at Haverford College. Fortunately for students, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has waged a successful war against such speech codes. Central Connecticut State College set up a panel to discuss slavery reparations. All seven speakers, invited by the school, supported the idea. Professor Jay Bergman questioned the lack of diversity on the panel. In response, two members of the African Studies department published a letter criticizing Bergman, saying, "The protests against reparations stand on the same platform that produced apartheid, Hitler and the KKK." Such a response, as Professor Bergman says, is nothing less than intellectual thuggery. For universities such as Columbia and Yale, military recruiters are unwelcome, but they welcome terrorists such as Columbia University's invitation to Colonel Mohammar Quadaffi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yale admitted former Taliban spokesman Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi as a student, despite his fourth-grade education and high school equivalency degree. On other campuses, such as Lehigh, Central Michigan, Arizona, Holy Cross and California Berkeley universities, administrators banned students, staff and faculty from showing signs of patriotism after the 9/11 attacks. On some campuses, display of the American flag was banned; the pledge of allegiance and singing patriotic songs were banned out of fear of possibly offending foreign students. Several university officials refused to be interviewed for the documentary. They wanted to keep their campus policies under wraps, not only from reporters but parents as well. When college admissions officials make their recruitment visits, they don't tell parents that their children will learn "whiteness is a form of racial oppression," or that they sponsor racially segregated orientations, dorms and graduation ceremonies. Parents and prospective students are kept in the dark. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (http://www.isi.org/) has published "Choosing the Right College," to which I've written the introduction. The guide provides a wealth of information to help parents and students choose the right college. Academic Cesspools II In last month's column "Academic Cesspools," I wrote about "Indoctrinate U," a recently released documentary exposing egregious university indoctrination of young people at prestigious and not-so-prestigious universities (www.onthefencefilms.com/movies.html). I said the documentary only captured the tip of a disgusting iceberg. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a frontline organization in the battle against academic suppression of free speech and thought, released information about what's going on at the University of Delaware, and probably at other universities as well, that should send chills up the spines of parents of college-age students. The following excerpts are taken from the University of Delaware's Office of Residence Life Diversity Facilitation Training document. The full document is available at www.thefire.org. Students living in the University's housing, roughly 7,000, are taught: "A racist: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination. (This does not deny the existence of such prejudices, hostilities, acts of rage or discrimination.)" This gem of wisdom suggests that by virtue of birth alone, not conduct, if you're white, you're a racist. If you're white and disagree with racial quotas, preferences and openly racist statements made by blacks to whites, and you call it reverse racism or reverse discrimination, here's the document's message for you: "Reverse racism: A term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege. Those in denial use the term reverse racism to refer to hostile behavior by people of color toward whites, and to affirmative action policies, which allegedly give 'preferential treatment' to people of color over whites. In the U.S., there is no such thing as 'reverse racism.'" I agree with the last sentence. Racism is racism irrespective of color. A white University of Delaware student might not have an ounce of ill will toward any race. According to the university's document, he's a racist anyway. "A non-racist: A non-term. The term was created by whites to deny responsibility for systemic racism, to maintain an aura of innocence in the face of racial oppression, and to shift responsibility for that oppression from whites to people of color (called 'blaming the victim'). Responsibility for perpetuating and legitimizing a racist system rests both on those who actively maintain it, and on those who refuse to challenge it. Silence is consent." Then the document asks, "Have you ever heard a well-meaning white person say, 'I'm not a member of any race except the human race?' What she usually means by this statement is that she doesn't want to perpetuate racial categories by acknowledging that she is white. This is an evasion of responsibility for her participation in a system based on supremacy for white people." I doubt whether this racist nonsense is restricted to the university's housing program. Students are probably taught similar nonsense in their sociology, psychology and political science classes. FIRE's outing of the University of Delaware's racist program elicited this official response from Vice President Michael Gilbert, "The central mission of the University, and of the program, is to cultivate both learning and the free exchange of ideas." (According to thefire.org, as a result of public exposure, and without condemning this racist program, on Nov. 2 President Patrick Harker ordered the mandatory re-education halted pending a review.) It's a safe bet the university did not highlight this kind of learning experience to parents and students in its recruitment efforts. Nor were generous donors and alumni informed that they are racists by birth. I'd also guess that this kind of "education" was kept under wraps from the state legislators who use taxpayer money to fund the university. Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well. Academic Intimidation There is an article in the current issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education -- the trade publication of the academic world -- about professors being physically intimidated by their students. "Most of us dread physical confrontation," the author says. "And so these aggressive, and even dangerous, students get passed along, learning that intimidation and implied threats will get them what they want in life." This professor has been advised, at more than one college, not to let students know where he lives, not to give out his home phone number and to keep his home phone number from being listed. This is a very different academic world from the one in which I began teaching back in 1962. Over the years, I saw it change before my eyes. During my first year of teaching, at Douglass College in New Jersey, I was one of the few faculty members who did not invite students to his home. In fact, I was asked by a colleague why I didn't. "My home is a bachelor apartment" I said, "and that is not the place to invite the young women I am teaching." His response was: "How did you get to be such an old fogy at such a young age?" How did we get from there to where professors are being advised to not even have their phone numbers listed? The answer to that question has implications not only for the academic world but for the society at large and for international relations. It happened because people who ran colleges and universities were too squeamish to use the power they had, and relied instead on clever evasions to avoid confrontations. They were, as the British say, too clever by half. "Negotiations" and "flexibility" were considered to be the more sophisticated alternative to confrontation. Most campuses across the country bought that approach -- and it failed repeatedly on campus after campus, when caving in on one set of student demands led only to new and bigger demands. The academic world has never fully recovered. Many congratulated themselves on the restoration of "peace" on campus in the 1970s. Almost always, it was the peace of surrender. In order to appease campus radicals, all sorts of new ideologically oriented courses, programs and departments were created, with an emphasis on teaching victimhood and resentments, often hiring people whose scholarly credentials were meager or even non-existent. Such courses, programs, and departments are still with us in the 21st century -- not because no one recognizes their intellectual deficiencies but because no one dares to try to get rid of them. One of the rare exceptions to academic cave-ins around the country during the 1960s was the University of Chicago. When students there seized an administration building, dozens of them were suspended or expelled. That put an end to that. There is not the slightest reason why academic institutions with far more applicants than they can accept have to put up with disruptions, violence or intimidation. Every student they expel can be replaced immediately by someone on the waiting list. In case of more serious trouble, they can call in the police. President Nathan Pusey of Harvard did that in 1969, when students there seized an administration building and began releasing confidential information from faculty personnel files to the media. The Harvard faculty were outraged -- at Pusey. To call the cops onto the sacred soil of Harvard Yard was too much. It just wasn't politically correct. And, as a later president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, could tell you, being politically correct can be the difference between remaining president of Harvard and having to give up the office. Authority in general, and physical force in particular, are anathema to many among the intelligentsia, academic or otherwise. They can always think of some "third way" to avoid hard choices, whether on campus, in society, or among nations. Moreover, they have little or no interest in the actual track record of those third ways. Having to learn to live with intimidation by their own students is one of the consequences. PCC College Welcome America has left many of its great founding principles—hard work, personal responsibility, and initiative—which are important in the daily lives of citizens and those in authority. At Pensacola Christian College, these same attributes, guided by the overriding goal of doing right before God, have helped this ministry grow to become what it is today. In academia, the desire to be highly accepted before secular institutions easily produces a spirit of elitism (pride) within a college’s faculty, administration, and student body. This leads Christian institutions to develop condescending professional pride. We are thankful PCC’s student body, faculty, and administration demonstrate a happy, wholesome spirit—devoid of elitism, pride, and arrogancy. We are thankful for what God has done in our midst, not what man has achieved, and we do not desire secular (worldly) acceptance. Over 11,000 PCC graduates are scattered around the world—the majority maintain a wholesome spirit reflecting the biblical values on which this institution was built. PCC has an excellent Christian and academic program with dedicated faculty and administration on a beautiful campus. Come bring your family for a visit, and experience the vibrant, wholesome environment for college young people! America’s headlong fall into socialism has received much attention in recent days. Evidences of this decline arise daily in politics, academics, and economics. Yet, the path to socialism can actually be traced to the progressive socialists of the late nineteenth century with the beginning of the modern era and great advancements in science, industry, and psychology. Our citizenry and churches had reached such a self-sufficient complacency that people began to question — and soon abandon — the authority and precepts of God’s Word. This thinking soon permeated every area of American life. John Dewey and others promoted their social agenda academically through progressive education. At this same time, the scientific community began to question the Biblical account of creation and to embrace Darwin’s theory of evolution. Historians tell us that a socialist movement sweeping through American politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries produced a broad popular consensus that government should be the primary agent of social change. For the first time in American history, the Constitution was openly criticized and reinterpreted. Today, as Christian citizens, we are often appalled at the overwhelming degradation in our country. Yet, America’s founders intended that her people enjoy freedoms based upon values that align with God’s Word. Only a return to Biblical principles can prevent the rise of socialism in America. —Dr. Troy Shoemaker, Academic V.P. at PCC Texas Boots Liberal Bias From Textbooks In most states, the liberal education establishment enjoys total control over the state’s board of education. For years, liberals have imposed their revisionist history on our nation’s public school students, expunging important facts and historic figures while loading the textbooks with liberal propaganda, distortions and cliches. It’s easy to get a quick lesson in the virulent left-wing bias by checking the index and noting how textbooks treat President Ronald Reagan and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. When parents object to left-wing inclusions and omissions, claiming they should have something to say about what their own children are being taught and how their taxpayers’ money is spent, they are usually vilified as “book burners” and belittled as uneducated primitives who should allow the “experts” to decide. The self-identified “experts” are alumni of liberal teachers colleges and/or members of a left-wing teachers union. In most states, the liberal education establishment enjoys total control over the state’s board of education, department of education and curriculum committees. Texas is different—the Texas State Board of Education is elected, and the people (even including parents!) have a voice. In most states, the liberal education establishment enjoys total control over the state’s board of education. Texas is uniquely important in textbook content because the state of Texas is the largest single purchaser of textbooks. Publishers can hardly afford to print different versions for other states, so Texas curriculum standards have nationwide influence. The review of social studies curriculum (covering U.S. government, American history, world history and economics) comes up every 10 years, and 2010 is one of those years. The unelected education “experts” proposed their history revisions, such as eliminating Independence Day, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Edison, Daniel Boone and Neil Armstrong, and replacing Christmas with Diwali. After a public outcry, the SBOE responded with common-sense improvements. Thomas Edison, the world’s greatest inventor, will be again included in the narrative of American history. Schoolchildren will no longer be misled into believing that capitalism and the free market are dirty words and that America has an unjust economic system. Instead, they will learn how the free-enterprise system gave our nation and the world so much that is good for so many people. Liberals don’t like the concept of American exceptionalism. The liberals want to teach what’s wrong with America (masquerading under the code word “social justice”) instead of what’s right and successful. The SBOE voted to include describing how American exceptionalism is based on values that are unique and different from those of other nations. The SBOE specified that teaching about the Bill of Rights should include a reference to the right to keep and bear arms. Some school curricula pretend the Second Amendment doesn’t exist. It’s no secret that the people who control public schools are at war with our nation’s history, culture and achievements. Texas curriculum standards will henceforth accurately describe the U.S. government as a “constitutional republic” rather than as a democracy. The secularists tried to remove reference to the religious basis for the founding of America, but that was voted down. The Texas Board rejected the anti-Christian crowd’s proposal to eliminate the use of B.C. and A.D. for historic dates, as in Before Christ and Anno Domini, and replace them with B.C.E., as in Before the Common Era, and C.E. The deceptive claim that the United States was founded on a “separation of church and state” gets the ax, and rightfully so. In fact, most of the original 13 colonies were founded as Christian communities with much overlap between church and state. History textbooks that deal with Joseph McCarthy will now be required to explain “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of Communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers are authentic transcripts of some 3,000 messages between the Soviet Union and its secret agents in the United States. Discussions of economics will not be limited to the theories of Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes and Adam Smith. Textbooks must also include Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market theory. History textbooks will now be required to cover the “unintended consequences” of Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. Textbooks should also include “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.” Texas textbooks will now have to mention “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” instead of blaming society for everything and expecting government to provide remedies for all social ills. It’s no secret that the people who control public schools are at war with our nation’s history, culture and achievements. Since taxpayers foot the bill, it is long overdue for a state board of education to correct many textbooks myths and lies about our magnificent national heritage and achievements. After a public comment period, a final vote on the Texas standards is expected in May.
A New Jersey elementary school asked third grade boys to dress up like girls to celebrate Women’s History Month. According to parents in New Jersey, asking third grade boys to dress up like girls shouldn’t be part of a graded assignment. At an…elementary school, the teacher…sent a letter home asking parents to cross-dress their kids for a “fashion show” that “just happened” to coincide with the homosexuals’ Day of Silence.… The mom…who led the charge against the idea, said her son was horrified at the idea and begged her not to make him do it. “My husband and I are very open-minded, but…[t]he school system is trying to introduce alternative lifestyles in a sneaky way. At nine years old, I’m not ready to have the conversation with my son about homosexuals, lesbians, and cross-dressing.” The principal…got so many complaints she ultimately cancelled the event, claiming her teacher had been “misunderstood.” Actually, parents understand… the point of this exercise was: to give the transgender community an opportunity to indoctrinate their kids! (Purposefully omitted was the name of the school, teacher, and parent. Check source of article for that.) Tony Perkins Who Killed High Academics? State educators believe the most important thing is the number of students handed a diploma, whether they can read it or not…. The latest institution of higher learning seeking to lower [academic scholarship] is the University of Arkansas, which is out to attract more students to its campus…. And what better way than to whittle away at the core of the core curriculum it once offered—indeed, demanded—of those who studied there? Never mind how much or just what those students may learn; the important thing is the number of students handed a diploma, whether they can read it or not…. Scholarship is scarcely the highest priority of this state’s public universities. That minor detail comes pretty far down—if it makes the list at all…. These days the biggest concern at this state’s 4-year universities is their low graduation rates. It seems many are called to these schools, but only 38% are chosen to graduate within 6 years. That statistic…made the front page of the paper a few weeks back: “Arkansas’ university graduation rate 38%.” The graduation rate at 2-year community colleges is even lower—17%.... Citizens are supposed to be shocked, alarmed and moved to action by the low number of entering freshmen who manage to become graduating seniors in this state. But what else would you expect when you consider how poorly the kids are being prepared for college? Last time I checked, more than half the graduates of the state’s high schools (54.6% last year) needed to take remedial courses in math, English or reading to learn what they should have learned in high school. The reaction of the state’s educators has been pretty much what you’d expect: Churn out more graduates by lowering standards even further…. The university’s core curriculum is to be reduced from the current 66 to 35 credit hours. “What we’re trying to do in the state,” explains the chancellor, “is get more students with baccalaureate degrees. Anything we can do to make it seamless and make it an easier transfer (from smaller colleges) to the university is good”…. To quote Jim Purcell, who directs the state’s Department of Higher Education: “We’re in a state where we’re really trying to increase our graduates.” It’s the number of graduates that count, you see, not whether they’re being educated…. After all, why should a scientist know something of Shakespeare, or a student of foreign languages take geometry? Why study a foreign tongue at all when everybody in the world now speaks English, or should? Why should a degree of familiarity with the King James Bible be expected of any but pre-ministerial students? Or a course in genetics be of any interest to students in the humanities? Such notions are so…classical. A broad liberal education is the antithesis of a technical, specialized education, which is what results when each department of the university decides for itself what general education courses it will require for its specialty. The term liberal education derives from the concept of an education suitable for the free — those who enjoy liberty. Education, like modern society itself, is now to be broken down into specializations…. Why should not all students, whether in physics or phys-ed, be required to have much the same core curriculum, or liberal education?… Lest we forget, the term liberal education derives from the concept of an education suitable for the free—those who enjoy liberty. Rather than being enslaved by their own ignorance. “Who Killed Scholarship?” Townhall.com 6/9/10 © Tribune Media Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Permanent Politicians & Tenured Professors Tenured professors have little or no accountability for their actions or words. [In November ’09] a concrete and tangible measure of hope and real change was introduced on Capitol Hill…in the form of a constitutional amendment that would place term-limits on members of the House and Senate. Simple yet compelling, the amendment would oust those deemed “permanent politicians”…. [Republican Senator Jim] DeMint summed up the disparaging condition of Washington D.C. perfectly in support of his amendment: “As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork—in short, amassing their own power.” Apply a similar litmus test to higher education in the United States, and the policy of tenure draws stark comparisons. Emboldened by increased control over curriculum, position in high-level committees and seemingly impenetrable job security, tenured professors have little or no accountability for their actions or words. And, just like a permanent politician, a tenured professor’s incentive for achieving success becomes exclusively self-controlled and self-serving. Whether that is to gain notoriety, receive more funding for pet projects, or to pursue an agenda, the measurement of success is left to the individual…. Inevitably proponents of tenure will defend its purpose of protecting the free speech rights and academic freedom of its members. However, to say that selected professors are guaranteed these liberties with no exceptions while others are not produces perhaps the worst product of tenured reign, an academic caste system between the haves and the have-nots. The “haves” are secure in their tenured positions, enjoying academic freedom, the pursuit of their own agenda, and in most cases the power to decide who will join their illustrious club. The “have-nots” are those whose positions are not set in stone, whose academic freedom and pursuits are frequently scrutinized by their…tenured counterparts, and whose path forward often hinges on their ability to obtain job security in the form of tenure. What has not changed either on university campuses or in Washington… is corruption, trading favors, jockeying for funding, and as DeMint aptly put it “amassing their own power,” by a network of permanent professionals. Seldom do we see an elected official actively seek restraint rather than pursue excess to their own power…. In the same regard, our public institutions and colleges should pursue true academic integrity by seriously reconsidering the disingenuous businessas- usual practice of tenure, and replace it with one that encourages real change. First appeared in Townhall.com 11/19/09. America’s Schools Social Indoctrination What caused children of the “religious right” to change their moral imperatives so dramatically? Why did 18-to-29-year-old evangelicals vote for Barack Obama despite his apostasy on the fundamental moral issues of abortion and samesex unions? They voted 32% for Obama, twice the percentage of that demographic group who voted for John Kerry in 2004. Social Justice Indoctrination Many of these young people identify “social justice” as the reason that led them to relegate the prime moral issues of life and marriage to the back burner. But the term “social justice” does not define a moral cause—it is left-wing jargon to overturn those who have economic and political power. What caused young evangelicals, the children of the so-called “religious right,” to change their moral imperatives so dramatically? Most likely it’s the attitudes and decisionmaking they learned in the public schools, which 89% of U.S. students attend. Propaganda Centers The public schools took a major left turn in the 1960s, when humanist John Dewey and the instructors he trained at Columbia Teachers College began their put-down of objective truth and authoritative notions of good and evil. In the 1970s, Sidney Simon’s best-seller Values Clarification taught students to cast off their parents’ values and make their own choices, often aided by Kinsey-trained sexperts determined to change our sexual mores. By the 1980s, many radical antiwar activists of the 1960s had become tenured college professors, so teachers colleges and public schools opened their doors to “social justice” instruction. Among these ’60s radicals was Weather Undergrounder William Ayers, who…emerged as a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ayers developed quite a following as he taught resentment against America. In 2008, he was elected by his peers as vice president for curriculum studies of the American Education Research Association, the nation’s largest organization of education professors and researchers…. Ayers became a leading advocate of “social justice” teaching — i.e., getting students to believe that they are victims of an unjust, oppressive and racist America…. Ayers has been on a decades-long mission to transform education into anti-American indoctrination and to get young people to demand government control of the economy, politics and culture. We see the result in the 2008 post-election surveys: 7 out of every 10 voters between the ages of 18 and 29 now favor expanding the role of government and agree that the government should do more to solve the nation’s problems. It’s obvious which party and which candidates will get their vote…. 70% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 now favor expanding the role of government. The National Association of Scholars reports that use of the term “social justice” is today understood to mean “the advocacy of more egalitarian access to income through statesponsored redistribution.” That is academic verbiage for Barack Obama’s assertion that he wants to “spread the wealth around.” Methods of Indoctrination Rethinking Schools is a Milwaukee-based organization that publishes instructional materials to assist teachers how to “weave social justice issues throughout the curriculum.” Lessons include “Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers” and “Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word.” The thinking of teachers is further molded at expensive conferences, financed by billing the taxpayers. The National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) sponsors seminars with titles such as “Our Work as Social Justice Educators,” “Teaching for Social Justice in Elementary Schools,” “Dismantling White Privilege and Supporting Anti-Racist Education in Our Classrooms and Schools” and “Creating Change Agents Who Teach for Social Justice.” This “social justice” curriculum results in a heavy cost in time not spent on the basics. Young Americans who are exposed to Ayers’ radical left-wing ideas generally have little background information to help them evaluate bias and errors…. Phyllis Schlafly “Public Schools Change Young Evangelicals’ Values” townhall.com 12/30/08. Islam’s Influence in Our Schools Christian Action Network Information sent out by the Christian Action Network informs that some public schools across the country are teaching and practicing the Muslim cult with their students. In Bryon Unified School District, California, seventh grade students were given an “Islamic Student Guide” which specifically states: “From the beginning you and your classmates will become Muslim.” The program has been upheld as constitutional by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. This same school taught or asked students to: (1) Recite aloud Muslim prayers that begin with, “In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful,” (2) Memorize the Muslim profession of faith: “Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his messenger,” (3) Chant “Praise be to Allah” in response to prompts by the teacher, (4) Profess as true, the Muslim belief that “the Holy Quran is God’s Word,” (5) Give up candy and TV to demonstrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, (6) Take an Arabic name from a list of 30, (7) Play a game called “Race to Mecca,” (8) Wear an emblem of the Muslim star and crescent moon around their necks, (9) Recite the following jihadist prayer: “Believers, why is it that when it is said to you: ‘March in the cause of Allah,’ you linger slothfully in the land?...if you do not fight, He will punish you sternly and replace you with other men.” Public schools across the country are teaching and practicing the Muslim cult with their students. In Nyssa, Oregon, students are taught: (1) How to say Muslim prayers, (2) The Five Pillars of Islamic Faith, (3) Key scriptures from the Koran, (4) To dress up as Muslims, (5) To perform Islamic skits, and (6) To build Muslim props. A suburban school in Dallas allows Muslims to leave class to pray. A Minneapolis school allows Muslim students to organize an hour of prayer on Fridays. In Dearborn, Michigan, Muslim students are given two days off to celebrate the Islamic holiday of Ramadan. Christian Action Network in Maranatha, Baptist Watchman, 9/09. Phyllis Schlafly “Public Schools Change Young Evangelicals’ Values” townhall.com 12/30/08. Pensacola Christian College Update Magazines (PDFs) with more great articles (like the above): A great college that you might encourage your children or grandchildren to attend: Some great articles at another great college that you might encourage your children or grandchildren to attend: Examples (many more at above link): Gilbert Meilaender: C.S. Lewis on Moral Education Larry Arnn: The Crisis and Politics of Higher Education Arlan Gilbert: Hillsdale College and Imprimis Larry P. Arnn: Education, Economics, and Self-Government Edward Erler: Michigan Affirmative Action Cases: An Historical Perspective Edmund Fairfield: College and the Republic Sky Dayton: Education in the Internet Age William Brodbeck: What Hillsdale Means Robert Hanna: Hillsdale Approach to Teacher Education Victor Davis Hanson: Classics and War Dinesh D'Souza: Multiculturalism: Fact or Threat? Ward Connerly: Leadership, Character, and America's Future Lawrence Reed: A New Direction for Education Reform Larry Arnn: Hillsdale and America Ward Connerly: Content of Our Children's Character Various Authors: Hillsdale I Know Steve Forbes: Training Minds and Hearts: Principle-Centered Education Reform Margaret Thatcher: Challenge of Educating for 21st-Century Citizenship Fritz Steiger: Putting Children First Virginia Gilder: Want Better Public Education? Support Private Vouchers Theodore Forstmann: Competitive Vision for American Education Jennifer Grossman: How Philanthropy Is Revolutionizing Education Thomas Sowell: Minority Schools and the Politics of Education Keith Butler: Bishop Butler Addresses Academy Students Alexandra York: The Fourth "R" in Education: Reading, WRiting, Rithmetic, and ARt John Fund: Politics, Economics, and Education in the 21st Century Ward Connerly: Back to Equality BalintVazsonyi: Four Points of the Compass: Restoring America's Sense of Direction Wade Horn: Why There Is No Substitute for Parents Robert Hanna: Hillsdale Academy: A Model for America George Roche: The Mission of Hillsdale College: An Inside Perspective Linda Chavez: Hispanics and the American Dream Michael Medved: Protecting Our Children from a Plague of Pessimism Patrick Fagan: Real Root Cause of Violent Crime: The Breakdown of the Family Robert Blackstock: Hillsdale College and the Western Tradition: Exploring the Roots of Freedom Robert Novak: Political Correctness in the Newsroom George Roche: How Government Funding Is Destroying American Higher Education Clarence Thomas: Education: The Second Road to Freedom George Roche: Hillsdale College vs. the Federal Bureaucrats–Again Polly Williams: Inner City Kids: Why Choice Is Their Only Hope Patrick Rooney: Private Vouchers: A New Idea in Education Reform Larry Woiwode: Television: The Cyclops that Eats Books Barry Asmus: Building an Unlimited Future Christina Sommers: Teaching the Virtues George Roche: The Corruption of Education: Failing Colleges, "Political Correctness," and Federal Funding Dan Coats: America's Youth: A Crisis of Character George Roche: Sesquicentennial: Hillsdale College, 1844-1994 Charles Sykes: How Colleges Are Failing Our Students Christina Sommers: Feminism and the College Curriculum Lynne Cheney: Why We Need a Core Curriculum for College Students Warren Brookes: Public Education and the Global Failure of Socialism Gerda Bikales: Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Bilingual Education in Our Schools WilliamAllen: The Civil Rights Revolution John Willson: Dilemmas of the Christian College Athlete Jeane Kirkpatrick: The Myth of Moral Equivalence George Roche: How to Put Our Schools on the Road to Renewal Carl Henry: The Crisis of Modern Learning Tom Wolfe: Idea Fashions of the Eighties: After Marx, What? John Muller: Educational Bankruptcy and the Hillsdale Vision Teaching and Academic Life Truly Private Education Coping with Ignorance Something-for-Nothing Syndrome New Left, Watergatend American Higher Education Noble Lie and the Women's Movement Bias of Network News Liberating Education Educational Inflation Decadence and Recovery in American Education Urban Crime: Its Causes and Control Why Attend College? Many Students Do Not Belong in College: Many guidance counselors tell the students not to worry about money -- that they will "find" them grants/loans, etc. that will cover the cost, and discourage them from working while attending college at night (and having their employer pay for it) or attending junior colleges for 2 years and then, if the occupation actually requires a 4 year degree, transferring to a state 4 year college -- and the parents (and students) end up borrowing so much that it takes many years to repay it. Coupled with the interest, it is often many years before a student even breaks even (especially if the student ends up working in another field, or doesn't graduate, or if the student majors in a field for which there are no openings). A hidden cost that is often overlooked and can be substantial (4 or more years salary) is the income that is lost while a student is in college vs if they worked full or part time in either another profession, or while having their employer pay for their college via night-school (in effect, this is college for free). College is such a big business today that many colleges offer courses (usually at the junior high school level) and degrees for subjects and skills that do not require college at all (and never did), in order to increase their revenue base. (See the link above for more details). Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-11 Edition Success Without College by Linda Lee "In this brilliant, brave, and oh-so-needed book, Linda Lee explodes the myth that all young people must stay on the same conveyor belt through college or perish. That myth has led to the demise of many a young person, and their parents along with them. Now Ms. Lee shows us another way. This book is a godsend. Millions of parents and their children will benefit from discovering the alternative paths explained in this book. Written with the warmth of a mother, and the research, analytic skill of a New York Times editor, Success Without College appears like an angel in the midst of massive suffering. At last, a guide to a better way."
If your child seems indecisive about college, don't read the riot act, read this landmark book instead. College is not the only alternative. A New York Times editor and concerned parent tells you why and helps you to find happy alternatives to starting college before your child is ready. As an educated, committed parent, Linda Lee harbored the usual expectation of a prestigious college degree as the illustrious preface to a top-flight career for her child. Some fifty thousand dollars and several disastrous report cards later, Lee recognized that her seemingly rational expectations were proving far-fetched and that her son was simply not ready for college. Moreover, she was shocked to discover that his experience was not the exception but the rule; only 26 percent of students receive a bachelor's degree within five years. Why, then, are parents led to believe that their children must go to college immediately and that it is the right choice for everyone? If not attending college worked for Bill Gates, Harry S. Truman, Thomas Edison, and William Faulkner, why can't it work for your child and what are your alternatives? Success Without College is a groundbreaking book that reveals the surprising facts of why many bright kids are not suited for college (or at least not right after high school). Lee's accessible, knowledgeable style informs parents why this should be more a source of pride than shame by providing profiles of students and parents from around the country and their creative, positive solutions to the college dilemma. With a college education now costing an average of a hundred thousand dollars, maybe it's time for American parents to reconsider: Do you really need college to succeed? You don't have to go to college. That's very easy to say, and very hard to believe. The expectation of a college degree has become a traditional aspect of American parenting. A college diploma has become such a popular symbol of personal success and culture that 66% of U.S. high school graduates go to college, up from 14% only 60 years ago, but out of all teh college students in America, only 26% get degrees after 6 years. Why have we come to believe that college is right for everyone, or that our children should go there right after high school? With a college education now costing an average of more than one hundred thousand dollars, maybe it's time for American parents to reconsider: do you really need college to succeed? Don't have a college degree? You're in good company -- consider these success stories, some of whom didn't even graduate from high school: Peter Jennings; Joan Baez; Thomas Edison; William Faulkner; Harry S. Truman; Bill Gates; Jane Austin. From the Inside Flap As an educated, committed parent, Linda Lee harbored the usual expectation of a prestigious college degree as the illustrious preface to a top-flight career for her child. Some fifty thousand dollars and several disastrous report cards later, Lee recognized that her seemingly rational expectations were proving far-fetched and that her son was simply not ready for college. Moreover, she was shocked to discover that his experience was not the exception but the rule; only 26 percent of students receive a bachelor's degree within five years. Why, then, are parents led to believe that their children must go to college immediately and that it is the right choice for everyone? If not attending college worked for Bill Gates, Harry S. Truman, Thomas Edison, and William Faulkner, why can't it work for your child and what are your alternatives? Success Without College is a groundbreaking book that reveals the surprising facts of why many bright kids are not suited for college (or at least not right after high school). Lee's accessible, knowledgeable style informs parents why this should be more a source of pride than shame by providing profiles of students and parents from around the country and their creative, positive solutions to the college dilemma. With a college education now costing an average of a hundred thousand dollars, maybe it's time for American parents to reconsider: Do you really need college to succeed? From the Back Cover About the Author THE CASE AGAINST COLLEGE by Caroline Bird — True or False: — Q: A college education is a solid financial investment. A: False. If the money spent on a Princeton student's education were put into a savings bank instead, the interest would net him over one million dollars by age 64-twice as much as the projected earnings of a male college graduate. Q: A college education is a spring-board to success. A: False. 58% of the people who earn over $15,000 a year never went to college. Before you spend a fortune on a college education, consider the facts and the alternatives. The Case Against College - Caroline Bird's fascinating book that separates the myths from the realities. All great truths begin as blasphemies. Here is who belongs in college: the high-achieving student who is interested in learning for learning's sake, those who intend to become schoolteachers and those young people who seem certain to go on to advanced degrees in law, medicine, architecture and the like. Here is who actually goes to college: everyone. That everyone includes the learning disabled and the fairly dumb, those who have trouble reading and writing and doing math, slackers who see college as an opportunity to major in Beers of the World, burned-out book jockeys and the just plain average student with not much interest in anything. Think about your high school class. Now think about the 76 percent of those students (80 to 90 percent in middle-class suburbs) who say they expect to go to two-year or four-year colleges. You begin to see the problem? Pamela Gerhardt, who has been teaching advanced writing and editing at the University of Maryland for six years, says she has seen a decline in her students' interest in the world of ideas. In an article in the Washington Post on August 22,1999, she noted: "Last semester, many of my students drifted in late, slumped into chairs, made excuses to leave early and surrounded my desk when papers were due, clearly distraught over the looming deadline. 'I can't think of any problems,' one told me. 'Nothing interests me.'" Her students, she said, rejected the idea of writing about things like homelessness or AIDS. Five male students, she said, wanted to write about the "problem" of the instant replay in televised football games. Ever since the Garden of Eden, people have been complaining that things used to be better, once upon a time, back when. I suppose it is possible that, thirty years ago, students were just as shallow and impatient with education as they are today. But I don't think so. It could be that a college education is wasted on the young, but it is more likely that a college education is especially being wasted on today's youth. Of course, there was a period twenty-five years ago when Cassandras argued that college was a waste of time and money. Around the time that The Overeducated American was published, in 1975, Caroline Bird wrote a book called The Case Against College. Her book has been out of print for decades (but is available used). But there are arguments that seem very familiar to me: that Madison Avenue sells college like soap flakes, that going to college had become a choice requiring no forethought; that students weren't really there to learn and that college was no longer an effective way to train workers. But primarily Ms. Bird argued that "there is no real evidence that the higher income of college graduates is due to college at all." She cited as her proof Christopher Jencks's report "Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America," which pointed out that people from high-status families tended to earn more than people from low-status families, even if they had the same amount of education. College, Bird pointed out twenty-five years ago, "fails to work its income-raising magic for almost a third of those who go." Moreover, she said, "college doesn't make people intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal or quick to learn new things. It's the other way around. Intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal, quick-to-learn people are attracted to college in the first place." Or, as Zachary Karabell asked in the 1999 book What's College For?: The Struggle to Define American Higher Education, "on a more pragmatic level, does college truly lead to better jobs?" He answered his own question with "Not necessarily. The more people go to college, the less a college degree is worth." He goes on to point out that the Bureau of Labor Statistics includes in its list of jobs that require a college degree "insurance adjuster" and "manager of a Blockbuster video store." Is that what you were foreseeing for Joey when you wrote that $25,000 tuition check? Caroline Bird was outraged over the expense of college in 1975. A Princeton education, she said, would cost $22,256 for tuition, books, travel, room, board and pocket money--for four years. Twenty-five years later, the price for that Princeton degree has grown to $140,000, including room and board and books, but not travel money and pocket change. It's even more than that, if you factor in the student's lost wages. Because of the low unemployment rates at the end of the nineties, anyone with the IQ to go to Princeton could make at least $15,000 a year with only a high school diploma, and perhaps more. So tack on at least $60,000 (if the student knows computers, make that $120,000) in lost wages while Jared or Jessica was busy at Princeton studying Shakespeare. That puts the price of a college degree from a fine Ivy League school at more than $200,000. Is it worth it today? Perhaps even less so than in Caroline Bird's day, primarily because students no longer seem interested in ideas, and because it is so much easier to make money just by hopping onto the Internet. "I agree that from the perspective of society as a whole, it would be better if fewer people went to college," Robert Frank told me. He's the popular Cornell economist, and the author of Luxury Fever and other books. "Economists often challenge this notion by citing studies that show significantly higher wages for college graduates," he said. "But all these studies say is that the people who attend college are better, on the average, than those who don't. They don't tell us how much value is added to them by attending college. From the individual's point of view, it still often pays to attend college, since employers so often use education as an initial screening device. Everyone wants the best-paying and most interesting jobs, after all, which assures that there will always be a surfeit of applicants for them. So employers who offer such jobs have every incentive to confine their attention to college graduates. But that doesn't mean that we'd be poorer as a nation if fewer people went to college." An article in Newsweek (November 1, 1999) by Robert J. Samuelson said: "Going to Harvard or Duke won't automatically produce a better job and higher pay. Graduates of these schools generally do well. But they do well because they are talented." The article was titled "The Worthless Ivy League?" Brigid McMenamin wrote a blistering piece in Forbes magazine (December 28, 1998) called "The Tyranny of the Diploma." Beyond listing the usual suspects in the computer field who did not complete college--Bill Gates, Michael Dell--she pointed to the young digerati who are making $50,000 to $80,000 a year and more at age sixteen. At a time when most kids in college say they are there "to get a job," these kids may wel1 skip college in order to jump in on the booming Internet business. Moreover, as Ms. McMenamin recounts, almost 15 percent, or 58 members, of the Forbes 400 (a yearly listing of the most successful business leaders), had either, as she put it, ditched college or avoided it altogether. In terms of wages, she said, brick masons and machinists had it all over biology and liberal arts mayors. As a capper, she stated: "A hefty 21 percent of all degree-holders who work earn less than the average for high school grads." She didn't even bring up plumbers, electricians and car mechanics. HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS Almost half a million teenagers drop out of high school every year, according to the United States Department of Education. In New York City, half of the entering freshmen don't graduate from high school. There is every reason to be alarmed about high school dropouts. Yet there is nothing stopping a high school dropout from becoming a plumber, or a computer programmer, and earning a great deal more than most holders of a degree in European history. One sixteen-year-old New Yorker, Cooper Small, dropped out of Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan in his junior year--over a bad grade in English, even though his GPA of 97.4 ranked him, he said, third in his class. By that point he had begun working as a computer programmer, making $175 an hour. He then enrolled in Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, as a freshman in college without a high school diploma. That's the millennial example: a seventeen-year-old who is off to college without a high school diploma, making more than his professors and doing it through building web pages. OK, so those are the computer geniuses, the ones who may not even need a college education. But what about the kids who want to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers? Fine, they should go to college, though I'll tell you, in the course of this book, about a medical school in the United States that takes students straight out of high school. Meanwhile, parents should be aware that in 1990, 75,000 people with college degrees were working as street vendors or door-to-door salesmen, 83,000 college graduates were working as maids, housemen, janitors or cleaners and 166,000 college grads were working as motor vehicle operators, according to the July 1992 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. Jennifer might get that expensive degree in marine biology, but she also might just as easily end up a waitress/ski bum in Aspen who picks grapes in the south of France during the summer to pay for her room and board. THE MIDDLE-CLASS BURDEN Future doctors and lawyers constitute only a small portion of the students going to college. Going to college is epidemic, especially among middle-class families, whose students have nothing more in mind than just...going to college. These are students who have a sense of entitlement about the enterprise. They may enroll in business classes because that seems to be the way to get rich, or they may major in communications with some vague idea of getting into broadcasting.These are the students who see their college degree as getting their ticket punched, so they can go out in the world and get a good job and become the consumers they have been raised to be. Listen to Sarah Williams, who recently left a high position in marketing at Unilever to take a flier on an Internet start-up. "I found high school in Greenwich, Connecticut, pretty boring," she said. She enrolled in the University of Colorado and then dropped out. "I would never use 60 percent of what I needed in order to graduate," she said. "Jobs want people who are specialists," she concluded. "Not people who are well-rounded." Or, as Mr. Karabell says in What's College For?, "Today's students represent a generation of pragmatists who want knowledge that they can apply to their lives." Mr. Karabell, who has taught at Harvard and Dartmouth, wrote that today's college students are looking for usable skills. And if they think that way at top schools, imagine the attitudes prevalent at the local community college. Despite the fact that half of all college students matriculate at community colleges, which essentially offer training and remedial education, Mr. Karabell said, "The public still retains romantic notions of college and still sees a college degree as a special achievement." Those romantic notions of success through college mean that parents treat all education up until college as mere prelude. Many middle-class parents buy homes in school districts where they are assured that 85 to 90 percent of graduates go to college--and where no guidance counselor would dare suggest otherwise. At New York City's selective public high schools like Bronx Science, Stuyvesant and (in the humanities) Townsend Harris, the number of students heading off to college is close to 100 percent. And then there are the private prep schools, either day schools or boarding schools, for which parents pay up to $20,000 a year to guarantee that their children get into good colleges. But here's a thought. College professors tel1 me that three-quarters of their freshmen have no business sitting in a college classroom. The professors were not talking about open enrollment, or remedial classes; they were primarily talking about spoiled, immature and lazy middle-class kids, the kind who are filling even some of the best college classrooms and who have no interest in studying what is being taught. Saying that "everyone" needs to go to college (that is to say, everyone in the middle class) at age eighteen is just as arbitrary as saying that everyone at eighteen should become a race car driver or a concert pianist. Many kids just aren't ready. Some may never have the aptitude to do college-level work. And a surefire way to make sure that your reluctant son or daughter will never graduate from college (or experience the pleasure of learning for learning's sake) is to insist that he or she go to college "just to see what it's like." What they will see is that, for them, it's like hell. From the Hardcover edition. University Of Destruction: Your Game Plan For Spiritual Victory On Campus The statistic is staggering: As many as 50 percent of Christian students say they have lost their faith after four years in college. For far too many students, the transition from home life to campus life is traumatic--what begins as a University of Instruction often ends up being a University of Destruction...with long-lasting negative effects and no guarantee of return. Relating his own experiences at Stanford, David Wheaton describes the three Pillars of Peril you will face in college-sex, drugs/alcohol, and humanism-and presents a game plan for victory over these pitfalls based on raising your spiritual GPA. You will also receive practical advice on dating, friends, choosing the right college, and how to get back on course if you have gone astray. Headed to college? Already there? Let University of Destruction show you how to be an Overcomer on campus! http://www.paperbackswap.com/Dumbing-Down-Hidden-John-Taylor-Gatto/book/086571519X/ A highly praised bestseller for over a decade, Dumbing Us Down is a radical treatise on public education that concludes that compulsory government schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in a machine. This Special Collector's Hardcover Edition celebrates 100,000 copies of the book in print, and the book's on-going importance and popularity.John Gatto was a teacher in New York City's public schools for over 30 years and is a recipient of the New York State Teacher of the Year award. A much-sought after speaker on education throughout North America, his other books include A Different Kind of Teacher (Berkeley Hills Books, 2001) and The Underground History of American Education (Oxford Village Press, 2000). Editorial Reviews Product Description About the Author http://www.paperbackswap.com/Marketing-Evil-How-David-Kupelian/book/1581824599/ Americans have come to tolerate, embrace and even champion many things that would have horrified their parents' generation—from easy divorce and unrestricted abortion-on-demand to extreme body piercing and teaching homosexuality to grade-schoolers. Does that mean today's Americans are inherently more morally confused and depraved than previous generations? Of course not, says veteran journalist David Kupelian. But they have fallen victim to some of the most stunningly brilliant and compelling marketing campaigns in modern history. The Marketing of Evil reveals how much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged, perfumed, gift-wrapped and sold to them as though it had great value. Highly skilled marketers, playing on our deeply felt national values of fairness, generosity and tolerance, have persuaded us to embrace as enlightened and noble that which all previous generations since America's founding regarded as grossly self-destructive—in a word, evil. In this groundbreaking and meticulously researched book, Kupelian peels back the veil of marketing-induced deception to reveal exactly when, where, how, and especially why Americans bought into the lies that now threaten the future of the country. For example, few of us realize that the widely revered father of the "sexual revolution" has been irrefutably exposed as a full-fledged sexual psychopath who encouraged pedophilia. Or that giant corporations voraciously competing for America's $150 billion teen market routinely infiltrate young people's social groups to find out how better to lead children into ever more debauched forms of "authentic self-expression." Likewise, most of us mistakenly believe the "abortion rights" and "gay rights" movements were spontaneous, grassroots uprisings of neglected or persecuted minorities wanting to breathe free. Few people realize America was actually "sold" on abortion thanks to an audacious public relations campaign that relied on fantastic lies and fabrications. Or that the "gay rights" movement—which transformed America's former view of homosexuals as self-destructive human beings into their current status as victims and cultural heroes—faithfully followed an in-depth, phased plan laid out by professional Harvard-trained marketers. No quarter is given in this riveting, insightful exploration of how lies, both subtle and outrageous, are packaged as truth. From the federal government to the public school system to the news media to the hidden creators of "youth culture," nothing is exempt from the thousand-watt spotlight of Kupelian's journalistic inquiry. In the end, The Marketing of Evil is an up-close, modern-day look at what is traditionally known as "tempation"—the art and science of making evil look good. From the Back Cover "It's often said that marketing is warfare, and in The Marketing of Evil, David Kupelian clearly reveals the stunning strategies and tactics of persuasion employed by those engaged in an all-out war against America's Judeo-Christian culture." —David Limbaugh, syndicated columnist and author "David Kupelian's research brings into sharp focus what many have sensed and suspected for a long time. ... [An] important and groundbreaking book." —D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries "From pitching promiscuity as 'freedom' to promoting abortion as 'choice,' the marketers of evil are always selling you something destructive—with catastrophic results. Kupelian shines a light on them all." —Michelle Malkin, Fox News Channel "Like the dazzling disclosures found in the final page of a gripping whodunit or the fascinating revelation of a magician's secrets, The Marketing of Evil irresistibly exposes how it was done." —Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Toward Tradition "The game's over, folks—the con men have been exposed. I urge every parent to read this eye-opening book." —Rebecca Hagelin, the Heritage Foundation "The Marketing of Evil offers Americans real hope—because when our problems come this sharply into focus, so do the solutions." —Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily.com "Excellent! Simply excellent." —Donald E. Wildmon, American Family Association About the Author http://www.paperbackswap.com/Brainwashed-How-Universities-Ben-Shapiro/book/1595559795/ When parents send their children off to college, mom and dad hope they'll return more cultivated, knowledgeable, and astute--able to see issues from all points of view. But, according to Ben Shapiro, there's only one view allowed on most college campuses: a rabid brand of liberalism that must be swallowed hook, line, and sinker. In this explosive book, Ben Shapiro, a college student himself, reveals how America's university system is one of the largest brainwashing machines on the planet. Examining this nationwide problem from firsthand experience, Shapiro shows how the leftists who dominate the universities--from the administration to the student government, from the professors to the student media--use their power to mold impressionable minds. Fresh and bitterly funny, this book proves that the universities, far from being a place for open discussion, are really dungeons of the mind that indoctrinate students to become socialists, atheists, race-baiters, and narcissists. http://benjaminshapiro.com/index.php/books/58-brainwashed An explosive new book revealing how America's university system has become one of the largest brainwashing machines on the planet has risen as high as No. 28 on Amazon.com's bestseller list, even before its national ad campaign. . . . From WND Books, A Division of Thomas Nelson Publishers .... You haven't heard it all until you've heard it from the inside. Los Angeles, CA - It won't come as a shock to any American that today's Universities are filled with left-wing professors and a very definite liberal bias. Ben Shapiro, a graduating UCLA student, has lived it for the past four years, and what he reports is shocking, informative, and unfortunately for parents and students, worse than y ou ever thought possible. Shapiro, who was fired from the UCLA student newspaper for taking on the rabid pro-Muslim bias of the paper, provides an insider's look at academic indoctrination. In Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth, Shaprio reveals: Exit polling data that shows students become more liberal as they progress through their college career. Shapiro reveals why. Brainwashed Blurbs: "Ben Shapiro's writing is smart, informative and incisive. He is wise beyond his years without losing the refreshing fearlessness of youth." "Most older Americans suppose that our universities are forums of open inquiry, free thought and unique tolerance. Ben Shapiro, America's youngest syndicated columnist and a senior at UCLA, knows otherwise. In Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate, he tells the truth -- that universities are forums of left-liberal indoctrination, where dissent is discouraged and penalized, with more restrictions on free speech than any other part of American society. Parents who are paying for tuition might want to take note, and see what their hard-earned money is paying for. "Welcome to P.C. 101. In this trenchant insider's expose, Ben Shapiro bears witness to the modern American campus freak show. You'll get up close and personal with the Marxist loons, moral relativists, multicultural zealots, and America-haters who are corrupting young minds. Brainwashed reveals the ignominious lows to which higher education has sunk. Get deprogrammed: Buy this book." "A worthy successor to God and Man at Yale and Harvard Hates America in exploring the belly of the academic beast." "Sharp thinking, tight writing, crazy-but-true stories: Ben Shapiro sees campus brainwashing and raises a rational protest. This is a good book to give both freshmen who need warning and voters/alumni who need to take action." "Ben Shapiro is the Political Prodigy. He's young, in academia's trenches, and he will probably fail his poli-sci course just for writing this book. His writing is brilliant and biting -- if I had not been told he was an undergrad at UCLA, I'd never know it by reading this book. Brainwashed is a fantastic insight on and analysis of today's university system. What Animal House did for the toga party, Brainwashed should do for American resistance to campus radicalism." "Ben Shapiro's courage and insight should provide inspiration not only for other young conservatives on campus, but also for their parents. His book is a welcome sign that all is not lost for this new generation." "Don't tell me a book this brilliant was written by a college kid barely out of his teens. It's got to have been written by a gutsy old sage who somehow got himself embedded into UCLA and whose piercing observations have the power to save the oncoming generation from tyrants with tenure." "A brilliant new voice for a new generation of activists: Don't miss Ben Shapiro's new book!" "With wit and verve, Ben Shapiro - America's youngest national columnist - provides a first-hand account of how liberal pieties masquerade as the only truth in today's corrupted universities. With luck, his critique will help others begin to the take those steps needed to fix the campus and return it to its esteemed place in our national life." "Overwhelming majorities of our teachers -- our supposed torchbearers in the dark -- are liberals. Though they cannot admit it, their personal beliefs invariably season their teaching methods. After all, teachers are charged with educating us about what they think is most important. The result is that they invariably stamp their students with morally deficient liberal rhetoric. "Shapiro has a razor-sharp pen. His pointed criticism is directed at the overwhelming percentage of college professors who believe Islam is good and Christianity is bad, who don't accept that capitalism beat socialism because capitalism is ending centuries of destitution, and who worship skin color diversity but who blithely create strict campus rules against diversity of speech." "With courage, wit, and dramatic flair in abundance, Ben Shapiro demonstrates that our institutes of higher learning have become wastelands of Leftist indoctrination, poisoning young minds with an endless barrage of propaganda for every fashionable cause on the planet. This book reveals how deeply entrenched a noxious culture of hatred for America and Western values has become among those who teach our nation's young men and women. Shapiro delivers a sobering wake-up call for all Americans, detailing the pressing need to - as the Left might put it - take back our colleges and universities." "Been there. Done that (Tulane, A&S, '91). Ben gets it exactly right about the modern collegiate brainwash. Thankfully, beer and Mardi Gras saved me from full indoctrination. But Ben Shapiro's unassailable book, most assuredly, is the healthier blueprint to avoiding Marx and Engel's witting accomplices." Freefall of the American University: How Our Colleges Are Corrupting the Minds and Morals of the Next Generation by Jim Nelson Black It's happening in colleges all across the country. Instead of being educational institutions designed to encourage the free discussion of ideas, universities have become prisons of propaganda, indoctrinating students with politically correct (and often morally repugnant) ideas about American life and culture. This book exposes the liberal bias in today's universities, providing hard evidence, in clear and unimpeachable terms, that shows how today's colleges are covertly and overtly proselytizing with leftist slants on sexuality, politics, and lifestyles. By naming names and providing specific and credible insights from faculty members, administrators, professional observers, and analysts who have witnessed and chronicled the intellectual and ethical collapse taking place within the academy, this book offers a broad overview of the issues, the history of the problems, analysis from a broad range of academics and professionals, and also observations of the university students themselves, in their own words, from schools all across the nation. A worthy contribution to the growing literature documenting the devastation wreaked on our schools by left-wing professors and educators. -- David Horowitz, founder of Students for Academic Freedom and author of Radical Son and Left Illusions. The fate of the next generation is in your hands... According to author, educator, and researcher Jim Nelson Black, the one thing they're not being taught is the truth. Instead, he says in this provocative analysis, they're being "intellectually scarred, morally neutered, socially and intellectually programmed." Our institutions of higher learning are "responsible for the collapse of educational standards and a debasement of morality that is unprecendented in American history." With hundreds of disturbing examples and dozens of powerful first-person interviews with faculty, students, and alumni of America's premier universities, Black puts the reader right in the middle of one of the most important controversies of our day. Freefall of the American University presents an eye-opening assessment of where we stand, where things went wrong, and what must be done to turn it around. Jim Nelson Black's Freefall of the American University is a reasoned, articulate, and provocative look at the radicalization of our campuses and the perversion of basic educational goals in today's university system. Freefall deserves a place on the bookshelf of every concerned American: student, parent, or taxpayer. This is our higher education system, and it's time to take it back. -- Ben Shapiro Creating Equal My Fight Against Race Preferences From his impoverished childhood in segregated pre-war Louisiana to his audience with Bill Clinton at the White House, Ward Connerly's panoramic book spans a civil rights story that's making headlines from coast to coast. Since 1995, when Connerly first burst onto the American scene as the University of California Regent who forced the nation's largest public university to become color blind in its admissions policies, Connerly has led a national campaign to end race preference. In 1996, he passed Proposition 209 in California and two years later he led I-200, an identical measure, to victory in Washington state. He is now battling Governor Jeb Bush in Florida as he attempts to put a Florida Civil Rights Initiative on the ballot there. A personal book that gives the inside story of Connerly's battle against race preferences, Creating Equal names names and tells it like it is. It is destined to provoke debate from the dining room table to the halls of Congress. Connerly's encounters with the great and near great ranging from Jesse Jackson and Al Gore to Bill Clinton and Rupert Murdoch illuminate this book that has been praised by writers such as Shelby Steele. Illustrated with family and political photographs. Amazon.com Review From Library Journal From Booklist Review Memo to Al Gore and George W. Bush: Read this book.... (a) warmly personal, highly readable book. -- Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2000 About the Author Missing Diversity On America's Campuses California's Betrayal of Academic Freedom It's Time for Fairness and Inclusion in Our Universities Bowling Green Barbarians An Ill-Bred Professor, and a Bad Situation How to Get an "A" at One Elite School Wake Up America: My Visit To Vanderbilt http://chronicle.com/article/Patrolling-Professors-/21710 Studies on Faculty and Campus Diversity - The Campus Today - News - Students For Academic Freedom Conservatives Need Not Apply Delusional Diversity Recomended Readings Many PDF documents you can read/download: Students Who Learn Little or Nothing Is Academic Freedom a License to Indoctrinate? The Subversive Agenda of our Public Schools JW Freedom Center Students 150+ Books You Should Be Reading In Class, But Probably Aren’t Freedom Center Students “Hard Indoctrination, Soft Indoctrination, and the Books that Change Us” Freedom Center Students Betraying Academic Freedom Academia’s Failing Grade Is There an Academic Blacklist? A Place for Teaching, Not Indoctrination --- http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/2543/denial-at-brown “Polemics don’t advance the debate,” says the Brown Daily Herald in “Ignoring ‘Islamofascism’ hype,” a vicious little polemic that accuses the organizers of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week of wanting a “fight.” The editorialist preens: “We’re glad that the debate is being carried out at this level, not with signs and shouting.” Of course, there was shouting when I spoke at Brown last week, although not too much, so the Daily Herald has every right to be proud. There were few disruptions during the talk itself, although there was a loud group of louts toward the back, one of whom during the question period told me angrily that he didn’t want to listen to what I was saying. I assured him that no one was forcing him to listen at all, and that he was quite welcome to leave. The question period was full of the usual self-righteous lecturing by thoroughly propagandized students who have no training in critical thinking and quite obviously feel deeply threatened when their cherished ideas, which rest on such shaky intellectual and evidentiary foundations, are questioned. I see that one of the fundamental weaknesses of the Left, and their Islamic supremacist allies, is that they believe their own propaganda, and don’t even have the conceptual apparatus required to help them recover when its inaccuracy and dishonesty is exposed. Even at their best the questioners were clearly playing “Gotcha,” trying to get me to say something they could use against the Week and the perspective I represent, rather than engaging in real intellectual give-and-take. This too is a function of how thoroughly they have been propagandized, for they have been taught that those who oppose them are morally evil, and can’t even conceptualize the possibility that people of good will might disagree with them and thus should be engaged with ideas, not rants and attempted traps. I didn’t expect anything else at the beginning of the Week, and of course I was nowhere greeted with anything like the reception that Nonie Darwish and David Horowitz received at other universities. In general, the hysteria, the lies about the Week and the intentions of its organizers, and the attempts to silence us all indicate how much the Week was needed, how threatened the Left and its jihadist allies are by our shining this light upon them and pointing out the hypocrisy of their “bigotry” talk, and how vitally important it is that we keep up this kind of pressure. But Brown students should indeed be very proud, considering the immense provocation they had to suffer through. The editorial says: “Fortunately, despite confrontational remarks made by Robert Spencer, who said in his lecture here Thursday that he does not believe ‘that Islam at its core is a peaceful religion,’ Brown’s campus remained largely calm.” Largely? Anyway, this was not an assertion I made without evidence. I drew a distinction between teaching and practice and explaining the vulnerability of peaceful Muslims to jihadist recruitment on the basis of the jihadists’ use of various passages of the Qur’an and Hadith (which I cited), I explained that all the schools of Sunni and Shi’ite jurisprudence have a doctrine involving warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. This was and is a statement of fact. If it is false, the Brown Herald, or the Muslim community at Brown, should refute it. Anyone is welcome to refute it if they can. I can and have (in my books and elsewhere) explained it at length, with abundant citations from the Qur’an and Sunnah, as well as from mainstream Islamic commentaries on the Qur’an and Islamic jurists. But they don’t refute it. No one ever has refuted it. Instead, here the Herald treats it as if the very statement constitutes incitement to violence against Muslims. And in an unconscious irony, the Herald expresses relief that the campus remained “largely calm,” rather than erupt into violence over someone daring to assert that Islam is not a religion of peace. Well, bravo, Brown students! What admirable, nay, noble restraint! But if you really want a debate on the key issues, as you say in this editorial, simply heaping abuse and contempt on your opponent and being glad that nobody popped him one is not actually a demonstration of the falsity of his arguments. If you are willing to engage in a genuine discussion and debate of this question — does Islamic doctrine actually teach peace? — I am at your service, and will return to Brown. If you do not wish to engage in such a debate, as appears clear, then be assured that you will not forever be able to ignore this question, or to act as if the mere asking of it is the equivalent of burning a cross on someone’s front lawn. Unfortunately, those Muslims who do not believe that Islam is a religion of peace, who are the ones who benefit most from the ruling of this question out of polite discourse, will continue — unimpeded by their peaceful coreligionists — to commit acts of violence in order to advance the cause of Islamic supremacism. It is more than likely that this conflict will touch you personally, and your vilification of the anti-jihad movement and your refusal to engage it intellectually may at that point look very different to you from the way it looks today. Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Religion of Peace? Books and Films Generally Excluded from the Current Curriculum in Middle Eastern Studies Freedom Center Students Palestinian Wall of Lies http://www.amazon.com/Name-Education-Ideologies-Politics-Institutions/dp/1600347606/ Product Description In the Name of Education seeks to answer questions that have plagued concerned individuals for decades. Armed with a bevy of historical facts, Alexis takes on the challenge of addressing the problematic situations in education today--including a discussion of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, a book that has sold more than forty million copies. From the Back Cover In the Name of Education seeks to answer questions that have plagued concerned individuals for decades. Armed with a bevy of historical facts, Alexis takes on the challenge of addressing the problematic situations in education today--including a discussion of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, a book that has sold more than forty million copies.
Many recent engineering grads in India say that after months of job hunting they are still unemployed and lack the skills necessary to join the workforce. Critics say corruption and low standards are to blame. Poh Si Teng reports from New Delhi. So few of the high school and college graduates who come through the door can communicate effectively in English, and so many lack a grasp of educational basics such as reading comprehension, that the company can hire just three out of every 100 applicants. Flawed Miracle In India, Doubts Gather Over Rising Giant's Course Yet 24/7 Customer's experience tells a very different story. Its increasing difficulty finding competent employees in India has forced the company to expand its search to the Philippines and Nicaragua. Most of its 8,000 employees are now based outside of India. In the nation that made offshoring a household word, 24/7 finds itself so short of talent that it is having to offshore. "With India's population size, it should be so much easier to find employees," says S. Nagarajan, founder of the company. "Instead, we're scouring every nook and cranny." India's economic expansion was supposed to create opportunities for millions to rise out of poverty, get an education and land good jobs. But as India liberalized its economy starting in 1991 after decades of socialism, it failed to reform its heavily regulated education system. India's Growth Battle Take a look at India's economy 20 years after the country abandoned its Soviet-style, centrally planned economic model, embraced capitalism and jump-started economic growth. .Business executives say schools are hampered by overbearing bureaucracy and a focus on rote learning rather than critical thinking and comprehension. Government keeps tuition low, which makes schools accessible to more students, but also keeps teacher salaries and budgets low. What's more, say educators and business leaders, the curriculum in most places is outdated and disconnected from the real world. "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys," says Vijay Thadani, chief executive of New Delhi-based NIIT Ltd. India, a recruitment firm that also runs job-training programs for college graduates lacking the skills to land good jobs. Muddying the picture is that on the surface, India appears to have met the demand for more educated workers with a quantum leap in graduates. Engineering colleges in India now have seats for 1.5 million students, nearly four times the 390,000 available in 2000, according to the National Association of Software and Services Companies, a trade group. But 75% of technical graduates and more than 85% of general graduates are unemployable by India's high-growth global industries, including information technology and call centers, according to results from assessment tests administered by the group. Another survey, conducted annually by Pratham, a nongovernmental organization that aims to improve education for the poor, looked at grade-school performance at 13,000 schools across India. It found that about half of the country's fifth graders can't read at a second-grade level. At stake is India's ability to sustain growth—its economy is projected to expand 9% this year—while maintaining its advantages as a low-cost place to do business. The challenge is especially pressing given the country's more youthful population than the U.S., Europe and China. More than half of India's population is under the age of 25, and one million people a month are expected to seek to join the labor force here over the next decade, the Indian government estimates. The fear is that if these young people aren't trained well enough to participate in the country's glittering new economy, they pose a potential threat to India's stability. "Economic reforms are not about goofy rich guys buying Mercedes cars," says Manish Sabharwal, managing director of Teamlease Services Ltd., an employee recruitment and training firm in Bangalore. "Twenty years of reforms are worth nothing if we can't get our kids into jobs." .Yet even as the government and business leaders acknowledge the labor shortage, educational reforms are a long way from becoming law. A bill that gives schools more autonomy to design their own curriculum, for example, is expected to be introduced in the cabinet in the next few weeks, and in parliament later this year. "I was not prepared at all to get a job," says Pradeep Singh, 23, who graduated last year from RKDF College of Engineering, one of the city of Bhopal's oldest engineering schools. He has been on five job interviews—none of which led to work. To make himself more attractive to potential employers, he has enrolled in a five-month-long computer programming course run by NIIT. Mr. Singh and several other engineering graduates said they learned quickly that they needn't bother to go to some classes. "The faculty take it very casually, and the students take it very casually, like they've all agreed not to be bothered too much," Mr. Singh says. He says he routinely missed a couple of days of classes a week, and it took just three or four days of cramming from the textbook at the end of the semester to pass the exams. Others said cheating, often in collaboration with test graders, is rampant. Deepak Sharma, 26, failed several exams when he was enrolled at a top engineering college outside of Delhi, until he finally figured out the trick: Writing his mobile number on the exam paper. That's what he did for a theory-of-computation exam, and shortly after, he says the examiner called him and offered to pass him and his friends if they paid 10,000 rupees each, about $250. He and four friends pulled together the money, and they all passed the test. "I feel almost 99% certain that if I didn't pay the money, I would have failed the exam again," says Mr. Sharma. BC Nakra, Pro Vice Chancellor of ITM University, where Mr. Sharma studied, said in an interview that there is no cheating at his school, and that if anyone were spotted cheating in this way, he would be "behind bars." He said he had read about a case or two in the newspaper, and in the "rarest of the rare cases, it might happen somewhere, and if you blow [it] out of all proportions, it effects the entire community." The examiner couldn't be located for comment. Cheating aside, the Indian education system needs to change its entire orientation to focus on learning, says Saurabh Govil, senior vice president in human resources at Wipro Technologies. Wipro, India's third largest software exporter by sales, says it has struggled to find skilled workers. The problem, says Mr. Govil, is immense: "How are you able to change the mind-set that knowledge is more than a stamp?" At 24/7 Customer's recruiting center on a recent afternoon, 40 people were filling out forms in an interior lobby filled with bucket seats. In a glass-walled conference room, a human-resources executive interviewed a group of seven applicants. Six were recent college graduates, and one said he was enrolled in a correspondence degree program. One by one, they delivered biographical monologues in halting English. The interviewer interrupted one young man who spoke so fast, it was hard to tell what he was saying. The young man was instructed to compose himself and start from the beginning. He tried again, speaking just as fast, and was rejected after the first round. View Full Image at above link Another applicant, Rajan Kumar, said he earned a bachelor's degree in engineering a couple of years ago. His hobby is watching cricket, he said, and his strength is punctuality. The interviewer, noting his engineering degree, asked why he isn't trying to get a job in a technical field, to which he replied: "Right now, I'm here." This explanation was judged inadequate, and Mr. Kumar was eliminated, too. A 22-year-old man named Chaudhury Laxmikant Dash, who graduated last year, also with a bachelor's in engineering, said he's a game-show winner whose hobby is international travel. But when probed by the interviewer, he conceded, "Until now I have not traveled." Still, he made it through the first-round interview, along with two others, a woman and a man who filled out his application with just one name, Robinson. For their next challenge, they had to type 25 words a minute. The woman typed a page only to learn her pace was too slow at 18 words a minute. Mr. Dash, sweating and hunched over, couldn't get his score high enough, despite two attempts. Only Mr. Robinson moved on to the third part of the test, featuring a single paragraph about nuclear war followed by three multiple-choice questions. Mr. Robinson stared at the screen, immobilized. With his failure to pass the comprehension section, the last of the original group of applicants was eliminated. The average graduate's "ability to comprehend and converse is very low," says Satya Sai Sylada, 24/7 Customer's head of hiring for India. "That's the biggest challenge we face." Indeed, demand for skilled labor continues to grow. Tata Consultancy Services, part of the Tata Group, expects to hire 65,000 people this year, up from 38,000 last year and 700 in 1986. Trying to bridge the widening chasm between job requirements and the skills of graduates, Tata has extended its internal training program. It puts fresh graduates through 72 days of training, double the duration in 1986, says Tata chief executive N. Chandrasekaran. Tata has a special campus in south India where it trains 9,000 recruits at a time, and has plans to bump that up to 10,000. Wipro runs an even longer, 90-day training program to address what Mr. Govil, the human-resources executive, calls the "inherent inadequacies" in Indian engineering education. The company can train 5,000 employees at once. Both companies sent teams of employees to India's approximately 3,000 engineering colleges to assess the quality of each before they decided where to focus their campus recruiting efforts. Tata says 300 of the schools made the cut; for Wipro, only 100 did. Tata has also begun recruiting and training liberal-arts students with no engineering background but who want secure jobs. And Wipro has set up a foundation that spends $4 million annually to train teachers. Participants attend week-long workshops and then get follow-up online mentoring. Some say that where they used to spend a third of class time with their backs to students, drawing diagrams on the blackboard, they now engage students in discussion and use audiovisual props. View Full Image at above link This kind of teaching might have helped D.H. Shivanand, 25, the son of farmers from a village outside of Bangalore. He just finished a master's degree in business administration—in English—from one of Bangalore's top colleges. His father borrowed the $4,500 tuition from a small lending agency. Now, almost a year after graduating, Mr. Shivanand is still looking for an entry-level finance job. Tata and IBM Corp., among dozens of other firms, turned him down, he says, after he repeatedly failed to answer questions correctly in the job interviews. He says he actually knew the answers but froze because he got nervous, so he's now taking a course to improve his confidence, interviewing skills and spoken English. His family is again pitching in, paying 6,000 rupees a month for his rent, or about $130, plus 1,500 rupees for the course, or $33. "My family has invested so much money in my education, and they don't understand why I am still not finding a job," says Mr. Shivanand. "They are hoping very, very much that I get a job soon, so after all of their investment, I will finally support them." See video at: http://online.wsj.com/video/indian-engineering-grads-unprepared-for-work/7746AB30-4B5C-401A-A2E9-62E87B80758A.html?mod=WSJ_article_related The Diversity Hoax - Law Students Report from Berkeley THE DIVERSITY HOAX is a book about diversity on campus, written by those who know it best -- students. These essays by UC Berkeley law students from across the political spectrum offer hopeful solutions to an important problem in higher education today. They will motivate students nationwide to start exercising their right to free speech and express their diverse opinions on various topics, including what "diversity" really means. ***** Praise for THE DIVERSITY HOAX ***** "This fascinating and powerful collection of thoughtful young voices is eye-opening even to those versed in the machinations of diversity in higher education. It is a book of experiences more than abstractions, and it opens us to the inner lives of those usually too young and too busy to speak for themselves. I was disturbed and yet also moved as I read the stories of people so young already fighting so hard for their integrity. No one can read this book without admiration for its writers and horror at the situation they find themselves in. There is no other book like it." "The Diversity Hoax is required reading for anyone concerned about legal education in America. These intriguing essays show how the illiberal orthodoxy of "political correctness" is stifling debate at an institution that should be an open marketplace of ideas. By describing the problem so clearly and candidly, this excellent book may be the beginning of its resolution." "A frightening look at how the left wing thought-police have invaded one of America's most prestigious law schools." "David Wienir, Marc Berley, and the contributors to The Diversity Hoax are profiles in courage." "David Wienir and Marc Berley are to be congratulated both for their principles and this illuminating book. They believe in true diversity of ideas, including those that disagree with the main premise of this extraordinary collection. An indispensable follow-up to The Shadow University, The Diversity Hoax bears moral witness to a scandal of immense proportions: freedom of speech and conscience are being trampled at American college and university campuses. Bravo for an essential job well done!" THE DIVERSITY HOAX: LAW STUDENTS REPORT FROM BERKELEY Introduction - Marc Berley Part One: The History The Question Chapter Two: The Lack of Dialogue Chapter Three: The Muddled Goals of Diversity Chapter Four: Cuffed By The Thought-Police Chapter Five: An Institutionalized Problem? Chapter Six: The Dissent: "It's Your Problem" Chapter Seven: Reflections on Affirmative Action Chapter Eight: The Double Standard Chapter Nine: Attempts at Good Humor Chapter Ten: The End of the Individual? Part Three: The Future Afterword - Dennis Prager Appendices Acknowledgements About the Editors ***** THE DIVERSITY HOAX Copyright 1999 David Wienir and Marc Berley. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. This publication has not been authorized or endorsed by the University of California, Berkeley. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and editors. Our greatest collective hope for civility and tolerance -- indeed, for a better, if not harmonious, America -- is the reassertion of basic liberal principles: respect for justice based on fairness; pursuit of truth rooted in reason; the right to free speech; and respect for individuals and their individual rights. Nowhere is this more important than in our schools. If those who recognize the problems [described in this book] can take stock and act boldly now, perhaps we can save and nurture what is best in all of us. Hope can prevail, along with differences. New generations of American students can learn to disagree civilly. And as they ascend to positions of power in this country, they would be in a better position to address difficult problems and arrive at workable solutions. -- David Wienir and Marc Berley, "The Future" About The Diversity Hoax In his first months as a student at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 1997, David Wienir was startled by the lack of intellectual diversity he found among students, professors, and administrators. What is more, he was initially dismayed and later terrified by the lack of intellectual freedom to be found in classrooms, hallways, and courtyards. David encountered something he had not expected to find at a "top-ten" law school -- inconceivable intolerance for any views that did not accord with what appeared to be the prevailing campus view on Proposition 209. Although it was voted on by the people of California, David found many on campus acting as if Proposition 209 carried none of the moral power of the law and had to be reversed by any means necessary. David was not naive when he applied to Berkeley; he knew that radical liberal politics rule the roost at most American ivory towers -- and especially Berkeley. He just could not believe that an elite American law school would turn its back on the tradition that, from the time of Cicero, had lawyers train by learning to argue in utrimque parte, speaking on both sides of every issue. Certain hypothetical questions about certain cases were taboo. David did not expect his classmates to hold his view on controversial topics such as racial preference, but he also did not expect to find classes disrupted and to be called names merely for holding his opinion, and pretty much keeping it to himself. As David describes it, the problem was that protesters were intimidating diverse students in the name of diversity: Within the first month of school, certain members of the Class of 2000 authored an open letter, addressed to the dean, for all students of the class to sign. Those who signed the letter confessed that they "chose to attend Boalt in spite of [their] grave disappointment in the lack of diversity evidenced in the Class of 2000." The letter professed that "completely abolishing [racial preferences] without implementing any other sufficient means of achieving diversity has compromised our legal education. The pool of background experiences and perspectives we are exposed to has diminished significantly, limiting our opportunities for intellectual growth." Seventy-one percent of the entering class signed the letter, and there was scarce evidence at Boalt that those among the twenty-nine percent minority were welcome to speak. I myself was one among the palpably silent twenty-nine percent. The protesters wanted David, among others, to sign the anti-Proposition 209 petition, and the more often David politely refused to sign, the more fiercely he was maligned, accused, and called offensive names. Finding his views excluded, his voice silenced, and his signature demanded, David describes what he calls "a hypocritical definition of 'diversity'": Those who signed the letter seemed to see themselves as more empowered and enlightened than their dissenting contemporaries. Those who refused to sign the letter were -- I speak from experience -- scorned and disparaged. The intolerance of the authors of this open letter was clearly paradoxical: on the one hand, they espoused "diversity"; on the other hand, they rejected anything but group-think. Support them, in other words, or be prepared for a gross slinging of names that largely stick. David's first few months at Boalt Hall were rough ones. Nevertheless, he kept his poise and remained optimistic. "At Berkeley, my voice was not supposed to be heard," writes David. "I was supposed to count only as one of those hateful, oppressive opponents of diversity. Hidden amidst the shadows of the debate over racial preference, I nevertheless refused to go without putting my ear to what I hoped was fertile ground." Hoping to find that there was more intellectual freedom and diversity at Boalt Hall than he himself had experienced, David set himself a project. He sent out a letter to every student at Boalt suggesting they submit essays that he would try to publish as The Berkeley Federalist Law Papers, a nonpartisan publication dedicated to open and honest expression. The call for papers asked some simple questions: "How healthy is the marketplace of ideas here at Boalt? Do you have fair opportunity to share your ideas in the classroom? Does expression flow freely in an environment tolerant of diversity, or does the climate of tolerance at Berkeley paradoxically inhibit true diversity of opinion? Has political activism within the classroom silenced important student perspectives?" Seeking "diary-like" submissions, David made it clear that "all viewpoints are welcome and encouraged." "Let your voice be heard," he wrote. What was the result of David's equipoise, perseverance, and effort? A remarkable collection of twenty-seven essays revealing a rampant attack upon intellectual freedom and free speech affecting diverse students from across the political spectrum. David sent me the collection to see if FAST, the not-for-profit student organization I run, would be interested in publishing it. The essays submitted to David clearly deserved to be heard. David and I edited the collection. We left the submissions alone, but added an introduction, an essay on the history of free speech at Berkeley and attacks upon it, and a conclusion addressing the current and future status of free speech on American college and university campuses. We kept David's word. In the spirit of free speech, the collection reprints all of the submissions David received. Of the twenty-seven essays, only two suggest that intellectual freedom and free speech exist at UC Berkeley. Hence the title of the final book: The Diversity Hoax: Law Students Report from Berkeley. As The Diversity Hoax shows, David Wienir's experience as a student at UC Berkeley is not an anomalous one. He is just one of many students who are shocked by the threat to freedom posed by an entire campus. But David is the first to dedicate himself to the task of rendering a full account: The institutional practice of racial preference was just about over in California, and some people are upset -- very upset. California's Proposition 209, which banned government-sponsored racial discrimination, including racial preference in admissions decisions at University of California campuses, turned the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) into ground zero for the debate about racial preferences. The fabric of the entering class changed noticeably from previous years -- in the fall of 1997, only one black arrived as a first-year student. But that number does not tell the whole story. Eighteen black students were accepted to Boalt Hall in 1997, but none chose to attend. The eighteen who gained admission were so qualified that they not only merited acceptance to Berkeley even after Proposition 209; many also gained acceptance to even more prestigious law schools such as Harvard and Yale. The one black student who did attend Boalt as a member of the entering class in 1997 was actually admitted in 1996, while a policy of racial preference was still in place. "Although Proposition 209 merely made academic achievement the absolute criterion for admission to one of the nation's "top-ten" law schools," writes David in "The History," his account of the making of The Diversity Hoax, "it had a number of more noticeable effects. Many people at Boalt geared up to turn back the clock." As David reports, "in the classrooms, hallways, bathroom stalls, and bars, students and faculty bemoaned the lack of 'diversity' due to the 're-segregation' of campus. These fierce opponents of Proposition 209 (and less-than-tolerant enemies of the Californians who supported it) rallied behind the claim that education itself was being compromised by racial homogeneity." David offers as one example Marjorie Shultz, a Boalt professor and 1976 Boalt graduate, who stated: "how can [they] be excellent collectively if [they] have experiences that are narrower than the experiences of this population." An even better example, perhaps, is the dean of Boalt Hall, Herma Hill Kay, who claimed that without ethnic diversity, "it is more difficult to have a classroom discussion." Joshua Irwin, a student of the Class of 2000 told the Sacramento Bee, "I think that there's not going to be as many views represented in this class." David admits that "it is virtually undeniable that the law school at Berkeley is suffering from a lack of diversity, and that the education at Boalt has indeed been compromised." But the decline in "the quality of education at Boalt Hall has…little to do with race," he points out. "It has everything to do with intellectual freedom….The Class of 2000 has strongly supported the proposition that race serves as a proxy for opinion." What is worse, "scare tactics, parading as enlightened 'politically correct' peer pressure, are all part of the fight to control the definition of diversity at Berkeley," writes David, describing what it is like to live among the horrifying contradictions of the diversity hoax: The intolerant activists, comprised of both Boalt students and other enthusiasts, have personally attacked students who express contrary views by using techniques of slander, intimidation, and pejorative personal statements. They have torn down flyers of organizations with diverse views. They have marched up and down the halls chanting militant slogans such as "Let them in or tear it down" ("them" referring to under-qualified minority students who had not gained admission under the new race-blind admission policies, "it" referring to the university). They have interrupted classes by insulting professors, blowing whistles, and screaming into loudspeakers….The campus has been defaced. Fire alarms have been pulled. Many of the students even came to class in full uniform, wearing identical T-shirts signifying their desire to ethnically reengineer the law school. The language that the 'diversity' protesters used was clear. On the walls they wrote: "FUCK 209" and "SUPPORT DIVERSITY, NOT BOALT." Given his experience, David had to draw the following conclusion about Boalt Hall: "Diversity is defined according to skin color, rather than according to ideas." To reduce diversity to pigmentation and ethnicity is, as David writes, "a form of racism that ignores the diversity of opinions not only among populations, but among minorities themselves." What is more, "given the fact that control of the definition of not only 'diversity' but also of 'minority' is in the hands of people with a narrow agenda, great harm has come to minorities themselves." One of the most grievous tactics of the 'diversity' protesters' prolonged campaign was to disrupt classes by bringing in minority students from outside the Boalt community. After acting rudely to professors, the protesters would then confront white people and ask them in a forceful way to give up their seats to a minority student -- a symbolic gesture. But in at least one case, the 'diversity' protesters unwittingly asked a minority student and refused to tolerate her dissenting view. As one woman who cares greatly about both intellectual and racial diversity tells in some of the most riveting pages of The Diversity Hoax, she herself, although a minority of mixed race, was called repugnant, indeed racist, names simply on account of the views she held. "When I expressed my outrage at being asked to give up my seat to a minority at a recent classroom protest staged in support of affirmative action," writes Isabelle Quinn, "this caused a classmate to call me a 'racist white conservative idiot.' The Diversity Hoax is a book of essays by Berkeley law students: women, men, minorities, Democrats, Republicans, and moderates alike -- and different. While their backgrounds, life experiences, political views, and physical characteristics are different, their views on intellectual freedom at Berkeley are starkly similar: diversity -- different points of view -- is not, by and large, to be found on campus. Regardless of background, many of the students who submitted essays to David see themselves, with considerable authority, as part of a true minority at Berkeley -- those who are not only willing to tolerate opposing views but who know that only "a free and open marketplace of ideas benefits all." Students who have always fought to protect the free speech of others found themselves confronting hostile methods to silence their views at Berkeley. "Funny, I've always thought of myself as a classic liberal -- the type that defends vociferously the rights of people to disagree with me," writes Nick-Anthony Buford in "What Ever Happened to John Stuart Mill?" But, "ironically, the inspiring 'traditional' 1960's paradigm of Berkeley -- of respect for diverse opinions -- is subverted, and trampled by the new intolerance of the activist student thought-police who police the discussions which take place in the classrooms and hallways." In "News from the Ladies' Room," Megan Elizabeth Murray holds "the belief that we all have a right to speak." But at Boalt, she points out, "the very people whose rights I was trying to respect were not respecting the rights of others." Anyone who finds any of the above unbelievable or overstated needs to read every essay in The Diversity Hoax. The students who submitted essays to David did so because they perceived a problem they wanted to describe to the world. Berkeley was famous for fighting for free speech in the 1960's. But, as the student essays in The Diversity Hoax describe, the academic year of 1997-98 saw the successful silencing of many students who sought diversity of ideas and free speech. The 'diversity' protesters and petitioners (a fluctuating group of students generally ranging from 20 to 100) used bullying tactics -- tactics so ugly that liberal and moderate Democrats alike felt silenced by the radical liberals with whom they thought they shared a belief in fairness and freedom of speech. Read together, the student essays paint a compelling portrait of the state of free speech at one of America's top law schools. Almost all of the submissions David received report that a true diversity of ideas is neither encouraged nor tolerated at Berkeley. Free speech is in jeopardy. Politically correct ("PC") thought-police censor. In too many awful scenarios, PC racism prevails. PC racism has been blind to its various victims in recent years. The essays in The Diversity Hoax document how hypocritical, self-centered, and intolerant the 'diversity' protesters could be. But that is what happens when some people put their feelings before other people's facts. One would not think that people who worship at the altar of identity politics would assert their right to declare their "group" without affording other people the same right, but that is what often happens. The 'diversity' protestors, after all, do not ask everyone they harass for a family tree. Of course, we would not want them to, and that is the point. Wishing to be outwardly proud of their "group" or ethnicity, however, they don't allow true individuals to be quiet about theirs. There is also that other problem of not respecting people who actually happen to be and consider themselves white. As every student of civil rights in America should know, bullying tactics can keep justice at bay for only so long. A dedicated student of Western civilization, Martin Luther King, Jr. had absolute beliefs about justice that he would not violate -- that was his power. Unfortunately, many of today's students are indoctrinated warriors, taught by radical professors to reject the best of what the Western tradition has to offer and mistake power for justice. Not coincidentally, they mistake polite dissent for usurpation of their power. It is sad to see so many of America's students pushed in the direction of intolerance, pessimism, and confrontation rather than in the direction of tolerance, hope, and peace. Racism still exists in America. Thirty-five years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, however, America has much reason for optimism. America has been and remains committed to eradicating institutional racism. Unfortunately, new forms of resistance to a color-blind society are increasingly evident. In an atmosphere in which the color of skin has come to matter more than the content of character or demonstrated skills, Proposition 209 reasserts the language of that momentous Civil Rights Act of 1964. Opposition to Proposition 209, however, especially on the UC Berkeley campus, has demonstrated a determination by some to defer the dream of a color-blind society. Anti-American sentiment, refusal to assimilate, and separatist ethnic identity politics do untold damage to our schools and to our country, generally harming minorities most of all. Now is not the time to sanction institutionalized racism. That, at least, was the view of California when it voted on Proposition 209. Even if students disagree with the people of California, now is not the time to sanction the silencing of democratic debate about controversial topics, especially at universities, where intellectual freedom is invaluable. The Diverstity Hoax is not a joy to publish. It documents some of the worst educational trends currently threatening our country. According to the immediate needs of the "liberal" revolution on campus, skin color comes to substitute for ideas. In this charged atmosphere, many of America's most successful minorities -- Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, and Clarence Thomas, to take just a few examples -- are vilified on university campuses as traitors or puppets, rather than accepted (or merely tolerated) as successful individuals who are free to espouse their views. Although these black intellectuals have arrived at their diverse views through life experience and considerable study, their experience and hard work do not matter to the 'diversity' protestors who disagree with them. To many opponents of Proposition 209, minorities who oppose racial preference "think white" and hence are white -- at least for the purposes of the diversity revolution. By the same token, repugnant pejorative names are slung at minorities who hold anything resembling conservative views. These are some of the sad facts at the center of the diversity hoax. To the 'diversity' protesters, only some facts matter. Only some efforts count. Only some opinions are acceptable. And all ideas are reducible to race. I continue to put the word diversity in single quotation marks when referring to the 'diversity' protesters because, as the essays here demonstrate, diversity is coming to mean whatever the 'diversity' protesters say it means. And whoever says otherwise is hastily silenced and excluded from diversity. As Humpty Dumpty says to Alice in Through the Looking Glass, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." So the 'diversity' protesters would have it. In the 1960's, Berkeley was the famous center of the Free Speech Movement in America. People dedicated to free speech came from all around the country to be a part of the movement led by Mario Savio. Savio died in 1996. In the 1997-98 academic year, Berkeley became a place where 'diversity' protesters not only worked to curtail the free speech of students who disagreed with their position on racial preference; they also intimidated students who early supported them but who, after joining in, came to question the protesters' intolerant tactics. It appears the 'diversity' protesters weren't for diversity; they were against it. As the essays in The Diversity Hoax recount, the 1997-98 academic year was a sad chapter in the free speech at Berkeley. True liberalism gave way to an impulse to accomplish a mission by illiberal means. The classical liberal John Stuart Mill would not have been happy to witness the recent silencing of minority views at Berkeley. "All silencing of discussion," wrote Mill, is a dangerous "assumption of infallibility." When the mind is fettered, it is not free to grow. To suppress free speech is to champion error. When intellectual freedom is denied to some, everyone loses, as the essays in The Diversity Hoax make clear. "In my module, in particular, there exists a great deal of unease between the Right and the Left," writes Randall Lewis in "We're All Losers." "I sympathize with the Left much more often. Yet, that does not imply that I won't make comments that I regard as theoretically true when an argument on the Left is weak," writes Lewis. "Hindering speech and refraining from making logical points only works to all our detriment." The biggest problem expressed in the essays in The Diversity Hoax is that because diversity of opinion is stifled at Berkeley, students -- all students -- are not learning as much as they could in their classrooms. Students from across the political spectrum form what has become a silenced minority -- students who understand that the end of free speech and intellectual freedom, in the service of whatever revolution, means the destruction of education, individualism, and any semblance of the American dream. The "silencing of dissenting voices at Boalt also means that our classroom discussions are much less rich than they might otherwise be," writes Heather McCormick in "The Unprofitable Monopoly." Indeed, "many who disagree with the ultra-liberal viewpoint that dominates discussion at Boalt have learned to keep silent." Wondering how this could be the case at an elite law school, she asks: "Why is it that we, as advocates in training, are nevertheless so reluctant to stand up for our positions?" Like many others raised in The Diversity Hoax it is a material question. "Our expectations are anchored so far to the Left at Boalt" that "in most classes, we don't hear from true conservatives at all, only less extreme liberals," McCormick writes. "In reading this article, maybe you have assumed that I am a conservative. I am not. I am a moderate Democrat. That my viewpoints can pass for conservatism in the classroom (which they sometimes do) appalls me and shows just how flat the debate is." McCormick's proposed solution to the problem would demand more of conservatives and liberals alike: "More conservatives must be willing to express their viewpoints in class, in spite of their fears of being demonized. Should the debate become one-sided nevertheless, more liberals and moderates need to offer alternative perspectives, even if that means playing devil's advocate." It is a caring, reasonable proposal, but Boalt Hall appears to have a long way to go. On her first day of school, writes Darcy Edmonds, "I feared confrontation with fellow students asking me to carry signs and demonstrate for a cause about which I was still unsure." Soon, however, Edmonds writes, "I agreed with [the protesters'] intention of showing that the students were united in their belief in diversity in the classroom, so I agreed to participate." Edmonds soon noticed the duplicity of the protesters, who did not tell all their supporters the full extent and intolerant nature of their plans. Instead, she saw their ability "for using...other students like pawns in their game of political strategy." Where did this leave her? "I felt I could not tell anyone my personal philosophies -- that I wanted to increase opportunities for students of diverse backgrounds but did not support affirmative action." The harassing tactics of the 'diversity' protesters created an atmosphere in which students were "not willing to risk resentment by voicing their honest opinions." The diversity hoax -- the hoodwinking assumption that diversity includes only certain views -- was terrifying. The 'diversity' protesters even treated Dean Kay terribly. This treatment," David points out, "was part of a larger hypocrisy at the root of their tactics." McCormick offers this moving comment: "While I endorse efforts to increase minority enrollment at Boalt, there was no way I was going to stand in the Dean's office and shout down a woman who has devoted a lifetime to defending the rights of women and minorities." David's experience at Boalt is testimony to the one-sided intolerance that creates division and keeps people from coming to common ground. "I came to Berkeley sympathetic to some of the issues of the liberal Democratic agenda, and remain so," David writes. "However, I am adamant that the tactics of the intolerant radical activists actually erode the validity of much that they have to say. As I gazed across the historic campus late one April night, I wondered whatever happened to the Berkeley of the sixties -- a Berkeley that celebrated freedom of expression, and despised narrow-mindedness?" "Many Boalt students act as if their education is threatened whenever any conservative view is expressed," writes David. "Ironically, the conservative views are generally those supporting liberal notions of freedom of expression. Still, almost every time a lone conservative tried to raise his or her voice during my first year at Boalt, things got ugly." How ugly? "Fists, rather than hands, were raised. Eyes rolled. Glares flashed. Intolerance radiated. Diversity of mind was declared dangerous and unwanted. Only racial diversity was celebrated and cherished." The students published in The Diversity Hoax ask some numbing questions, questions American higher education would do well to confront with honesty. "What was I thinking expecting a mature public discussion in a top U.S. law school?" writes Murray. "To me," she adds, "diversity is a range of viewpoints and experiences." Murray asks further, "How can we 'become' color-blind all the while highlighting our differences with fireworks? We end up pitted against each other based on race instead of forgetting that we look different. To advance we must advance ourselves. Each of us must stop complaining about the past and look to the future." The purpose of The Diversity Hoax is to allow students not merely to express their views, but also to express in a meaningful way the difficulty they have faced trying to express them at UC Berkeley. The circumstances of the publication of The Diversity Hoax by the Foundation for Academic Standards & Tradition (FAST) are particularly important. FAST is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization created to empower diverse college and university students nationwide to restore both high academic standards and humanistic study of the liberal arts in the Western tradition to their schools. FAST works to reverse the tragic "dumbing down" and irresponsible politicization in evidence at so many schools across the country. FAST was founded because many students understand the value of the Western intellectual tradition and the necessity of raising academic standards in American institutions of higher learning. Without common ground, students from increasingly diverse backgrounds will not learn to speak and listen to one another. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that American educators make sure that students read a collection of books that will help make them informed critical thinkers with common ground. At the same time, schools must encourage intellectual freedom. FAST is dedicated to the pursuit of free speech for student voices. This is why FAST is publishing The Diversity Hoax. What is occurring at Berkeley is a decline in academic standards that appears to be the result of efforts on the part of administrators, professors, and students to reject some of the best aspects of the Western intellectual tradition. The essays in The Diversity Hoax suggest that the pursuit of truth rooted in reason is being replaced by a rejection of reason as a mere tool of oppression, rather than the valuable source of self-correction that, in America, led visionary white men to abolish slavery. It is under such conditions that Shakespeare becomes known as the cultural artifact of an oppressive culture, rather than a fine poet who has much to teach diverse people about human nature. Under such conditions, Western civilization is wrongly attacked, made responsible for all of the world's ills, but ignored where it has led the way in confronting and lessening those ills. When pursued with honesty, history shows, the Western intellectual tradition leads to recognition of errors and a determination to accomplish self-correction. Conversely, many countries and cultures that have done neither are the pets of the 'diversity' protesters and their demands for a multicultural curriculum based on vague and hyperbolic notions of egalitarianism and social engineering. Racial preference, it is the reasoned belief of many, and the belief of a majority of Californians who voted on Proposition 209, is not only unjust but also harmful to both individuals and institutions of higher learning. Lowering admissions criteria for some helps no one. I myself would like to see more black students attend elite universities, including UC Berkeley. The best way to improve the opportunities for all students, I believe, is truly to raise standards in K-12 education and apply college admissions criteria fairly. A more challenging course of action than many are willing to consider, but more promising than racial preferences. The Diversity Hoax is by no means, however, a book about Proposition 209. It is a book about free speech and intellectual freedom -- a book in which students recount the obstacles they confronted when they expressed their views on a number of controversial topics at UC Berkeley. David calls The Diversity Hoax "a compilation of those student essays, thoughts, and intellectual prayers." How does he describe its mission? "This book is dedicated to diversity -- diversity of thought, and diversity of opinion. It asserts the value of minorities themselves freely to debate diverse opinions." UC Berkeley, as David and I point out, is not unique. "While the essays of The Diversity Hoax were written about Boalt, it would be incorrect to assume that the problems it describes are unique to its halls," writes David. "The scope of this book is much greater than the uncivil actions of a small number of Berkeley radicals. If only we could be so lucky. If only the disease of contemptuous intolerance were so well contained." Indeed. As David writes, "Berkeley serves as the perfect backdrop for the first comprehensive collection of essays published by students dealing with the loss of intellectual freedom within a 'top ten' law school. What is particularly troubling is that so many law students seem to be sanctioning an attack upon reason itself, upon the foundation of justice and objectivity upon which America is based." Our country is based on justice grounded in the possibility of a fair, free, reasonable pursuit of truth. The state of democracy in America has much to do with what the country's law schools are teaching a new generation of American lawyers. Anyone with an interest in the American justice system, higher education, intellectual freedom, free speech, and a number of other important issues will read the student essays in The Diversity Hoax with considerable interest. As David writes, The Diversity Hoax is "intended to create a moment of pause and reflection": My goal is for a copy of this book to sit on the desk of every dean, academic, and student in the nation. This book allows the world to see what many students see -- and feel what they feel. I hope it will make people think. I hope it will help people to realize that there is a problem, and address it….This book lets those who are actually affected by intolerance in academia speak for themselves….They are snapshots into the minds of students studying amidst paradoxes, unfounded allegations, and restrictions and limitations of free thought and ideas. They should be taken seriously. The issues broached and treated in The Diversity Hoax are complex. If the book causes its readers to consider them further, it will have achieved its goal: widening the perspective on one of the most important issues in American education and society today. The ramifications of the diversity hoax are enormous. May the wisdom of the students open many eyes. This essay is excerpted from Marc Berley's "Introduction" and David Wienir's "The History." All quotations are from The Diversity Hoax. Copyright 1999 by Marc Berley Excerpted from "The History" The Contributors Each essay is subjective and speaks only for itself. Each contributor relates the facts as he or she perceived them. Each essay was submitted blindly, without any opportunity to review the work of others. This was not a group project. This collection records the observations of concerned individual students, some of whom know each other, some of whom know neither each other nor me. Of the twenty-seven essays submitted, two disagree with the notion that there is a problem with respect to intellectual diversity and freedom. In the interest of truth and freedom of expression, no submissions have been omitted. Every student who cared enough to submit his or her view on the topic has been published here. Each writer thought independently, yet for the most part the voices speak as a unified whole. The message is plain -- there is a problem that needs to be addressed. There are more than 700 students at Boalt Hall and only twenty-seven essays here. This collection therefore makes no claim to speak on behalf of the entire student body or of Boalt Hall itself. These essays represent the view of a minority of students at Boalt Hall. The real question here is the size of the minority for which the contributors speak. Only a small portion of the daily readers of the New York Times ever writes a letter to the editor. But for every person who does write, there are many who agree with the points expressed but who, for whatever reason, choose not to air their opinions in a public forum. Given the nature of this book, fear of reprisal was one reason not to contribute, as a number of would-be contributors told me in response to my call for papers. In a less intolerant atmosphere, I might have been deluged with essays. But in a more tolerant atmosphere, there would have been no need -- and no subject -- for such a book at all. All contributors were actively studying at Boalt Hall during the academic year 1997-98, the time when all but one of these essays were written. Some contributors were in their twenties, some were in their forties. Men and women contributed. Some had blond hair, while others had brown or red hair. Many of the contributors were considered "minorities" when they applied to the law school. To my knowledge the contributors are racially diverse. East Asians, Near-East Asians, Hispanics, and others of various religious and ethnic backgrounds contributed to this publication. As I fervently believe that diversity of opinion has little if anything to do with gender, race, or hair color, such information about each writer is not specified. I received twenty-seven essays. All of them are printed here. While some essays needed minor grammatical and stylistic corrections, most are published largely untouched. Only three contributors asked to be anonymous. Only one essay was submitted anonymously. The effort and resolve of those who contributed to this volume ought to be celebrated. The timely participation of the contributors demonstrates the sense of urgency expressed in this book. Many students wrote their essays while studying for "all-important" law school exams. One student submitted his essay less than 48 hours before he was due to be married. Another student actually broke down into tears when she discussed submitting her essay. No student received any form of monetary compensation for his or her contribution. For the most part, it was not even clear if the project, The Berkeley Federalist Law Papers, would even be published. To my knowledge, only about a quarter of the contributors were active members of the Berkeley Federalist Society, a fact which speaks to the desire of the contributors to address an important problem. The writing is pure, heartfelt, and immediate, but also reasoned. To my knowledge, no book had ever been published by a collection of concerned law students commenting on the intellectual health of their institution. Lawyers always look to precedent, and we had none to follow. Lawyers are trained to be cautious and seldom to commit -- these future lawyers were willing to make bold and important statements. Historically, what has made Berkeley an outstanding academic institution is not only its willingness to question, but also the eagerness of its students to respond. This is no less true today than at any time in the past. I posed a question. The students bravely responded. For this reason alone, I am grateful to have been accepted to Boalt and would enthusiastically encourage all accepted students to attend. Even conservatives. The reader should not think for a moment that this project has been driven by bitterness or scorn. Rather, this book has been inspired by unbridled optimism and hope for change. The future is bright -- but requires thought and action by those who care. The cathartic effect that this book has had on the students who contributed appears to have been profound. Through writing for this publication, many students told me that, for the first time, they were able to formulate and organize their perceptions. Through reading, I hope that students across the nation who are concerned with open and free debate and intellectual honesty will realize that they are not alone. I hope that readers will become less tolerant of intolerance, and will realize the consequences of remaining silent and not making their world a better place. Copyright 1999 by David Wienir About the Editors MARC BERLEY is executive director of the Foundation for Academic Standards & Tradition (FAST), a not-for-profit organization created to empower diverse college and university students nationwide to restore high academic standards and humanistic study of the liberal arts in the Western tradition to their schools. He earned his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 1993. He has taught literature, humanities, and writing at Columbia University, Lawrence University, and Rutgers University and written on Shakespeare, Milton, Plato, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, and education. To order The Diversity Hoax call: (800) 247-6553 Students who order by telephone pay only $9.95 for the book. http://www.boundless.org/2000/departments/pages/a0000174.html For Wienir, the incident became a paradigm of what "diversity" often really means on today's college campus: the imposition of a leftist orthodoxy that brooks no dissent. The protesters' mistake was to act on the racist assumption that skin color determines a person's politics, and that someone who looks white must therefore "think white." Martin Luther King, Jr., understood that the ideal of a color-blind society could only be based on the conviction that there is a law above the law -- a transcendent moral law that acts as the basis for human law. In the fall of 1998 David Wienir, a law student at the University of California at Berkeley, joined with three classmates to start a new fraternity, whose purpose was pretty much the same as all frats: to "provide support for heterosexual men" and offer an "opportunity to interact with a large number of interesting, eligible women." Harmless enough, one might think. But apparently not everyone did think so. Is the word "heterosexual" so inflammatory these days? Within a week, Wienir writes, "the dean of the law school was notified that something like a white supremacist group had been started" at Boalt Hall, the Berkeley law school. Ironically, Wienir is Jewish, and his three friends were Jewish, Cuban and Indian. Yet the slanderous report spread like wildfire. "I overheard students I had never met discuss the 'white supremacist' clan, often mentioning my name," Wienir writes. "Students I had never even seen before angrily approached me, demanding both explanation and repentance." Almost a year after the incident, "my name is still being linked to a white-supremacist movement that, to my knowledge, does not, thank God, even exist." For Wienir, the incident became a paradigm of what "diversity" often really means on today's college campus: the imposition of a leftist orthodoxy that brooks no dissent. During that first year of law school, Wienir writes, he "began to understand the methods of the radical Left to be nothing short of intellectual terrorism. ... The intolerant activists ... have personally attacked students who express contrary views by using techniques of slander, intimidation and pejorative personal statements." Other methods include tearing down "flyers of organizations with opposing views," and interrupting classes by "insulting professors, blowing whistles and screaming into loudspeakers." All this was part of an organized reaction against the passage a year earlier of Proposition 209 (known as the California Civil Rights Initiative), which forbids the practice of racial preferences in university admissions policy. The result was that only one African-American student entered UC Berkeley in 1997 as a first-year student, which outraged diversity advocates. (In fact, 18 black students were accepted to Boalt Hall, but all chose to go elsewhere.) Hoping to discover that there was more open-mindedness and tolerance at Boalt Hall than he himself had experienced, Wienir came up with a project that became the core of this book. He sent a letter to all law students, asking them to submit diary-like essays in response to questions such as: "How healthy is the marketplace of ideas here at Boalt? Do you have fair opportunity to share your ideas in the classroom? Does expression flow freely in an environment tolerant of diversity, or does the climate of tolerance at Berkeley paradoxically inhibit true diversity of opinion?" Twenty-seven students responded, and all are included in The Diversity Hoax. Two of the contributors hold that intellectual diversity at Boalt Hall is alive and well. The rest, however, describe a left-wing hegemony and flatness of intellectual life that would give any free-thinker pause, not just out of concern for free speech on campus but also for freedom off campus, as these law students graduate and spread their worldview throughout the rest of American culture. Consider the story told by Isabelle Quinn. One October day in 1998, a group of demonstrators entered the classroom and demanded that white students give up their seats to minority protestors. When Quinn refused to give up her seat, they denounced her as a "racist white conservative bigot." It turns out that Quinn is the daughter of Filipino immigrants (of European descent); she herself had benefited from affirmative action when she first entered Berkeley and had previously "protested in support of minority students." The protesters' mistake was to act on the racist assumption that skin color determines a person's politics, and that someone who looks white must therefore "think white." Or take the story of Heather McCormick, who says that her "first big lesson in the silencing of dialogue" happened in a first-year course on property law. The professor showed a video on housing discrimination, while calling for "an open dialogue, encouraging everyone to express what they felt about what they had seen." At one point, a male student asked a question about the hypothetical possibility of reverse discrimination in housing; indeed, might there not be situations wherein a majority person finds himself discriminated against in housing? "How could you even bring that up?" the professor demanded, and launched into a "tirade [that] went on for a good two minutes," while the student sank "down into his chair, lowered his eyes, and said nothing." The professor's hostile response illustrated "what too often passes for 'open dialogue' at Boalt," McCormick concludes. Or again, consider the story of Jim Culp. In a class on tort law, discussing the intentional infliction of emotional distress, the professor noted that courts do not allow legal action between spouses, on the grounds that emotional distress is part and parcel of married life. A female student protested that the courts should not ignore "mental abuse of women." The professor asked Culp what he thought. "Well," he replied, "I don't feel that men have a monopoly on inflicting emotional distress. ... Hence ... inflicting emotional distress is not an issue specific to women, as men and women are equally perpetrators and victims of it." Immediately, "There was a roar of scorn from many women in the class," Culp writes. "Many stood up screaming unintelligible insults. Some even threw objects at me." So much for diversity of opinion. Finally, consider the story of former Army Airborne Ranger Richard Welsh, who was falsely accused by a left-wing activist of cheating on an exam. Welsh then faced a kangaroo-court inquiry by the Honor Board, which found him guilty (but promised that, barring "future violations," it would not go on his record). Welsh could have kept quiet about this potentially career-ending episode, but he wants justice. As The Diversity Hoax was being published, he was pursuing an outside appeal with the university's ombudsman, having "exhaustively traveled the jagged avenues of recourse offered by the law school." Welsh says his hopes for that outside appeal have dimmed, however. The ombudsman won't even return his phone calls. Stories like these form the core of The Diversity Hoax, and the strength of the book is that it allows students to tell in their own words accounts of leftist intolerance and bigotry on the campus. In addition to the student essays are introductory and concluding chapters by Wienir and Marc Berley, executive director of the Foundation for Academic Standards and Traditions (FAST), which helps students "restore high academic standards and humanistic study of the liberal arts in the Western tradition in their schools." The book also has an afterward by Dennis Prager, conservative Jewish radio talk-show host. The book gives little attention to the intellectual roots of the diversity hoax; but this comes as no surprise given the book's emphasis on personal experience. For more of a historical perspective, consider the work of Gene Edward Veith, author of Modern Fascism, who documents the parallels between the contemporary diversity movement and the philosophy of fascism. Veith shows that the diversity movement shares with philosophical fascism an emphasis on group rights over individual rights -- in the case of the Nazis, the Aryan race; today, women and minorities. Both diversity champions and fascists deny objective reason, and locate "truth" in the subjective perspective of favored group(s). Both look to the state to redistribute wealth to those same favored groups. Both reject reasoned debate in favor of power politics. And both even grant the state the power to decide who shall live and who shall die -- the Nazis with their concentration camps; today's liberals with their impassioned defense of abortion and euthanasia. Finally, both repudiate historic Christianity and revive ancient forms of paganism -- the Nazi paganism of blood and soil; today's New Age paganism of pantheism and goddesses worship. At the heart of these parallels, Veith writes, is a "revolt against transcendence." It is a revolt against any concept of a Creator God who has revealed a truth that is objective and universal, and whose holy character is the basis for an objective and universal morality. As such it must also be a revolt against universal human rights, as laid out in the Declaration of Independence, which states that we are all "endowed by the Creator" with certain inalienable rights. This kind of universalism is dead set against the particularism of group "truth" and group rights. How ironic that the people who most loudly proclaim the rights of various race and ethnic groups today actually repudiate the vision that makes those rights possible. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood that the ideal of a color-blind society could only be based on the conviction that there is a law above the law -- a transcendent moral law that acts as the basis for human law. It is the content of our character that matters, not the color of our skin -- or our gender or class. The Diversity Hoax is a good place to start in taking a critical look at the true meaning of what is called "diversity." The students who speak out here should be commended for protesting against racism and discrimination. The Diversity Hoax - Law Students Report from Berkeley Editorial Reviews "A frightening look at how the left wing thought-police have invaded one of America's most prestigious law schools." -- David Horowitz, author of Radical Son and The Politics of Bad Faith "David Wienir and Marc Berley are to be congratulated both for their principles and this illuminating book. They believe in true diversity of ideas, including those that disagree with the main premise of this extraordinary collection. An indispensable follow-up to The Shadow University, The Diversity Hoax bears moral witness to a scandal of immense proportions: freedom of speech and conscience are being trampled at American college and university campuses. Bravo for an essential job well done!" -- Harvey A. Silverglate, co-author with Alan Charles Kors of The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses "David Wienir, Marc Berley, and the contributors to The Diversity Hoax are profiles in courage." -- Dennis Prager, author of Think a Second Time and Happiness Is a Serious Problem, syndicated radio talk show host (KABC) "The publication of The Diversity Hoax shows students aren't going to acquiesce to such tactics anymore." -- Forbes "This fascinating and powerful collection of thoughtful young voices is eye-opening even to those versed in the machinations of diversity in higher education. It is a book of experiences more than abstractions, and it opens us to the inner lives of those usually too young and too busy to speak for themselves. I was disturbed and yet also moved as I read the stories of people so young already fighting so hard for their integrity. No one can read this book without admiration for its writers and horror at the situation they find themselves in. There is no other book like it." -- Shelby Steele, author of The Content of Our Character and A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America "Vital...insiders' perspective on the culture wars." -- Boston Book Review Product Description About the Author http://www.bruinalumni.com/articles/racialgames1.html Chapter 1 The conservative writer and activist David Horowitz has argued that the Left believes with religious fervor that it can create a world with no hunger, cruelty, or unfairness. What every other religion believes only possibly in the Kingdom of Heaven, the Left plans to make reality in the here and now -- by any means necessary. Racially-focused admissions to our most prestigious colleges and universities have been a major part of this decades-long struggle to realize this radical conception of social justice and equality of outcome. The end of affirmative action in California -- firmly ensconced in the state Constitution with the overwhelming passage of Proposition 209 -- was a major blow against this project and the radicals' vision for a new world. Delayed by the inevitable round of court battles, it was not until the incoming class of 1998 that race-neutral UC admissions were achieved. Finally accepting their legal defeat, the race lobby turned its attention to the court of public opinion, making dire predictions of demographic disaster. Proposition 209 would spell ruin for minority students, they predicted; the voters would live to regret their monstrous decision Predictable howls of protest from radical students and faculty greeted the release of statistics about the incoming Class of 1998 -- from Hispanic student leaders, "outrage," while black student leaders were "appalled."[i] And why not? The evidence was all there, they declared. Just look at the large drops in minority admissions to the elite campuses of Berkeley and UCLA. Except that most of the minority applicants hadn't actually been denied admission altogether. Instead, they had been directed to less rigorous UC campuses that better matched their lower qualifications. For the race preferences lobby, however, this act of academic mercy was unacceptable. In response, they launched a two-part plan that had been in development since the UC Regents' 1995 elimination of affirmative action in admissions, hiring and contracting. The first component of the plan, as described in Diversity@UCLA: By Any Means Necessary, was the burgeoning campaign for diversity. Renaming affirmative action "diversity" was a cynical, devious, but ultimately well-chosen tactic. The general public perceives diversity as a noble, laudable goal -- one in which a wide variety of participant backgrounds strengthens the collective experience of the group in question. The public also mistakenly believes that diversity is about ensuring equal access -- to college admissions, to hiring, to public programs. The irony of the entire diversity hoax is that in philosophy and practice, the goal is not equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome. Therein lies the crucial difference between radical diversity as practiced at UCLA, and the mainstream diversity of the public imagination. At the same time that diversity was being cemented as a public policy goal, the means of achieving the objective - a new admissions policy - was first publicly introduced. This new policy, called "comprehensive review," would, Californians were told, avoid the pitfalls of only looking at narrow measures of achievement like GPA and SAT scores. Instead, UCLA admissions would look at the whole person, picking up on more subtle, unspecified, forms of collegiate qualification. The policy proposal represented a major departure from the meritocratic system currently in place, in which 50-75% of the class was admitted on GPA and test scores alone. But despite the audacity of such a plan, the triumph of the Diversitistas' campaign for comprehensive review was nearly inevitable. Their leaders were more powerful and better organized than the scant opposition -- and it didn't hurt that then-UC President Richard Atkinson was on their side. Along with powerful friends in high places, the proponents boasted a highly motivated ground attack. UCLA student radicals had been organizing from the first time that the Regents discussed ending affirmative action. And while they were sent reeling from SP-1 and SP-2, and suffered the crushing blow of Proposition 209, they just as quickly began to turn the tide. On May 16, 2001, the Diversitistas forced the symbolic repeal of SP-1, and quickly followed that with their defining triumph, the November 15, 2001 passage of a new "comprehensive review" admissions system. The process, still ill-defined at the time of its passage, broke so many precedents that its full effect would not be understood for many months. What was immediately obvious was the hastiness of the decision. On the UC level, reforms have typically moved at a snail's pace -- especially any changes to admissions systems or standards. But not in the case of comprehensive review. The Regents proved so eager to satisfy the diversity lobby that the changes were made literally in the middle of the Fall 2002 class' application period. Worse yet, the changes were effective immediately. Many students had already submitted their applications when the criteria were changed, but were given no opportunity to resubmit information to address the new areas of emphasis. The sudden change also had a negative effect on sophomore and junior students. Those who had been placing greater emphasis on academics over extracurriculars -- in line with the previous criteria -- were thrust into a new system which discriminated against all-grades, few-activities students. Perversely, the new system most disadvantaged the worthiest applicants -- those high school students dedicated enough to micromanage a high school career in line with UCLA admissions standards. With one fell swoop, the Regents not only sent its most dedicated future applicants back to the start, it actually sent them behind less dedicated students, who, by dumb luck, or mere neglect, had the jack-of-all-trades record suddenly favored by UCLA admissions. But then, comprehensive review was never about equity, or fairness to those playing by the rules. And it was no accident that the changes hit future white and Asian applicants the hardest. UCLA admissions officials figured that as members of "overrepresented" groups (in their cruel bureaucratic jargon), these applicants would take care of themselves. It was unsuccessful minority applicants who needed love and nurturing. Chapter 2 The true nature of comprehensive review would not become fully apparent for some time. If practiced according to theory, the policy looks at the entire student, reviewing GPA, test scores, breadth and difficulty of courses taken, personal statements, letters of recommendation, personal interviews, and more. But the financial and organizational strain introduced by a truly comprehensive review process is why it is practiced almost exclusively by private schools. The UC, from the first year to present, proved utterly incapable of offering even the barest simulacrum of holistic admissions. The first and most obvious obstacle was a simple matter of numbers. In 2004, UCLA received a nation-leading 43,199 applications, reviewed by 140 UCLA staff or volunteer readers. Compare this number to Harvard, America's most prestigious and desirable university, which in that same year received 20,986 applications. It is fair to assume that all 20,000-plus Harvard applicants received a full and thorough review -- one of the glorious excesses affordable to a school with a $65 application fee and an endowment in excess of $22 billion. By contrast, the demographic crush of 43,000-plus applicants meant that each UCLA review lasts an average of eight to ten minutes -- total. And despite making laughably cursory reviews, UCLA still did not have time to review letters of recommendation, much less conduct personal interviews -- both hallmarks of the private school process. It is these shortcomings, and several others, which led UCLA professor Matt Malkan to rightly deride the process as a "parody of what the Ivy Leagues do."[i] The system, as described by the Daily Bruin immediately after its November 2001 approval, was intended to "evaluate UC applicants on academic achievements, personal achievements and life challenges in no given ratio."[ii] As awkward and vague as that summary is, the actual process of comprehensive review was even less elegant. In the eight to ten minutes they are allotted per applicant, readers review comprehensive dossiers composed of the UC application, a personal statement, and a summary sheet of academic information. The staff and volunteers assign a ranking of one to five for "personal achievement" and another numerical ranking on the same scale for "life challenges." Another group of readers conduct academic reviews looking at grades, test scores, scholastic honors, and breadth and difficulty of high school coursework, assigning a score between one and six. It would be a challenge to communicate the "holistic" reality of any applicant in eighty minutes, if not eight hours. But the process was never about allowing UCLA to make a superior admissions decision. It was only a smoke-screen for a hurry-up boiler room process, with reviewers skimming for buzz-words ("barrio," "poverty," "ghetto," "crime," etc..) by which they might justify what they wanted to do already -- admit more minorities. In line with the preoccupation with race (or its indirect signifiers of which, the UCLA reviewers are keenly aware), is a hatred for race-blind standards -- since they tend to yield disappointing numbers of minority admissions. Standardized tests are a particular bogeyman to the proponents of comprehensive reviews. But the SAT, along with GPA, is an objective measure thrown away at our peril. As UCLA Professor Matt Malkan points out, the SAT "is the only standardized test taken by most college-bound students for the last 30 years. It is the only practical way to compare the academic preparation of high school students across the country."[iii] Moreover, the SAT is the only way for all students to compete on a level playing field. The irony of the radical diversity lobby's hatred for the SAT is the test's historical role in establishing a meritocracy beneficial to a racial minority. In the 1920s, a rising tide of Jewish students was so successful at the SAT that Ivy League schools had to create legacy admissions -- preferences for children of (then almost exclusively non-Jewish) alumni -- to keep their numbers down. Just as the Jews' Ivy League success in the 1920s threatened the established order of things, so did the success of Asian UC applicants in the post-Prop. 209 era. Though the Diversitistas would hotly deny it -- after all, they're busy righting the world's wrongs -- both the legacy admissions of yesteryear, and the comprehensive review of today, are equally corrupt in their purpose and effect. Setting aside UCLA's practical inability to conduct a proper comprehensive review, or the historical myopia inherent in its dislike of standardized tests, there is a larger truth about this particular admissions system. Whether practiced by UCLA, Harvard or Cal State Fresno, comprehensive review will always far short of its impossible goal, for one simple reason: only God himself really knows "the whole person." Chapter 3 After the passage of comprehensive review, Keith Stolzenbach, faculty chairman of the Academic Senate's admissions committee, admitted to the Bruin that SAT-I scores would now rank last on a reader's priorities.[i] This reprioritization was in response to UC President Richard Atkinson's successful campaign to win a greater admissions emphasis on the SAT-II subject tests. These exams included, not coincidentally, the Spanish language SAT-II, aced in great numbers by desirable (and bilingual) minority Hispanic students. The move away from the SAT-I also included greater emphasis on the personal statement, the forum in which applicants present tales of woe to explain a lack of academic achievement. In fact, UCLA gives credit in the life challenges component for problems ranging from immigration hardships, living in a high-crime neighborhood, being a victim of a shooting, or long-term psychological difficulties. Other oft-cited examples include poverty, uneducated parents, or involuntary after-school commitments like caring for a sick parent or working a job to support family. Not surprisingly, every one of UCLA's targeted life challenges correlates strongest (though of course not exclusively) with minority applicants. Setting aside the motivation for choosing these particular life challenges, there is an unstated assumption which underlies them. Namely, that applicants who have overcome great challenges and achieved -- however modestly, as the numbers show -- deserve a boost. However, by Berkeley admissions director Carla Ferri's own words, UC schools desire "students that can tackle the academic programs with enthusiasm, with strength, with purpose."[ii] How do teenage schizophrenia, gunshot wounds, or a home in the ghetto serve as particular qualifications to meet the stated challenge? Nobody can rightly have a dispute with slight preference for students who overcome great obstacles to achieve great things. But that's not UCLA's system. To get minority numbers up, the records show that the UCLA admissions office headed by director Vu Tran is admitting students who have overcome exaggerated obstacles to achieve minor things. And to make an even more unpopular point, the very same traumas for which UCLA assigns bonus points also correlate to students most at a disadvantage for achieving in the university's academic meat-grinder. In several press accounts, former UCLA admissions director Rae Lee Siporin admitted that the radical diversity lobby wears race-colored glasses. After Proposition 209 depressed minority admissions at Berkeley and UCLA, Siporin and other self-appointed social engineers considered an admissions process incorporating pure socioeconomic preference as a boost to applicants from a background of poverty. But the plan was rejected after their modeling yielded too many low income, high-achieving Asians and whites, while failing to properly plump up the number of minorities. The modeling for comprehensive review generated more pleasing results. This system assigned particular importance to extracurricular activities, and allowed minority applicants to pervert the personal statement into a written river of tears, blaming their lack of qualifications on external limitations. By indexing for academic failure instead of mere poverty, comprehensive review achieved the desired ethnic numbers. But other than the candor of Siporin (now retired), the Diversitistas have suffered from sudden amnesia and refuse to admit that the motive for comprehensive review was bringing up minority numbers. Those struck by this selective erasure of memory included Chand Viswanathan, 2001 UCLA Academic Senate chairman, who defended less-qualified minorities by arguing that they "were very intelligent, but [their intelligence] was not reflected"[iii] in their scores. Along with trotting out that tired argument, current UCLA admissions director Vu Tran argued that seemingly unqualified "students in the very low range (of SAT scores)" deserve admission because "they still demonstrated academic excellence in spite of environmental conditions." What Tran asserted is that while students are admitted with low SATs, they make up for it with superior GPAs. His contention is not based on fact. As a review of the Fall 2002 UCLA admits and denials shows, average GPA for both admits and denials rises with every 100 point range on the chart -- from 3.43 for the 7 admitted students with a 701-800 SAT, 106 students with SATs from 801-900, 412 students from 901-100, on up to 4.43 for the 958 admitted students with a 1501-1600 score. At the same time, though, UCLA rejected 191 students with a 1500+ SAT score, and 1455 students in the 1401-1500 SAT range.[iv] Which is all well and good until you look again and are reminded that students with stratospheric scores are being rejected in favor of vastly underqualified students scoring in the sub-1000 score range. Clearly, the underperforming students admitted by Tran may very well have been demonstrating excellence, but not as much excellence as the thousands of denied students with both higher GPAs and higher SATs. For those still disbelieving, other UCLA statistics confirm the existence of differing standards of "excellence" depending on race. For the Fall 2004 class of new freshmen, African-Americans scored an average 1091 SAT and 3.67 GPA, while Chicanos scored 1128 and 4.00. By contrast, whites scored 1325 and 4.13, with Asians at 1328 and 4.17.[v] The difference is stark enough to be irrefutable. But Tran and Viswanathan continue to dissemble -- a disappointing but typical inclination. In the world of UCLA admissions, such deception is Job 1 -- burying the reality of racial preferences under an avalanche of words. Chapter 4 It all seems quite common-sense -- giving a boost to students who performed well despite the obstacles in their way. But the process of comprehensive review is insultingly oversimplified. UCLA boils down the entirety of an applicant's life into three score ranges of 1-5, 1-5, and 1-6. Making the situation worse is the deliberate lack of verification or quantification. Personal statements, newly emphasized, are a place in which a student can "explain" that an after-school job caused their low test scores and GPA. But can UCLA really verify this? Did the applicant actually work? And did the applicant truly need to work? It's not a big leap to change a job for spending money into a job to support the family; to change a weekends-only position into daily graveyard shifts. Even if our applicant is telling the truth about a 30 hours-per-week job to help pay the bills, can we say definitely that it had a negative effect on scholastic achievement? As most college students will attest, scheduled obligations like employment tend to teach time-management, so that in the end, the student does more with less studying time. And this is the subjectivity introduced by just one factor for which comprehensive review gives preference. As noted, only God himself knows the full truth of every application. That He's not on the UCLA staff should give the Diversitistas pause -- but it doesn't. The Diversitistas will sometimes contend that comprehensive review is needed to combat the malleability of GPA and SAT scores. They contend that test preparation classes are a class- or wealth-based advantage unavailable to (presumably poor) minority applicants. The selectivity inherent in the argument is amusing to behold. Radicals who normally wouldn't accept that the sky is blue if it came from the mouth of a businessman, suddenly swallow whole the test preparation company claims of 150-250 SAT point increases. One wonders whether they've ever seen -- or more importantly understand -- the legal disclaimer, "Results not typical." Sure, you could lose 150 pounds on the South Beach Diet -- but don't count it. Test preparation is the same way. Randomized and controlled SAT studies on preparation courses show that the average increase via this wealth-based advantage is 30-40 points. Very simply, no SAT course can make a genius of a dullard. For a smart student -- the kind who should even be bothering to apply to UCLA -- all the "prep" needed is a $20 book and some self-directed study. That's something even our prototypical South Central striver can afford. The real effect of implementing comprehensive review was not pretty. While Chand Viswanathan reassured the Bruin that "admissions officials are very careful not to lower the standards,"[i] the reality belied his words. A significant Wall Street Journal article from July 12, 2002 communicated the real-life injustices perpetrated by the new admissions policy. The story profiled a number of students, including Stanley Park, who while caring for his single mother stricken with breast cancer, and tutoring to pay the rent, managed to score a 1500 on the SAT. Hyejin Jae, the daughter of a "struggling Korean-immigrant pastor," scored a 1410. Both were rejected by UCLA, as was Albert Shin, an engineer's son who scored an off-the-charts 1540.[ii] By contrast, Blanca Martinez of South Gate High School, who also nursed a mother with breast cancer, scored an 1110 and was admitted. Martinez's South Gate classmates Susana Pena, with a pitiful 940 SAT, and Dania Medina with a score of 1050, including a mere 410 on the verbal section, also won admission. Rosauro Novelo of Belmont High School scored 980, but no matter -- UCLA welcomed her with open arms. Even more satisfying for the diversity lobby is that these successes were mirrored on the scale of entire high schools. Irvine's University High, with a 50% white and 41% Asian-American student population, dropped from 89 admits to 69. By contrast, the 99% Hispanic South Gate surged from 14 admits to 36, and primarily Hispanic Belmont High in Los Angeles shot from 8 to 24.[iii] The article also revealed a vicious game being played by UCLA to comply with the California Legislature's Latino Caucus demand to 'get the numbers up.' The UC targets, to the tune of $85 million per year, low-performing high schools for "outreach," which is special attention and resources devoted to encouraging its students to qualify for and apply to UCLA. But any student attending one of these targeted schools like South Gate or Belmont who also participates in a UC outreach program, earns 7 of the 8 points possible under the "exceptionally challenged" category. The single additional needed point could come from hardships like single parenting, a background of poverty, or recent immigrant status.[iv] UCLA, by combining its outreach program with comprehensive review admissions standards, has created a closed circuit loop designed to admit unqualified minority students. But they face a grim future. Overmatched by UCLA's unrelenting academic demands, they do not graduate. Or worse, in many ways, they graduate only by retreating into UCLA's ethnic studies programs -- hothouses of racial paranoia which grow the next generation's Jesse Jackson or Antonio Villaraigosa. But despite the insanity of such outcomes, UCLA rolls on heedlessly. In fact, to ensure that the fix is securely in, students at these underperforming high schools are coached personally by UCLA staff on how to tell a proper sob story. One outreach memo advised students to "mention if you have lived most of your life in a ghetto, barrio or low-income area." Even more remarkably, the same outreach staff which coaches minority applicants how to game the system is among the staff which reads applications.[v] And while they don't pass judgment on those they personally coached, the outreach staff also don't check their "race matters" philosophy at the door. It is these staff members, cynical enough to teach-woe-is-me strategies to minority applicants, who have a deadly effect on any chance of conducting an impartial admissions process. The anecdotal evidence presented in the Journal article was later confirmed in full by a report from UC Berkeley, created at the behest of then-UC Regents Chair John Moores. The October 21, 2003 report released the statistics on Fall 2002 Berkeley admissions. It provided clear evidence of a resurrected regime of racial preferences. Berkeley had rejected 641 applicants with near-perfect SAT scores, while accepting 378 students who scored between a 600 and 1000. Approximately 62% of the students with low SAT scores were underrepresented minorities, and less than 15% of those in that 600-1000 range were student-athlete exemptions.[vi] Less publicized was the fact that UCLA was actually the victor in this race to the bottom. In 2002, the university admitted 525 students with SATs of 1000 or below and rejected 1,646 students with SATs higher than 1400.[vii] Of particular note is UCLA's rejection of 191 students with an SAT score higher than 1500. The score of exactly 1500 places a student in the 99th percentile of test-takers; any higher and the College Board can only express it as "99+." From a numerical standpoint, out of the almost 1.4 million high school students who took the SAT, only 19,717 scored between in the 750-800 range for verbal, and only 24,802 scored in the 750-800 range for the math section. The group that did both is even smaller. By contrast, 72% of the entire nation's test takers exceeded every one of the 113 UCLA admits for students with a 900 or lower SAT.[viii] Chapter 5 Speaking Out There were also five Democrat appointees present for the March 18, 2004 meeting of the Regents' Education Committee. The meeting, which followed Moores' fateful column, resulted in the passage of an unprecedented resolution. Not only did it stubbornly reiterate the Committee's devotion to comprehensive review, but the resolution also specifically condemned Moores' public comments. This public reiteration of support for comprehensive review made clear that the Regents saw nothing wrong with a racial diversity achieved on the backs of better qualified whites and Asians. But the condemnation of Moores -- simply for pointing out the elephant in the room -- is disturbing evidence of the depth of the radical commitments of the UC's top policymakers. Both the concept of diversity and the admissions policy of comprehensive review prey on the public's sympathy for the general -- and generally reasonable -- principles of fair play and opportunity for all. The problem is that the proponents of diversity -- and comprehensive review -- abuse that trust by operating a very different UCLA admissions regime. Having here exposed UCLA's corrupt admissions practices, we can call diversity and comprehensive review what they are -- a racial sham foisted on all tax-paying Californians. http://www.bruinalumni.com/articles/afam1.html Chapter 1 The identity politics which infest UCLA today are both a product, and a cause, of radical undergraduate academics. The politically-correct focus on women, minorities and gays serves as a lens through which all topics, from Shakespeare to the Civil War, the 1760's to the 1960's, are viewed. We're in a brave new (UCLA) world now. For the student who wants to avoid the relative intellectual rigor of the other humanities and social-science disciplines, UCLA now boasts a long-list of victimoligist specialties. African-American Studies? Check. American Indian Studies? Check. Asian-American Studies, Chicano Studies, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Studies, and Women's Studies? Check, check, check, and…check. Getting a sense of the multi-cultis' pseudo-scholarship requires a close look at the class topics and assigned readings. This case study examines one typical department, African-American Studies, for one academic year, 2004-2005. Understanding that each department has its quirks, the troubling situation we find in African-American Studies offers strong backing to the anecdotal evidence available about the other five disciplines not examined here. The following are brief profiles of problem classes characterizing the professionalized radicalism of the department. Despite confining the investigative focus to radical topics and readings, the study still endless problematic content in the department's offerings. African-American Studies M107, titled "Cultural History of Rap," uses Professor Cheryl Keyes' own book Rap Music and Street Consciousness along with That's the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Part of the rigorous intellectual demands of the course include couch time with BET and MTV. The syllabus states, "Students are strongly encouraged to view hip-hop related television programs, if possible, on a weekly basis."[1] In that same vein, the department also offers Professor Scot Brown's "Recent African American Urban History: Funk Music and Black Popular Culture," which is cross-listed with the History department.[2] This class, like 56% of the year's African-American Studies courses, is co-offered by one or more other departments.[3] It is this cross-listing that is perhaps the biggest problem with identity politics studies. Through this interdisciplinary charade, the multi-culti infection of identity group compartmentalization spreads to mainstream majors like English, History and Political Science. Such cross-listing results in a History major learning about the Civil War from the perspective of an African American, an Asian-American, a Chicano, and a lesbian, for good measure. But with their eyes focused firmly on the politically correct microscope, students miss the broader picture of our common American experience. Meanwhile, courses which do not examine their subject through a racial lens are "re-educated," and otherwise made to conform. Non-compliant courses, and any professors who will not bow to the system, simply disappear. In Scot Brown's "Recent African American Urban History: Funk Music and Black Popular Culture" course, the professor argues that "James Brown, Sly & the Family Stone, Parliament Funkadelic, Betty Davis, [and] Earth, Wind and Fire," compose "multiple voices of anguish, protest and vision." The final exam assigns a 3-5 page paper analyzing one of a limited choice of "songs as they relate to the course themes of realism and surrealism in funk music." These choices include the deep thoughts of Chic's "Everybody Dance," which declares in part: Everybody dance, do-do-do Lots of people feel that funk is great music. Many people feel the same about polka. But neither deserves to the subject of academic study, much less a university's final exam. "Interracial Dynamics in American Society & Culture" is listed both as General Education Cluster 20, and African-American Studies M167. While deeper than classes that give credit for a straight-faced examination of Black Entertainment Television rump-shaking or '70s slap-bass virtuosity, "Interracial Dynamics" only digs a deeper grave of academic fraud. The course presents the usual theories and the usual suspects of the academic left. "White privilege," "institutional racism," and racial deconstruction -- but only against whites -- are par for the course here.[5] Familiar from my own experience with a similar class, Chicano Studies 182, "Whiteness Studies," is one assigned reading, George Lipsitz's "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness." Given the book's subtitle, "How White People Profit from Identity Politics," it's clear that Lipsitz wasn't writing about UCLA, where white people are in fact the only group not benefiting from identity politics. As the final class activity of the "Interracial Dynamics" class, those students enrolled in the class through the African-American Studies department hold a debate on California's Proposition 187 -- but only after being properly "educated" by two articles: Rene Sanchez's "Divisive Prop. 187 Is Voided," and Tamar Jacoby's "Anti-Immigration Fever In Arizona."[6] As with most academics at UCLA, students aren't expected to reach their own conclusions on controversial topics. Professors prefer to do it for them -- and then confirm their indoctrination as creatively as possible. For "Interracial Dynamics," that method is a sham debate that the pro-187 side could not possibly win without independent study above and beyond the course readings. In the next quarter of the "Interracial Dynamics" General Cluster class, the "Civil Rights and Black Power Movements" module consists of selections from Stokely Carmichael, Charles V. Hamilton, Huey P. Newton, and Bobby Seale.[7] The views of independent historians, for or against that ugly period of America history, are noticeably absent. Writers contrarian to the hagiography of what was in reality a Marxist street gang, like David Horowitz, Peter Collier, or Kate Coleman, are not presented for the students' benefit. Contrarian voices, as a close reading of the class syallabi make clear, are only welcome coming from the left. Thus are students assigned to read Edward Said's "Islam As News," and in further reading on immigration issues, are favored with Augusta Dwyer's "Let's Shoot Some Aliens: The US Border Patrol."[8] Wrapping up the winter quarter for GE Cluster students is a debate on "Income-based vs. Race-based Affirmative Action in Higher Education Admissions." There's no mention of the possibility of no affirmative action at all; and, given the assigned readings of "Regents of the University of California v. Allan Bakke (Justice Marshall's Dissent)" and Nell Irvin Painter's "Whites Say I Must Be on Easy Street,"[9] the reason is clear: you can't debate an idea you haven't learned. Making the outrageous content of the "Interracial Dynamics" class detailed here is that it is derived only from a brief review of the two course syllabi. Were there enough time and resources for a close review of every single author, work, and film in this class (or others), the result would be the enumeration of far more examples of radical works disguised by bland titles. A prime example illustrating this problem is the course screening of "I'm the One That I Want." The title itself is rather innocuous, not wearing its politics on its sleeve. However, the film is noted anti-war leftist Margaret Cho's foul-mouthed exposition on her life as a self-proclaimed Korean "fag hag." In the recording, which is simply a tape of her stand-up performance at San Francisco's Warfield Theater, Cho notes that "straight men are scary," and discusses, among other scholastically relevant topics, vagina-washing and oral sex.[10] This one example is bad enough, but it represents only the tip of the radical iceberg. Chapter 2 Professor Cheryl Harris teaches African-American Studies C191, titled "Race, Equal Protection and the Law."[1] Harris assigns her own Harvard Law Review article, "Whiteness as Property" which expands on her suspect racial theories. Also assigned is Omi and Winant's "Racial Formation in the United States," another pair of the usual suspects from the "Whiteness Studies" field of academics. The two contend that "racial meanings pervade U.S. society," and argue that "race in the United States [must be treated] as a fundamental organizing principle of social relationships."[2] In that same vein is Harvard Professor Noel Ignatiev's article "Immigrants and Whites," from his celebrated -- and intellectually lightweight -- publication Race Traitor. Ignatiev's magazine, which caught the fancy of academic radicals when it debuted in 1992, trumpets the confused slogan "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." Ignatiev himself states on the Race Traitor website, "It is not fair skin that makes people white; it is fair skin in a certain kind of society, one that attaches social importance to skin color."[3] Fair enough. Since Ignatiev wants to "abolish the white race," we eagerly await, albeit without holding our breath, the announcement of his desire to abolish the black race as well. But don't count on it. Professor Harris thinks highly enough of academic hacks like Omi, Winant and Ignatiev to assign their works in the limited ten-week duration of the class. And while it's bad enough that undergraduates are being force-fed such rubbish, it's far worse that Professor Harris, with her belief that race underlies everything in our nation, also holds the privilege of educating this nation's future lawyers. For an academic field seemingly uninterested with classic areas of inquiry, another pop culture class in African-American Studies is hardly surprising. Professor Paul Von Blum's "African-American Film" "serves as an alternative vision" to the "dramatic disrespect," and "racial distortions, caricatures, and stereotypes" of the white film establishment. Films screened include blaxploitation classics "Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song," "Shaft," and "Cotton Comes to Harlem." Von Blum also samples more recent, violent fare like Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," and John Singleton's "Boyz in the Hood."[4] As with 1970's funk, pop culture is fun, but hardly academic fodder. For a developing discipline, African-American Studies' amateurish focus on music and movies does itself no favors. This shortcoming, however, is inevitable. African-American Studies, like all multi-cultural studies, is simply too narrow a pedestal on which to mount an entire academic field. In slicing and dicing the common American experience into color-coded segments, multi-cultural academics miss the forest for the trees, because the story of African-Americans is the story of America -- and the story of America is history. UCLA's multi-cultural studies departments make a brave attempt to weave their separate, narrow threads into a common tapestry. But the attempt backfires. When multi-cultural studies intersect, the story is no longer even about the particular minority group as a whole -- itself already too narrow by comparison to broad narrative of American history. The intersections instead create, for example, tiny subfields like African-American women, African-American lesbians, transgendered African-Americans, and so on. Does the transgendered Chicano have a different cultural experience from the transgendered African-American? Possibly. But what of it? Von Blum's "African American Films" ignoring the obvious inanity, indulges this minority-of-a-minority obsession by spending class time on gay black filmmaker Marlon Riggs' execrable PBS documentary "Tongues Untied." An almost indescribable pastiche of spoken-word drum-circle nattering and soft-core gay pornography, it served in 1989 as the catalyst for Senator Jesse Helms' condemnation of National Endowment for the Arts funding practices. Riggs bitterly dismissed the criticism as the work of "white arch-conservatives and religious fundamentalists," but readily admitted the inclusion of "words like 'fuck'…images of two black men tenderly embracing…[and] highly diffused, silhouetted nudity."[5] The film's NEA funding and PBS distribution are clear evidence of these institutions' cooptation by political radicals. That a UCLA class would examine Riggs' work with a straight face is abundant evidence that the same has happened to the African-American Studies department. "The Psychology of Race and Gender Among African-Americans," cross-listed in African-American and Women's Studies, has a promising title, one which might even indicate the possibility of an actual intellectual discussion on race issues. But Professor James Cones' inclusion of the radical author bell hooks [sic] tempers even this possibility.[6] hooks is famous for her lesbian radicalism, manifested in an infamous essay in which she confessed to feeling a "homicidal malice" toward an anonymous white man on an airplane. Defending her fury, hooks noted, "Blacks who lack a proper killing rage are merely victims."[7] Nihilism also characterized hooks' remarks in her 2002 commencement speech at Southwestern University: "Every imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal nation on the planet teaches its citizens to care more for tomorrow than today."[8] Professor Cones, no doubt cognizant of hooks' well-known radicalism, nonetheless assigned the radical's book, "Where We Stand: Class Matters." The Library Journal notes that the work "illustrates how everyday interactions reproduce class hierarchy while simultaneously denying its existence."[9] Marxoid theorems aside, the Journal also praises the book's "valuable framework for discussing such difficult and unexplored areas as…the ruling-class co-optation of youth through popular culture, and real estate speculation as an instrument of racism."[10] Knowing the specifics of the book, Cones could only properly have assigned it as an example of abnormal "Pyschology of Race and Gender." But if the syllabus is any indication, hooks' work and its ideas are taught with the greatest respect, alongside other marginal works like J.L. King's "On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of 'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep With Men."[11] Professor Cheryl Keyes returns in a Winter 2005 class, cross-listed with Ethnomusicology, titled, appropriately enough, "African American Musical Heritage."[12] This predominance of music and film classes within the African-American Studies department serves to outline its narrow academic boundaries -- race, music, film, and political radicalism. Other notable -- but distastefully conservative -- aspects of the African-American experience, like evangelical religion, are denied a place at the table. Keyes' survey of African-American music returns to her unfortunate fixation on rap with the caustically titled Ebony article "Why Whites Are Ripping Off Rap and R&B." Never mind that music is constantly evolving and is owned by no race, ethnicity, or individual. Keyes' readings teach her students otherwise. Unfortunately, the endorsement of childish possessiveness of a universality like music is characteristic of the political radicalism and racial rage which permeates the department and its faculty. Chapter 3 African American Studies 118, which is cross-listed with American Indian, Asian American, and Chicano Studies, is a prime example of the peculiarly UCLA propensity toward navel-gazing. The class, "Issues in Student-Initiated Retention and Outreach: Student-Initiated Retention and Social Change in Los Angeles,"[1] runs in the same vein as Asian-American or Chicano Studies classes that chart the history of their race's militant ethnic organizations from the 1960s to present. But the "Issues" class is even worse, because there's not even a separation of 30 years to provide perspective. The class description admits that the "focus [is] on UCLA as a case." What it doesn't admit is that like many other multi-cultural classes, the philosophy, learning, and outcome is centered on conducting radical activism for credit. As the website explains, "For the past fifteen years, the Campus Retention Committee (CRC) has provided a vehicle for the organized participation of students in their own retention and successful matriculation. The Student-Initiated Outreach Committee (SIOC) has similarly focused student efforts on the development of student-run outreach programs for K-12 students, particularly those from underrepresented, disadvantaged communities. The CRC and SIOC represent the most elaborate expressions of student-initiated retention and outreach activity in the country. Collectively, they support, fund, and evaluate 12 student-initiated retention and outreach projects employing more than 60 student staff and over 100 student volunteers in service of nearly 2000 of their fellow undergraduates and 1500 K-12 students annually. The CRC and SIOC provide a broad, creative range of services, uniquely harnessing the collective experiences, energies, and aspirations of students to improve the quality of life and education at UCLA and in the community." The website further notes that "The CRC has acknowledged the impact of social change theory and practice on its own retention methodology. Students will have the opportunity to consider whether the CRC has made a reciprocal contribution through its alumni and former students."[2] Translation: through the use of all students' mandatory undergraduate student government fees, minority students on campus have built a recruitment and retention machine on campus that offers special outreach to prospective students, and members-only tutoring and other support services to current students. Well, that is, if you're a minority student. If you're a middle-class black student, even upper-class, the CRC and SIOC machines will seek you out, offer you priority enrollment, proprietary tutoring, and full-time employees whose only task is aiding your academic efforts at UCLA. But if you're an Iranian émigré, or the poorest of white trailer-park trash, the CRC and SIOC's doors, and their noble goals of "social change," are closed to you. As with the issue of diversity, minorities are UCLA's Chosen People. If you're not one, you are a nobody, an un-person. This entire UCLA class revolves around the idea that such a deeply corrupt system of preferential treatment is in fact deeply right, and deeply just. Rather unnecessarily -- given the almost exclusive enrollment of committed student radicals -- the syllabus warns that the class will not "tolerate racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory, rude, insensitive or personal remarks." That is, of course, unless the rude remarks come from class readings like bell hooks' "Let Freedom Ring," from "Why LA Happened: Implications of the '92 Los Angeles Rebellion." This is one of two class readings which refer coyly to the 1992 Los Angeles riots as a "rebellion." A third selection, from UCLA Professor Paul Von Blum, lauds "Resistance Art in Los Angeles."[3] The syllabus also assigns "Economic Justice in the Los Angeles Figueroa Corridor," and "Fighting for a Living Wage in Santa Monica," both from the radical UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education title, "Teaching for Change." It is made clear through the syllabus' reading assignments and general outline of topics that, for this class and its leaders, teaching is not a dispassionate calling. Instead, "Education is Change" (bell hooks), "Education is Politics," and teachers are to pursue "social change," "equality, self-determination, [and] community empowerment."[4] In this spirit of teaching change, students are assigned to complete ten hours of fieldwork "with a local community-based organization that includes 1) volunteering/site visits/workshops and 2) informational interviews with key staff members." Based on the backgrounds of class participants, and on the radical political philosophy underlying the very premise of the class, it's safe to assume that the fieldwork isn't with the Westwood Rotary Club, or the Los Angeles-based libertarian Reason Magazine. Rather, count on it being with the type of community organizations known as labor unions. To make this preference crystal-clear, the course website features an informational link about "Organize to Improve," a February 24, 2005 gathering held by the UCLA Labor Center in downtown Los Angeles.[5] The event featured UC Berkeley professor Steven Pitts discussing the "security officers campaign, the electrical workers' push to bring African Americans into the trade, and homecare workers' struggle to maintain dignity for workers." Macias' deception in mandating work with "community organizations" when that category is essentially confined to labor unions and radical organizations, is characteristic of the deception behind the class itself: turning legitimate academics into liberal activism. Chapter 4 African American Politics is in truth anything but a one-way street. While Democrat registrations still predominate, religious conservatism in the black community drives a strongly Republican streak in a mostly liberal population. But not to hear UCLA tell it. Like so many other classes, the radicalism of the Winter 2005 course "African American Politics" infects the Political Science department by cross-listing. In this class' examination of affirmative action, the philosophy of 'teaching for social change' seems to have strong root. Not one to use a rubber mallet when he could overdo it with a sledgehammer, Professor Antonio Brown provides a startlingly one-sided view of affirmative action, assigning Nathan Glazer's "A Case for Racial Preferences," along with three other articles. Not one of the selections offers the faintest suggestion of opposition. Rounding out his one-sided argument, Professor Brown helpfully suggests reading the affirmative action apologia "Shape of the River." The book, cited endlessly by defenders of preference for its quasi-scientific character, purports to show that affirmative action does no harm to whites, while simultaneously lifting up deserving minorities -- who were not one bit less qualified, they'll have you know! No Ward Connerly, no Dinesh D'Souza, no David Horowitz, no National Review articles…sounds like just another fair and balanced examination of racial issues at UCLA. Professor J.C. Djedje's "The African-American Musical Heritage," is another of the innumerable music and film classes that comprise the shallow academic wading pool of African American Studies. And, as with every other African American music class, the professors insists on straining credulity by placing the violence and misogyny of rap into an academic context, here, the article, "Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics: Gangsta Rap and Postindustrial Los Angeles" from the collection "Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture."[1] Unfortunately, African-American academics have taken the fact that the music form happened to have originated with African-American musicians as sufficient justification for its academic study. Professor Scot Brown's "Introduction to Afro-American History," cross-listed with the History department, presents the works of two well-known radicals.[2] "Propaganda as History," by John Hope Franklin, features the thoughts of the Duke professor emeritus who has been at the vocal forefront of the reparations movement. Franklin went so far as to attack David Horowitz, and the anti-reparations advertisement Horowitz placed in the Duke Chronicle in 2001. Franklin made the radical contention that "Most living Americans do have a connection with slavery," and that "All whites and no slaves benefited from American slavery."[3] The course also features, as do other UCLA African American Studies courses, the works of long-time Communist Party member Paul Robeson. Robeson is idolized by, among others, the infamous long-time radical Columbia professor Eric Foner. Foner, at the 2001 Columbia teach-in that saw Professor Nicholas De Genova call for "a thousand Mogadishus," recalled Robeson's declaration: "The patriot is the person who is never satisfied with his country."[4] Dissatisfied with America as he might have, Robeson was notably satisfied to receive a Stalin Peace Prize in 1952 from the dictator himself, and a Peace Medal from Communist East Germany. Professor Brown proudly includes a selection from Robeson's self-justifying autobiography, "Here I Stand." Professor Kyeyoung Park offers her addition to the African American Studies rolls with her class "Race and Racism" (which for good measure is cross-listed with Anthropology and Asian American Studies). The same small group of pseudoscholars in the field of "whiteness studies" are trotted out: Brodkin, Roediger, Winant, and Riggs. Park admits that race is a "historically constituted, socially constructed, and politically contested process," yet in the same breath complains that "the consequent denial of the existence of race has been used to justify cutting various social programs." Park's words are a coded complaint about the horrors which political radicals have confronted in recent years -- means-testing and time limitations on welfare, a developing state-by-state battle to end affirmative action and other "reactionary" events.[5] Park hoists herself on her own petard -- admitting that race is an invention, but remaining reluctant to abandon it and the benefits that being an "oppressed" minority now confer. What's a good leftist to do? The answer, so it would seem, is to avoid the question. Thus, all the readings in this African-American class are about white racial identity -- giving the inadvertent appearance that blacks are only able to define themselves through opposition with the prevailing white standard. In the course, the dead horse of "whiteness" is flogged plentifully, with articles like "The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control," "The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class," "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness," "Establishing the Fact of Whiteness," "Whiteness and Americanness: Examining Constructions of Race, Culture, and Nation in White Women's Life Narratives," and "Racial Faultlines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California." This being a UCLA African American studies class, there are several requirements: * A selection from bell hooks, here, "Reflections on Race and Sex" * An obligatory examination of homosexuals: "'Claiming' and 'Speaking' Who We Are: Black Gays and Lesbians, Racial Politics, and the Million Man March." * Assignment of the professor's own work. Park includes in Week 10's segment, "Race and Resistance: 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest" his essays, "Confronting the Liquor Industry in Los Angeles," and "South Central Aftermath: Black and Latin Commentaries on Koreans." * Apologia for the Los Angeles riots, described in Park's title as an "unrest," and put in scare quotes in the title of fellow UCLA Professor Darnell Hunt's work "Screening the Los Angeles "Riots": Race, Seeing and Resistance." It is typical Leftist Orwellian redefinition to call riots "unrest." Unrest is solved with Unisom; riots are solved with the National Guard.[6] Chapter 5 Rounding out the selection of African American Studies classes for the Spring 2005 catalog is "Non-Violence and Social Movements," co-taught by two of the most usual of all usual suspects: anti-war radical and dyed-red laborista Kent Wong, and one-time Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. crony Reverend James Lawson.[1] Part and parcel of Lawson's radically inflated self-perception are his and Wong's radical scholarship. Mandatory reading for their class features Wong's own work "Teaching for Change: Popular Education and the Labor Movement," published by Wong's Center for Labor Research and Education. The very title, "Teaching for Change," is epitomized in Wong's dogmatic lectures with titles like "Nonviolence and the War in Iraq; The War at Home: Attacks on Civil Liberties." With all the room for dissent that is breathed into a lecture topic like that, the subpoints outlined in the syllabus, like "Why are we waging War in Iraq?" and "Selective Repression" become far more understandable. Just as biased is the syllabus' list of possible final paper topics, including "The Peace Movement and the War in Iraq," "The United Farm Workers Movement," "The Living Wage Movement," "Homeland Security and the Attacks on Civil Liberties," "Student Anti-Sweatshop Movement," "Affirmative Action," and "Student Movement for Ethnic Studies." It need not be spelled out that, from a grading basis, arguing against any of those concepts, other than Homeland Security, would not be advisable. To paraphrase the course description from the infamous Berkeley class "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance," conservative thinkers would be advised to seek other sections. And, if you're not in agreement with the radical precepts governing UCLA's African-American Studies, or any other multi-culti major, you'd do best to simply move out of the department altogether. http://www.bruinalumni.com/articles/carnesale.html Much of the benign neglect which characterized Carnesale's tenure can be understood as a matter of political expediency. A career bureaucrat through and through, Carnesale was scrupulous in mouthing the proper words about 'diversity.' And in light of these commitments, what would be less respectful of that sacred cow of diversity than cracking down -- even for legitimate reasons -- on the radical activities of a cosseted minority group like the Muslim Student Association? Never mind their direct participation in rallies at the Israeli Embassy, their leaders chanting "Death to the Jews!" These were students…of color! And who would have a right to complain anyway? As the administration's thinking went, protests -- even anti-Semitic ones -- were all part of the wonderful hurly-burly of college life. For Carnesale, the choice hardly even had to be weighed. If he confronted the MSA, he faced a campus backlash and total lack of support from fellow Diversitista administrators. His choice: sit on the campus powder-keg, smiling broadly and hoping nobody would light a match. That's where UCLA's new byword of "excellence" comes in. The most successful con man is the one who can tell the boldest lies -- 'UCLA has never been better -- don't listen to those axe-grinding critics' -- with the straightest face. Carnesale's poker face was good -- in fact, it was great. And the donors ate it up. Meanwhile, the campus continued to descend into radicalism, ethnic factionalism and violence and discrimination against those who dared to think -- or speak -- differently. And again, when a few simple words and simple actions by Carnesale could have reversed this slow slide, UCLA's top man was nowhere to be seen or heard. One example of his inaction was on building takeovers during student protests. In 1998, just days after his taking office, when student radicals occupied Royce Hall, Carnesale did authorize outside LAPD intervention. The illegal demonstration was swiftly broken up and 88 students were arrested. http://www.bruinalumni.com/articles/diversityatucla1.html University of California Regent Ward Connerly did two utterly inexcusable things in his lifetime. He committed his first sin in 1995, when he led the Regents in ending, throughout the UC system, affirmative action in admissions, hiring and contracting. He sinned again the next year, spearheading the successful passage of Proposition 209, which altered the California Constitution to outlaw affirmative action in all state business. Student radicals, most with a personal stake in a system of racial preferences, were outraged, and expressed their displeasure in typical fashion -- protests, building takeovers, and violent confrontations at Regents meetings. The concept of diversity has had a long and respectable history in the United States -- which is the primary reason that it was adopted (and perverted to partisan ends) by the race lobby. No reasonable person objects to the idea of people from different backgrounds coming together in a common setting. Diversity also leeches on the concept of equal opportunity, the traditional American belief that, absent outside control, a group of applicants selected through a meritocracy will naturally be diverse. Several common social assumptions also help drive the public acceptance of diversity. The public takes as a given that through social interaction black people have things to teach white people, whites can teach Hispanics, Hispanics can teach Asians, and so on around the circle. But most Americans don't have a full understanding of the leaps of logic inherent in the way that diversity is practiced today, or the Faustian bargains it makes in the goal of assuring the diversity in a group of participants. When the reality is successfully communicated to the public, such as with Proposition 209, truth inevitably wins out. Affirmative action was about ensuring a diverse pool of applicants, but in its zeal to assure equal opportunity it violated another American fundamental, the third-rail of equal access. Affirmative action was successfully put down once the truth was told. The challenge is before us to do the same with the concept of diversity. Don't expect UCLA leadership like Chancellor Albert Carnesale to admit diversity's fraudulence. Carnesale insists diversity is a complex concept which emphasizes the presence of students from varying "racial, ethnic, economic, social and geographic" backgrounds. Only occasionally do UCLA's diversity proponents go off message. Raymund Paredes, one-time UCLA vice-chancellor of academic development, admitted in 1999 that diversity "certainly includes affirmative action."[i] Paredes' candor belies Carnesale's insistence that diversity is about more than affirmative action's characteristic fixation and discrimination against the white male. Further evidence against Carnesale's claim of a "complex" diversity is found on the webpage of Carnesale's own Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Diversity. It complains, "UCLA's faculty is still overwhelmingly white (81%) and male (78%)."[ii] This black vs. white, us vs. them argumentation stands in stark contrast to Carnesale's cheery emphasis on a multifaceted, mainstream diversity. That's because at base, affirmative action then and diversity both make a scapegoat of the white male. The name has changed to "diversity," but the underlying motives of class and race war remain the same. Chancellor Albert Carnesale's rhetoric apes the illogical, Orwellian doublespeak of the UCLA diversity lobby. Carnesale presided over the inauguration of an entire website dedicated to the topic, Diversity@UCLA,[iii] and has given at least three public addresses specifically praising this philosophy. Carnesale's characteristically agreeable rhetoric masks the unstated racism of Diversity, its desire for managed outcomes, and the fact that at UCLA, the only diversity that matters - diversity of thought - does not matter at all. In his "Statement on Diversity," Carnesale posits that "Diversity of the student body has long been a hallmark of UCLA's excellence, and that diversity is essential to producing graduates who are capable of leading a multi-cultural society… Diversity -- including racial, ethnic, economic, social and geographic -- remains a core institutional value for UCLA and is particularly crucial to the success of this institution..."[iv] Carnesale also notes that "education is markedly enhanced by a diverse student body, largely because students learn so much from each other. Diversity of backgrounds, beliefs and experiences is among the most valuable of educational assets."[v] Carnesale sums up the mission of the Diversitistas: "Our challenge at UCLA in the post-affirmative action era is to make sure we sustain our tradition of excellence and diversity." Unstated in all of Carnesale's bloviation is that the presence of students from different "racial, ethnic, economic, social and geographic" backgrounds -- Carnesale's self-stated formulation of diversity -- does not a good education make. He is of course correct in stating that "students learn…from each other." But typical of diversity proponents, he confers a pedagogical rank on student interaction approaching that of the professor himself. It's unlikely that Carnesale really believes that student interaction is all that central in the totality of a university education. But it sounds nice. And it keeps him out of trouble with the diversity lobby. Chapter 2 The views of Diversitistas like Carnesale are echoed by students, faculty and staff. These voices, however, display a refreshing lack of finesse in disguising their racially-motivated goals. In a 2001 UCLA Daily Bruin article discussing low numbers of minority law school students, Gary Blasi, a clinical and public interest law professor, bemoaned the "harm [to] every white or Asian American student who is here because their education is without the benefit of the perspectives those now absent students once brought to classroom discussions."[i] In a Black History Month article, the African Student Union Sergeant at Arms Kelly Wynn expanded on this theme, arguing that a lack of diversity "not only affects students of color, it affects other students as well because they're not exposed to our perspective."[ii] The students and professors of UCLA commit the fatal mistake of letting race and gender serve as a proxy for intellectual contributions that actually do help students to learn from one another. The prototypical situation - whites learning from blacks learning from Hispanics learning from Asians - sounds eminently reasonable. And it's one of the reasons why diversity is so far winning the battle of public opinion. But the argument falls apart on closer inspection. The justice of favoring minority students in any way over majority students is sustained only if every minority student possesses a significant characteristic that not one majority student possesses. But what is this characteristic? Is it a background of poverty? A full 8% of white Californians and 9% of Asian Californians are living below the poverty line.[iii] So that doesn't work. Is it poor educational access? Thousands of "majority" students attend terrible public schools in every public school district throughout the state. But there must be something… Is it coming from a broken home? No, divorce, joblessness or domestic abuse are not unique to any one race or gender. By the time we identify characteristics that, say, all black students possess and no white students possess, we have descended into a group of physiognomic features. Even then, it must be a full set of ethnic traits -- curly hair, broad nose, full lips, and dark skin -- since Jews, Sri Lankans, Italians, or any other group or admixture thereof might share one or two of these attributes. In short, the Diversitistas will never identify a single substantial characteristic that will prove the justice of Diversity, because lauding the classroom contribution of hair kink or lip size is absurd on its face. The diversity movement is illogical and unjust, and ironically enough, derives a great amount of its success from exploiting politically incorrect assumptions by unthinking whites. However un-PC it may be, the Diversitistas benefit from the benign white misconception that blacks, Hispanics and other minorities really are all different, that they all have experienced something unique or foreign to whites. We know that radicals hate racial profiling -- which in its most objectionable form uses race as a proxy for individual characteristics like criminality. But as is their wont, this distaste for profiling is highly selective -- and deeply hypocritical. If a black man is pulled over in Beverly Hills because he probably doesn't live there, and might break the law, it's racism. But if a black man is accepted to UCLA because he probably overcame a background of poverty and might make a unique contribution to classroom discussions, why, that's justice. Chapter 3 Another primary -- and absurd -- justification given for Diversity is to avoid a situation in which a minority student might be one of only a handful of members of his race in a given classroom. As UCLA Professor Tyrone Howard told the black-oriented student newsmagazine Nommo in the Fall 2003 issue, Diversity might spare future students from the chamber of horrors he found in 1986 as a UC Irvine undergraduate: "It was a lecture class with about three hundred people, who [were] almost exclusively white. The only exceptions were another brother who sat far in the front of the class, and myself. We happened to catch eyes and without saying a word, we were able to communicate the message: I am going through the same thing. He ended up becoming one of my closest friends." Magical black telepathy aside, Howard's anecdote summarizes the repellent philosophy of Diversity proponents: don't be an individual, be scared of white skin, and only seek acquaintances and friendships within your own race. The Diversitistas' goal of ending scarring experiences like Howard's is unfortunately doomed to failure. In case the good professor wasn't aware, blacks have been and will continue to be a minority in California at 6.1% of the population. The question must then be: how many blacks would make Howard and his ilk comfortable? A perfectly proportional 18.3 out of the 300? 50 blacks? 100 blacks? Going through life with a psychological need for a critical mass of black colleagues is a recipe for constant disappointment. To soothe the rattled nerves of minority students, UCLA could create an on-call pool of Designated Minorities dispatched as needed to restore proper classroom racial balance. Or, UCLA professors like Howard could teach their students a bigger philosophy, the philosophy of the individual. Race relations, in their decrepit state, would be improved if every student learned to regard himself as an individual, not a skin color. Unfortunately, the philosophy of racial separatism dominates the psyche of minority students. Curt Young told the Daily Bruin in 2002 of "feel[ing] like a stranger in a strange land" at UCLA, and noted that "When we (blacks) see each other, it's like an event."[i] For the restive racial minorities who are the heart and soul of the radical student left, the lack of fellow minorities is not just disappointing, it verges on a hate crime. At a 1998 anti-209 law school protest, Nancy Freeman, one of seven African American students admitted in 1997, wept, "When I walk up the steps to this law school, this does not feel like a friendly place to me."[ii] Other undergraduates are more direct. In the September 24, 2001 Daily Bruin, Bryant Tan, that year's Academic Affairs commissioner in the undergraduate student government, spat, "Welcome to a university that masks in blue and gold a student body that is ill reflective of Los Angeles and California, a limited and culturally irrelevant education, and a continued unwelcome mat for underrepresented students." For the radical student left, a lack of faces the same color as theirs morphs from not simply dissatisfying to actively hostile. But the problem is not an issue of mats of any kind, welcome or unwelcome, but rather that we're providing entry of any kind to students of such massive intellectual immaturity. The radical minority even directs some of their racial hostility to a group of their own supporters -- white-guilt liberals who just want to feel their pain. As Lakesha Breeding noted in a 1998 Daily Bruin letter, "it is nice that some whites and Asians express an interest in minority issues, but until they have actually dealt with the racism firsthand and felt the isolation from walking around campus and finding only a few faces like theirs, they cannot truly contribute perspectives on minority issues."[iii] Breeding's philosophy, if applied to the Civil Rights Movement, would have led to the exclusion of Jews and other sympathetic whites -- and the certain failure of their just cause. Like most radical cant at UCLA, the idea that only minorities have standing to discuss minority issues has its roots in the Sixties; Breeding's in particular stem from the separatist Black Power movement. Hispanics also shamelessly advance this brand of separatism. Celia Lacayo, President of the Latin American Students Association in 2000, justified her support for racial preferences with the blunt statement, "UCLA puts out the leaders in this community, and the leaders should look like their constituency." The message is clear -- it's every ethnic group for itself. For the Diversitistas, even philosophical agreement does not trump the primacy of race. Chapter 4 The arguments surrounding diversity would be academic but for the fact that UCLA admissions are a zero-sum game. Or, as UC Regent Ward Connerly bluntly stated, "People do not understand that when they say there are not enough of those people that they are also saying they have too many of those (other) people." But even if we entertain this notion of demography dictating admissions, we find that the Diversitistas are again advancing a selective argument. They are pushing, as always, for the admission of more ethnic minorities. And it is true that if UCLA did "represent the diversity" of Los Angeles, blacks would rise from their 2004 undergraduate enrollment of 3.48% to 11.2%. Hispanics would receive a similar boost from their current 15.38% to 46.5%. But imagine for a second, the howls of protest that would accompany a secondary effect of this scheme: a massive increase in white admissions. To wit: School City % of Whites County % of Whites Undergrad % of Whites City % and County % drawn from 2000 Census Undergrad % drawn from 2004 University of California Office of the President report: http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/uwnews/stat/statsum/fall2004/statsumm2004.pdf The chart makes abundantly clear several facts: - Whites are underrepresented in every city and county context, and even state-wide. - The Diversitistas were wise to target UCLA with this argument, since the percentage gap between white city population and white school population is the smallest of all the UCs. But even here, whites are underrepresented by 42%. - If the University of California were to adopt the plan in question, it would require the acceptance of 37,591 more white undergraduates. Unstated along with the fact that demographically matched diversity would lead to a massive white influx, is who would be sacrificed on the altar of "representation": Asian students who are vastly overrepresented on every campus. In a track race, we don't start a successful sprinter later and later when he's winning. The burden of improvement is on the trailing runners. It is this philosophy -- not the absurd idea of representative admissions -- which should form the core of UCLA admissions policy. Rather than bemoaning the "overrepresentation" of Asian students, let us say more power to them, and may the best applicant win. Besides "reflecting Los Angeles," UCLA diversity proponents also make the specious argument that diversity's outcome, the classroom presence of students from different backgrounds, produces the benefit of teaching "majority" students how to relate with minorities in a peaceful, productive manner. There is no acknowledgement that basic human decency could possibly be an alternate source of teaching peaceful interracial relations. To the Diversitistas, we are poised on the precipice of a collegiate Lord of the Flies, saved only by racial homogeneity. Ironic for a political movement so deeply secular and dismissive of religion in any form, the Left has adopted the characteristically Christian precept of original sin. We are all born racists, their argument goes, and only through Diversity shall we be saved. Or as Reynaldo Macias, the former chairman of the UCLA Cesar Chavez Center for Chicana and Chicano Studies stated in 1999, "the value of diversity lies in being able to live in a society without conflict based on race, of which recent high school violence and random acts of terror have had their roots based in ethnic intolerance."[v] [sic] Daily Bruin columnist Mitra Ebadolahi hyperventilated on this theme in 2000, gasping, "If our university becomes racially homogenous, or reflective only of a particular class or personal background, our education suffers and our awareness of the experiences of others is profoundly hindered. Ignorance can breed uneasiness, fear and misunderstanding, which can lead to intolerance, oppression and, ultimately, violence."[vi] In other words, but for the grace of Diversity, UCLA could be the next Kosovo. The last, and most sourly amusing argument for diversity, is encapsulated by the comments of Marky Keaton, the only black male accepted to the UCLA Law School in the post-affirmative action admission year of 2001: "We want people to understand that this issue, the issue of a diverse student body at the law school, is one that affects actual living people. Every time that the law school doesn't enroll a diverse student body, that represents actual lives that are being affected. It's not just something in a scholarly paper. Those are students who are missing out on an opportunity -- actual human beings who are being affected."[vii] Keaton's views characterize the myopia and the stupendous egotism of the diversity movement. There were no lamentations or rending of clothing when affirmative action was rampaging through UCLA. "Majority" students who lost out to vastly lesser-qualified minority students were "actual living people," too. But no tears were shed on their behalf. After all, Keaton and his ilk were getting what they wanted -- a "diverse student body." As with most of the 'logic' which characterizes the diversity movement, the argument is a selective one. And like the scheme to engineer UCLA's racial composition to reflect Los Angeles, it is only meant to serve the underlying purpose of diversity: more for their groups and less for others. More tellingly, Keaton's ideas emphasize what "majority" students were, and are, to the Diversitistas -- un-persons, nobodies, not "actual living people." Chapter 5 Given the abundance of so many false diversities, UCLA's silence about intellectual diversity speaks volumes. Unlike racial, gender, economic, or geographic diversity, intellectual diversity is related to the actual goal of higher education -- ideas. It is also the one diversity that dare not speak its name. An exhaustive search for any mention of intellectual diversity at UCLA turns up few examples indeed. One of the few, the Diversity@UCLA "Statement on Diversity," insists "We are fundamentally committed to including and integrating within the campus community individuals from different groups as defined by such characteristics as race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic background, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, and intellectual outlook."[1] Unfortunately, these bold words have not been met by bold action. As documented in two exhaustive studies, UCLA, like most other elite schools in the country, is not intellectually diverse in general faculty composition[2], faculty hiring committees, or in representative choices like commencement speaker.[3] But UCLA's administration takes a hear no evil, speak no evil approach to this decay. Former Chancellor Charles E. Young claimed in his 1996 "Vision Statement" shortly before retirement, that "The social, ethnic, national, and intellectual diversity within the ranks of our students, faculty, and staff makes UCLA one of the most diverse major research university in the nation."[4] Current Chancellor Albert Carnesale is similarly blind to the truth. Author Ajay Singh, in the Winter 2004 issue of UCLA Magazine, summarized Carnesale's contention that UCLA "prides itself on its role -- one that is essential to all public universities -- as a venue for the free exchange of ideas representing the full spectrum of political, societal and cultural thought."[5] Any conservative student could attest to the free exchange of liberal ideas among a 93% Democrat-affiliated faculty. But Carnesale is only correct about a "full spectrum," if the range to which he refers runs from center-left to Marxist. More hypocritical by far is that in the article, Carnesale then "notes that UCLA has hosted speakers ranging from filmmaker Michael Moore on the left to former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett on the right."[6] Michael Moore, the notorious left-wing hackteur, appeared at UCLA in 2004, and received thousands of dollars of mandatory student fees from the Campus Events Commission (part of the undergraduate student government). CEC Staff member Donovan Daughtry responded to charges of partisanship by claiming "We've tried to program with conservative speakers in the past. It's not as interesting to the campus community."[7] Whatever community disinterest Daughtry gauged did not come from actually hosting a conservative speaker -- student government has not aided such an effort for at least six years. But Daughtry's dismissive attitude does mirror Carnesale's more artful deception, his claim that UCLA "hosted" William Bennett. In 2003, William Bennett's Americans for Victory Over Terrorism organization organized a national series of teach-ins. As the then-chairman of the Bruin Republicans, I was delighted to host the series' UCLA stop. What followed was an amazing event, featuring not only Bennett but L. Paul Bremer, and R. James Woolsey. Woolsey was rumored that day to become the Presidential Envoy to Iraq; in the end, Bremer received the position. Even more amazing was the total lack of institutional support from UCLA. No undergraduate student fees provided honoraria -- all participants spoke for free. Nor did UCLA even completely cover venue rental or advertising costs; AVOT shouldered significant costs on both. No significant UCLA administration figure attended the event; there were no proclamations or warm congratulations for any of the speakers or the Bruin Republicans. Carnesale himself evinced no pleasure or even notice of the event. In short, "UCLA" did nothing to host this influential group of conservatives. This, as well as any example, sums up UCLA's approach to issues like intellectual diversity -- deny the obvious, do nothing unless forced, and when history is written, claim cooperation with the ideas and groups you ignored or resisted. Despite Diversity's manifold flaws, it has been enshrined at UCLA, becoming a regular -- if intellectually bankrupt -- part of daily life. A high priest of Diversity, the Executive Chancellor on Diversity, oversees the worship by entire administrative groups - the Chancellor's Committee on Diversity, the Academic Senate's Committee on Diversity and Equal Opportunity, and the UCLA Library's Committee on Diversity. Even alumni cannot escape the tentacles of diversity -- the UCLA Alumni Association boasts a Diversity/Outreach Council. The pervasive nature of diversity is testament to its success. But despite its success, diversity exists only by deception. For now, the public believes that diversity is another name for equal opportunity and the presence of a diverse set of participants in any competitive setting. At the point that the truth gets out -- that diversity pursues popular goals through immoral methods -- there will be another Proposition 209 moment in California -- and hopefully elsewhere. http://www.bruinalumni.com/pics/tonyvillarucla.jpg Antonio Villaraigosa (then, Tony Villar) leading a protest to include the Communist organization "Committee to Free Los Tres" on the Steering Committee of the Chicano Studies Center. UCLA campus, May 23, 1974. Chapter 1 Antonio Villaraigosa, a one-time juvenile delinquent still tattooed with the slogan "Born to Raise Hell," entered the UCLA campus as a transfer student from East Los Angeles Community College in 1972. Known then simply as Tony Villar, he would not successfully graduate by the time he left in 1975.(1) But Villar did leave a wide swath of influence in other, more radical ways. While on campus, Villar joined the UCLA chapter of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA), and was part of its leadership by 1974. MEChA had only been founded as a regional movement in 1969, and in many ways, the UCLA chapter, and the radical Chicano student left today, is a direct product of Villar's work then. Fellow MEChA alumni from the period remember Villaraigosa's exploits well: Chavez underemphasizes what young Tony Villar did on the UCLA campus. Archives from the campus newspaper The Daily Bruin of 1974 have revealed that Villar led a campaign to ensure an advisory role in the UCLA Chicano Studies Center for a communist Chicano community group, and successfully engineered the dismissal of the Chicano director of the Center who stood in the way of this goal. As first reported May 9, 1974, a group of approximately 50 Chicano students (out of the 1,500 with Hispanic surnames on campus at that time) called on the Chicano Studies Center Director Rudolfo 'Rudy' Alvarez to resign from his post. Villar accused Alvarez of "trying to alter the concept behind Chicano studies." The article paraphrased Villar's further accusation "that the center has drifted away from its initial direction of research conducted in conjunction with the community." After the protest by the group of students, the Bruin further reported: Not content with petty vandalism, Villar's group engineered, with the cooperation of a like-minded staff, a shut-down of the Center with the stated threat that it would not to end until Alvarez resigned.(2) But it is the article from June 25, 1974(3) that explains the real roots of the controversy and shows the true agenda that belied Villar's posturing about Alvarez's supposed "lack of leadership and incapability as an administrator."(4) The Daily Bruin on that date reported that "Chicano students are considering filing a class action suit against Rodolfo Alvarez, Chicano Studies Center (CSC) director, according to student leader Raoul Garcia. "Students criticized Alvarez' mishandling of the Steering Committee in 1973. "Where at one time the Steering Committee composed of students, faculty, and community people was the policy making body of the Center, now Rudy is its sole dictator," said Tony Villar, another leader in the movement against Alvarez. "Both Villar and Garcia attacked the Alvarez-directed CSC for working only with government-sponsored drug programs "instead of community organizations like the National Committee to Free Los Tres."" The "National Committee to Free Los Tres," it must be understood, was a Los Angeles group created by former MEChistas to defend three members of the militant Chicano organization Casa Carnalismo who were convicted of assaulting a federal narcotics officer posing as a drug dealer in East Los Angeles. Even more telling about this "community organization" that Villar favored is that by 1974, a Marxist-Leninist faction emerged within the NCFLT seeking to deemphasize the social-service aspect of the organization, and hoping to transform its parent group Casa Carnalismo into a "revolutionary vanguard" dedicated to the "liberation of the Mexican people."(5) In a direct and unmistakable way, Villar was advocating for nothing less than a Communist place at the table within UCLA's Chicano Studies Center. The Bruin ended the story with a final quote from Villar: The term "relevant education" is Orwellian code used by minority political activists to describe their vision of a network of non-academic interests that both feed from, and direct, the university. The ideal network includes, but is not limited to, labor unions, minority racial affiliation groups, and members of the public taking direct action to aggregate political power. Stripping away Villar's self-justification about 'relevant education,' it becomes clear that the fight was a proxy power grab by militant Chicano organizations. Their goal: to turn an academic unit at a proud university into a mere ideological factory to support and undergird a drive for exclusive minority power accumulation. Villar was ultimately successful in his fight for his vision for a relevant education. On July 19, 1974, the Daily Bruin announced in a brief notice that Professor Alvarez had resigned from his directorship following internal private deliberations with higher administration figures. Villar's goals, and the actions which made it possible, are instructive in understanding the man who desires to be the next mayor of Los Angeles. Not only did Villar himself harbor radical ambitions, he proved willing to destroy both an innocent man and a fellow Chicano by turning his staff, his students, and eventually, his employer, against him. Chapter 2 For a youth who displayed such ambition and achieved such lofty goals -- removing a UCLA professor who would not, under his directorship, subsume the Chicano Studies Center to the cause of Chicano radicalism -- Antonio Villaraigosa has shown surprisingly little interest in talking about his time as a UCLA MEChA leader. In a comprehensive search of every major news database, even passing references to Villaraigosa's affiliation with this radical, violent and separatist organization are few and far between. Direct acknowledgement of his association is almost nil. More instructive about Villaraigosa's acceptance of the goals and philosophies of MEChA are his public affiliations with MEChA and student radicals at UCLA. Most significant would be his appearance on April 12, 1998 at the MEChA National Convention, held that year on the UCLA campus. MEChA held a banquet that night honoring, among others, Sal Castro, organizer of the East Los Angeles School Blowouts of 1968, and featured a speech from Villaraigosa, then the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Villaraigosa also came to the UCLA campus and spoke glowingly about the actions of student radicals (including many MEChA members) the very night that they shut down a 2001 Los Angeles mayoral debate at Royce Hall. Villaraigosa also spoke personally to the radicals, blasting the University of California anti-preference statutes SP-1 and SP-2: "This is not Mississippi in 1960; this is not Alabama! This is California, the golden state; people from every corner of the world come here to realize the American Dream." Villaraigosa's strong feelings about racial preferences are not just the product of a fevered mind that viewed a Communist Chicano splinter group as a reasonable community partner, but a matter of bald self-interest as well. While speaking to those students, Villaraigosa also admitted that as an affirmative action admit to UCLA, "some people have said I got in through the back door, but I left through the front." What Villaraigosa failed to mention is that he left campus in 1975 to take a job and didn't meander back to any graduation doors, front or back, until many years later.[3] Those who benefit from an unequal system usually have the most interest in preserving that inequality. The rabid beneficiaries of affirmative action like Villaraigosa are prime examples of this maxim. Chapter 3 The UCLA Chicana and Chicano Studies Department, and its associated Cesar E. Chavez Interdisciplinary Studies Center, today bears the mark of Villar's "by any means necessary" philosophy. The Chicano Studies Department, upgraded from interdepartmental status just this year, is the outgrowth of the Chavez Interdisciplinary Studies Center, itself the 1993 creation of radical direct action, Hispanic community pressure and the gutless then-Chancellor Charles E. Young. The cause of creating a Chicano studies major at UCLA had been an ongoing one since the late '60s, and started innocently enough with the Chicano Studies Center that Villar found not radical enough for his liking in 1974. Much as it was in that year, the events of 1993 epitomized the bullying tactics of Chicano radicals in their cause of establishing a narrowly exclusive minority-interest major at UCLA. In April 1993, Chancellor Young rejected student demands that the Chicano Studies Program be given departmental status. The announcement, in an example of incredibly in-fortuitous timing, came on the eve of Cesar Chavez's funeral. The Chicano students and MEChA members who had been leading the campaign for departmental status responded by occupying and laying waste to the Faculty Center on May 11, 1993, causing between $35,000 and $50,000 in damage. The president of the non-ideological, private Faculty Center noted that protestors "smashed windows within a few feet of our [occupied] lunch tables…rifled a purse, stole a wallet and tossed car keys in a toilet. Walls were defaced, honorary plaques [were] cut."[1] 91 Chicano radicals, half of them not even students, were arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department.[2] Bad enough was that 84 of the radicals were let go within days of the incident. Worse yet was that supporters of the remaining seven that still faced stronger vandalism charges, were allowed to donate two works by Chicano artists "Gronk" and "Elo," (alleged combined value of $25,000), as compensation for the riot damage. Gronk's "The Mug," was even hung at the very scene of the crime, the UCLA Faculty Center, as a final insult from the radical Chicanos.[3] The student radicals were emboldened by their successes in trashing the school with impunity, but still smarting from the rejection by Young. On May 25, 1993, a group of nine Chicanos (including seven students) initiated what would eventually be a 14-day hunger strike. Two UCLA students, Marcos Aguilar and Balvina Collazo, and one high school student, Norma Montanez, adopted Azteco-babble names; respectively, Huitzilixtlitiu, Chitlichicoshayotl, and Ixtlapapayotl. The nine, which included an assistant professor from the medical school, rallied to their cause nearly every Chicano-interest activist and politician. Then-State Senator Art Torres (later to become chair of the California Democratic Party) threatened to withhold state funding unless demands were met. Cesar Chavez's son Fernando led a rally of Chicano students on June 3, 1993 supporting the hunger strikers. And in an evolution that would have warmed Tony Villar's radical heart, UCLA MEChista Gil Cedillo, and Chicano radicals Vivien Bonzo and Juan Jose Gutierrez, came together to lead a "United Community and Labor Alliance," that agitated for departmental status. Even old-time white radical Tom Hayden, then a State Senator from Santa Monica, threw his lot in with the mob. Not surprisingly for a man who built a long legacy of favoring student radicals on campus and opposing racial neutrality in UC policy, Chancellor Young quickly wilted under the pressure, signing a Hunger Strike Agreement. This agreement was a victory for special interest racial affiliation groups, and was a victory for the philosophy introduced by Tony Villar twenty years before: that Chicano Studies be 'relevant' to the community at large. Of special note was the involvement of the UCLA MEChA alum Gil Cedillo's "United Community and Labor Alliance," which established (though not for the first or last time) that UCLA academics would be converted by pressure groups into an ideological assembly line for labor and minority political interests. Education and dispassionate inquiry were out -- 'relevance' was in. The creation of the Interdisciplinary Center via the Hunger Strike Agreement was done with the further proviso that when "the evolution and the experience of the center for interdisciplinary instruction warrant[s] it, departmentalization will once again be on the table."[4] With this principle, full departmental status, and a realization of a 'relevant' department acting as an ideological factory for the radical Chicano movement, became a fait accompli. The path was clear, in that, barring a melt-down of the Center, full victory was only a matter of time. Thus it was that in 2005, many long years removed from the tumult of 1993, Villar's vision was fulfilled. Unfortunately for Californians, there will be for the foreseeable future, a radical Chicano fox in our university's hen house. And alumni like Antonio Villaraigosa and Gil Cedillo, who disguise radicalism with suits and smiles, will issue forth into the public, pursuing the MEChA agenda. An "affirmative action baby"[5] and a radical Chicano, Antonio Villaraigosa has charmed his way into power, and now seeks to become the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since the 19th century. But will Villaraigosa win if voters understand that the one-time Tony Villar is an unreconstructed MEChista, dedicated to the goals of Aztlan liberation, whose radical past at UCLA informs his thoughts and actions today? We will know soon enough: Election Day is May 17, 2005. Understanding MEChA - Introduction Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or MEChA, is a Chicano group that has chapters at both the high school and college level. These chapters are most heavily concentrated in predominantly Latino areas, especially in the Southwestern United States, but are found in other areas as well. MEChistas from Cruz Bustamante to Antonio Villaraigosa have dismissed their membership in the organization by characterizing it as the equivalent of a Chicano Rotary club. While MEChA does indeed pursue community service, the founding documents of MEChA make it very clear that it is community service with only one recipient -- Chicanos. Unfortunately, the same founding documents of MEChA (Philosophy of MEChA in particular), also reveal that membership in MEChA requires acceptance, belief and action for MEChA goals like the "liberation of Aztlan [the Southwestern United States]." Furthermore, every chapter, including MEChA de UCLA, was and is required to hold discussions and introduce new members to the uniformly radical historical documents of MEChA. Thus, by their own peculiar bylaws it becomes clear that MEChista alumni are lying when they claim ignorance on the topic of the following three racist documents: El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan El Plan is, to be brief, a racist, seditionist and treasonous document. To wit: Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada." [For those of the Hispanic race, everything. For those outside the Hispanic race, nothing.] Under Organizational Goals, El Plan Espiritual continues: "economic control of our lives and our communities can only come about by driving the exploiter out of our communities, our pueblos and our lands. … Lands rightfully ours will be fought for and defended." Under the "Self-Defense" section, El Plan Espiritual proclaims "For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts." El Plan Espiritual finishes "El Plan de Aztlan is the plan of liberation!" The Philosophy of MEChA sums up the goals out El Plan Espiritual thusly: "1) We are Chicanas and Chicanos of Aztlán reclaiming the land of our birth (Chicana/Chicano Nation); 2) Aztlán belongs to indigenous people, who are sovereign and not subject to a foreign culture; 3) We are a union of free pueblos forming a bronze (Chicana/Chicano) Nation." This is not poetic license. This is not ethnic pride. This is a declaration of war. El Plan de Santa Barbara El Plan de Santa Barbara El Plan de Santa Barbara is a more prosaic document but still radical in its view and intolerance for dissent, as seen in the declaration that "The Mexican American or Hispanic is a person who lacks self-respect and pride in one's ethnic and cultural background." In discussing sympathetic administrators within the campus community, EPSB warns that "students must constantly remind the Chicano administrators and faculty where their loyalty and allegiance lie." EPSB also condemns Chicanos who have been willing to work within the structure of the university, noting "Too often in the past the dedicated pushed for a program only to have a vendido sharp-talker come in and take over and start working for his Anglo administrator." "Vendido," of course, is the Spanish slur meaning "sell-out," and was used by Tony Villar against Chicano Studies Director Rudy Alvarez in 1974. It is in the section titled "Tying the campus to the barrio," that gives context for Tony Villar's demands for a "relevant education." The section reads in part, "The colleges and universities in the past have existed in an aura of omnipotence and infallibility. It is time that they be made responsible and responsive to the communities in which they are located or whose member they serve. As has already been mentioned, community members should serve on all program related to Chicano interests." Expanding on this theme, EPSB declares: "The idea must be made clear to the people of the barrio that they own the schools and all their resources are at their disposal." The section concludes with the understated analysis, almost as if discussing a business plan, that the use of school resources by the barrio "is an area which has great potential." The Philosophy of Aztlan /Understanding MEChA - Philosophy of MEChA The Philosophy of MEChA contains many valuable insights into the mindset of the founders and the MEChistas, past and present, who abide by its precepts. Philosophy explains that "Chicanismo involves a personal decision to reject assimilation and work towards the preservation of our cultural heritage." This rejection of assimilation, among the supposed "descendants of El Quinto Sol" extends to any Hispanic who simply wants to be an individual. They are derided as "corporate Hispanics." True MEChistas, by contrast, are to undertake a struggle for the "liberation of Aztlan." The means by which this goal would be pursued are various, but by Philosophy's specific reference to both El Plan Espiritual and EPSB, one can safely assume that the means would include cooptation of the university for "community purposes" -- the very goals young Tony Villar pursued in 1974. Also notable is the stark statement deep within the pages of Philosophy that, while there is a general lack of uniformity from club to club, general standards do include the requirement that: "General membership shall consist of any student who accepts, believes, and works for the goals and objectives of M.E.Ch.A. including the liberation of Aztlán" The first requirement for affiliation is that the chapter "Orient all members by discussing and reading historical documents of our movement including El Plan de Santa Barbara, El Plan de Aztlán and the Philosophy of M.E.Ch.A." As noted in the introduction, these two statements prove that any MEChista alumni who refuses to renounce his or her past associations by claiming ignorance or non-involvement with radical elements within MEChA are quite simply lying: they are radicals by definition. http://www.bruinalumni.com/articles/zeitlin.html By Andrew Jones In Monday's UCLA Daily Bruin article about the Bruin Alumni Association, a number of outrageous criticisms were leveled at the BAA by faculty radicals. The most usual of the usual suspects, Sociology professor Maurice Zeitlin, made the laughable claim that I or other concerned Bruin alumni don't have a "shred of evidence anywhere about the suppression" of conservative voices at UCLA. Not a shred, Maurice? What about my personal experience with the Executive Director of the Southern California ACLU, Ramona Ripston? (http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=23206) What about the 12-1 ratio of Democrat to Republican professors in the UCLA departments of Economics, English, History, Philosophy, Political Science and Sociology? (http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/reports/lackdiversity.html) And if Maurice wants to talk literally about 'voices' -- well, in the past 10 years (1994-2003), UCLA has not featured a single conservative or Republican speaker at a graduation ceremony. (http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=16464) And that's out of 39 speakers (the high number accounts for the fact that UCLA, from 1994-2001, had separate speakers at every single Letters and Science division). Surely, if UCLA were so scrupulously evenhanded, we would find a conservative or Republican somewhere in that group. I could go on like this, but ultimately, I have to admit that Maurice is right. It's true that I don't have a "shred of evidence." I've got reams of it. The "who me?" rhetoric from Zeitlin is not all that surprising. As conservative legend David Horowitz revealed in 2003, Zeitlin is not just your garden variety white-guilt liberal. Horowitz, Zeitlin, and LA Times columnist Robert Scheer founded in 1960 the first journal of the New Left, titled Root and Branch. That first issue featured Zeitlin's interview with the blood-soaked revolutionary Che Guevara. As Horowitz tells it: In 1960, long before the creation of Ramparts, Zeitlin had visited Cuba and interviewed Che Guevara, who was then the second most powerful man in the dictatorship. We published the interview in the first issue of our Berkeley magazine, Root and Branch, which one of the political journals that launched the new left (Robert Scheer was also an editor). The rest of us were both shocked and impressed when we read the interview and realized what Maurice had done. He had not just interviewed Guevara, already a radical legend. He had challenged Guevara's policies and in effect called into question his revolutionary credentials. Maurice had asked Guevara about the role he thought the trade unions should play in a socialist country, specifically Cuba. Should they be independent - as new left socialists like us wanted - or would they be appendages of the state, as Lenin and Stalin had made them? Maurice reminded Guevara that the elimination of independent unions, the organizations after all of the revolutionary class, had paved the way for the Soviet gulag. Guevara was angered by the question and by Maurice's temerity in raising the question, would not criticize the Soviets and abruptly changed the subject. Zeitlin had put Guevara to the test and Guevara had failed. The interview revealed that Guevara was a Stalinist himself. We all recognized the significance of what he had said. Yet to our shame, we continued to support the Cuban regime anyway, knowing that it was destined to be a totalitarian gulag - because that was the intention of its creators. Maurice did write a subsequent critique for Ramparts. But like us, he continued to support the regime and to attack the United States and its efforts to restore freedom to Cuba. Later, when I had second thoughts about my political commitments and left the political left and comrades like Maurice Zeitlin, I wrote about my regrets for defending a regime that has become the most sadistic dictatorship in Latin American history. Except for Ronald Radosh and other "second thoughters" who have also turned their backs on the left, I don't know of any new radicals who have done the same. Zeitlin has no regrets about his support for Fidel Castro, Che Geuvara, and the other socialist revolutionaries who ensured that for nearly half a century, Cuba has remained an island prison. Indeed, Zeitlin, at a 1997 academic conference, proclaimed Guevara "a leader of the first socialist revolution in this hemisphere," and that Guevara's "legacy is embodied in the fact that Cuban revolution is alive today despite the collapse of the Soviet bloc." Completing his endorsement, Zeitlin declared, "No social justice is possible without a vision like Che's." It is this "revolutionary spirit" which sends radicals like Zeitlin on contradictory flights of rhetorical fancy. The revolution which would sweep in this long-desired age of "social justice" would also result in the slaughter, as it always has, of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie -- of which college professors are most certainly a part. Zeitlin would do well to remember the old saying about getting what you wish for. Zeitlin is a man of contradictions. The underlying incongruity between Zeitlin's social vision and the inevitable outcome should that vision be realized, is one such example. Just as illustrative is the dissonance between his status as an American, and his hatred for this country. Because of this country's religious and political tolerance, and generous taxpayer funding for the University of California system, Zeitlin has achieved a rare level of material comfort and professional success. But that's not enough. And it never will be. Because with radicals like Zeitlin, the greater their success, the greater the feelings of inadequacy. All of this points directly to a new area of sociological study, one in which Zeitlin could play both doctor and patient: investigating political radicals' irrational hatred of America, and the psychological disturbance underpinning that loathing. http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=16464 A Report of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture Study of Bias in the Selection of Commencement Speakers at 32 Elite Colleges and Universities Executive Summary (David Horowitz) This study of the selection of commencement speakers [1] is intended to supplement the Study of Political Bias in the Administration and to provide an independent measure of its accuracy. In this case we were able to assign an identity to all the subjects with a political profile. The results are, in fact, even more imbalanced than what we discovered in our more imperfect inquiry into the political views of faculty and administrators. The ratio of commencement speakers on the left and right was 226-15, a ratio of over 15-1. Removing the three schools that featured multiple speakers every year, the count of 172-15 still almost perfectly mirrors the similar 10-1 ratio we observed with faculty political alignment. The position of Commencement Speaker is a high honorific and the individuals chosen are generally regarded as role models for each graduating class, reflecting values that students are encouraged to emulate. The occasion -- the passage of students into society as a new generation of potential leaders -- makes the selection of these individuals an important statement by the selection committee as to what that leadership should entail. For these reasons, we believe that the selection of commencement speakers is a good index of the preferences of the institutions themselves. For each of the thirty-two schools we acquired lists of the last ten commencement speakers and identified them using five categories: Liberal, Democrat, Conservative, Republican and No (Public) Political or Partisan Identification. The last category is important since some commencement speakers are leaders in scientific, charitable and civic fields that are not partisan in nature. In conducting our study we felt it was the public identities of speakers that were important for our purposes and not the fact that they may have cast a secret ballot for one political party or another. Molly Ivins and George Will -- writers about political issues from opposite sides of the spectrum -- are thus identified as "liberal" and "conservative" rather than "Democrat" and "Republican." Actors like Alan Alda, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Cosby and Danny Glover who publicly associate themselves with liberal causes are identified as liberals. Summary of Results [1] Researched by Andrew Jones. Total schools surveyed: 32 (See above link if you're interested in detailed breakdown of the above). Amherst Bates Bowdoin Brandeis Brown Bryn Mawr Cal Tech Carnegie Mellon University of Chicago Colgate Columbia Cornell Dartmouth Duke Harvard Haverford MIT Northwestern Oberlin Pennsylvania Princeton Smith Stanford Swarthmore Tufts UC Berkeley UCLA Wellesley Wesleyan Williams Yale http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/1898/lackdiversity.html This report on political bias at 32 elite colleges and universities is the third in a series conducted by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and researched by Andrew Jones. Methodology The Center generated a list of 32 elite colleges and universities. We included the entire Ivy League, premier liberal arts colleges like Amherst and Pomona, well-known technically-oriented universities like MIT, highly competitive public institutions like the University of California at Berkeley, and other elite private universities like Stanford. We compiled lists of tenured or tenure-track professors of the Economics, English, History, Philosophy, Political Science and Sociology departments - choosing these because they teach courses focusing on issues affecting the society at large. We compared these lists to the voter registration lists of the counties or states in which the colleges were located, and attempted to match individual names. The quality of our data varied. Not all faculty are registered to vote and not all reside in the county or even state which we searched. The political affiliation of these individuals was therefore not accessible. In other cases there was more than one individual with the same name, again making a positive identification impossible In some places, the Center was able to identify most professors; at others, only a minority were positively identified. The figures contained in this report are indicators of a problem; they make no claim to definitively identify that problem. This would only be possible with greater resources than are available to the Center or with the cooperation of the institutions themselves. We selected party registration for our study because other indices of bias would be highly subjective. The meanings of "liberal" and "conservative" are notoriously indeterminate, reflecting as much the prejudices of the cataloguer as they would the preferences of those being studied. Although the terms "Republican" and "Democrat" may seem inappropriate in the context of academic pursuits, they have the advantage of reflecting the self-identifications of the individuals under scrutiny and they are clearly identifiable. Moreover the terms "Republican" and "Democrat" can reasonably be said to reflect a predictable spectrum of assumptions, views and values that affect the outlooks of Americans who finance, attend, administer and teach at these educational institutions. This is why we chose them. It is not our intention to suggest that there should be quotas based on party affiliation in the hiring process at universities. Rather it is our purpose to discover whether there is a grossly unbalanced, politically shaped selection process in the hiring of college faculty. While recognizing the limitations imposed on our study, we believe the figures recorded in this report make a prima facie case that there is. Summary of Results In our examinations of over 150 departments and upper-level administrations at 32 elite colleges and universities, the Center found the following: •The overall ratio of Democrats to Republicans we were able to identify at the 32 schools was more than 10 to 1 (1397 Democrats, 134 Republicans). At other schools we found these representations of registered faculty Democrats to Republicans: At no less than four elite schools we could not identify a single Republican on the faculty: Faculty registration is just as unbalanced at major research universities as it is at small colleges. At Columbia University, the Center could identify only 6 faculty Republicans. The Center could not locate a single Republican in the history, political science, and sociology departments. Cornell University was just as left-leaning: the departments of English and history were entirely devoid of registered Republicans. Administrators lean just as far to the left: at schools like the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Melon, and Cornell, we could not identify a single Republican administrator. In the entire Ivy League, we identified only 3 Republican administrators. Conclusion These figures suggest that most students probably graduate without ever having a class taught by a professor with a conservative viewpoint. The ratios themselves are impossible to understand in the absence of a political bias in the training and hiring of college instructors. They strongly suggest that the governance of American universities has fallen into the hands of a self-perpetuating political and cultural subset of the general population, which seems intent on perpetuating its control. This is an unhealthy development for the both the educational enterprise and the democracy itself. Without further investigation it is not possible to establish with any degree of certainty why this state of affairs has come into existence, but there are many obvious factors that may be said to have contributed to it. Among them is the very exclusion of conservatives from faculty and administrative positions itself. This in itself creates a hostile environment for conservative students contemplating an academic career. This core hostility is amplified by practices that have been incorporated into academic life in the last several decades, including campus speech codes and politicized classrooms - both which represent radical departures from the pre-Sixties academic environment. A comprehensive study by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (available at www.speechcodes.org ) found that over 90 percent of well-known college campuses have speech codes intended to ban and punish politically incorrect, almost always conservative, speech. (Cases available at www.thefire.org.) Student testimonies about in-classroom political indoctrination are available at www.noindoctrination.org. The impression that conservative values and ideas aren't welcome on campus is driven home daily to students until it becomes second nature. Professors generally do not grade politically, but a large enough percentage do that students - and not just conservative students - will take the prudent course of concealing what they actually think in order to protect their academic standing. This is obviously at odds with the educational mission of the university but academic authorities have done little to address the abuse. All these factors exert a negative influence on the choices a conservative student might make about pursuing an intellectual career. But of all these factors the lack of conservative professors is the most significant. It serves to reduce the ability of the best and brightest conservative students to pursue graduate study even when they want to. Nearly all distinguished doctoral programs rely on matching students with professors who have compatible interests. A student interested in pursuing a Ph.D. based on his or her interest in Austrian school economics, traditionalist literary criticism, conservative historiography or religious poetry will have a difficult time finding a professor who wants to take her on. In the social sciences, Marxists have an infinitely easier time finding good mentors than Hayekians or Straussians. The lack of conservative professors provides a ready-made excuse (professors don't even think of it that way) for rejecting doctoral program applications for conservative students with stellar grades, recommendations, and standardized test scores. For those conservatives who earn the doctoral "union card" necessary to teach at a major research university, a second obstacle awaits: hiring and tenure committees, which are stacked with their ideological and political adversaries. A number of high profile cases have occurred recently in which conservative scholars with significant records of publishing have performed according to the book and still ended up out of work. The entire process of training graduate students, qualifying Ph.D. recipients, hiring junior faculty and granting tenure is hierarchical, arbitrary, closed to public scrutiny and designed to produce intellectual conformity in the best circumstances. Therefore special concern would be required to ensure that there are protections for students' academic freedom and for intellectual diversity. Unfortunately, in the present institutional framework no such protections exist. We believe a remedy for this problematic situation would be for universities and state legislatures to adopt an Academic Bill of Rights stressing the importance of intellectual diversity to the goal of academic freedom, and making this goal an integral part of educational policy. We are attaching a copy of our suggested draft for such a Bill of Rights to this report. When Ezra Cornell founded the institution that bears his name he said: "I would found an institution, where any person can find instruction in any study." American universities do not fulfill that promise when they cater to only half the population and fail to provide protections and adequate representation for the other. Presently, conservative viewpoints and values are under-represented in the academic curriculum, and conservatives themselves are relegated to second-class citizenship. While nearly all university administrations devote extraordinary resources to defend the principle of diversity in regard to race and gender, none can be said to have shown interest in the diversity of ideas. This bias has created a situation that is unworthy of the academic enterprise and unhealthy for the democracy that supports it, and in serious need of reform. Data: Total Schools Surveyed: 32 Amherst Bates Bowdoin Brandeis Brown Bryn Mawr Cal Tech Carnegie Mellon Chicago Colgate Columbia Cornell Dartmouth Davidson Duke Harvard Haverford MIT Northwestern Oberlin Pennsylvania Princeton Smith Stanford Swarthmore Tufts UC Berkeley UCLA Wellesley Wesleyan Williams Yale http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/167/Mickey082803.html Last spring as the semester was winding to a close, the University of Missouri College Republicans hosted New York Times' best-selling author David Horowitz. His appearance spurred controversy on campus. Professor Miriam Golomb accused Mr. Horowitz of being a racist. Students alleged that she offered to give additional bonus points to protest Horowitz's speech. When uproar over the alleged extra points for protesting occurred, professors came to her rescue. Instead of questioning her actions in a "Genetics and Society" class on accusing Horowitz of being a racist, people like Charles N. Davis, Chairman of the School of Journalism at MU, questioned the students. Davis implied in his article that the conservative students who have hosted Horowitz were racists, too, and suggested facetiously that the students invite former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke to campus. Not content to ridicule MU students, Davis insulted other conservative speakers, calling Ann Coulter the "world-renowned bigot and Islamaphobe" and Reagan biographer Dinesh D'Souza a "white victomologist." Journalism professor Davis showed a poor example to would-be reporters by making several fact errors in his diatribe and failing to offer any argument other than personal attack. Davis stated that Coulter had been fired from the "pretty-darned conservative New Republic." Wrong. First, the New Republic is not conservative; and, second, she had been fired from National Review. One also wonders why Dinesh D'Souza would be a "white victomologist" when he is of Indian decent. Not only this, but he hasn't spoken at MU within the last year. It seems odd that a university that wouldn't let anchors at the university television station wear American flags because it didn't want to appear as partial to a political persuasion, yet here is a journalism professor blithely implying that conservative students are racists. Why were the conservative students at the University of Missouri not ever defended by a professor on campus? It is either because there are few conservative professors at MU or the ones who are conservatives have been intimidated to not voicing their opinion. The only thing that conservative students can do anymore to have their side of the debate heard is to turn to national conservative organizations like Young America's Foundation. Unfortunately, last spring's episode was just one of a series of examples of bashing against conservatives and their ideals on the MU campus. Between canceling exams in lieu of protests or faculty organizing "teach-ins," the bias against conservatives is the real struggle on campus today. However, MU isn't alone in its flood of liberal propaganda to indoctrinate the next army of young socialists. Ohio University threatened to dismiss students from the university after painting "offensive" language on the communal wall where student organizations paint announcements for upcoming events. The "offensive" comments were only in response to a graphic display of the female anatomy to announce the upcoming "Vagina Monologues." All of this occurred during sibling weekend where the mostly younger brothers and sisters of current students visited the campus. A personal friend of mine is currently in a battle with Cal Poly University over his free speech rights. Steve Hinkle, president of the Cal Poly College Republicans, is currently dealing with a pending case of "disruption" when he was denied posting a flier in the public lounge of the Multi-Cultural Center. The students refused to let him post the flier because they viewed it as "offensive" and proceeded to call the police on him. He willingly left the lounge, yet was still charged with disruption even though the police report states nothing about disruption. It only states that "a suspicious white male was posting material of an offensive racial nature." Students at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill are fighting back. They've organized a group to question the university and its policies like requiring freshman to read Nickled and Dimed, a book about low-wage earners. The university conducted a study on the persecution of the gay student population, and now the conservatives are demanding a similar study be conducted for the conservative students. This is the kind of action that needs to be taken by students. Conservative students across the country shouldn't roll over and say, "Well, this is just how it is in academia." There needs to be a fight. Conservatives are fighting the good fight. All we are asking for from liberal administrators and professors is for the university to be a marketplace of ideas, and to stop censoring and intimidating conservative students. Conservatives are by no means asking to censor professors and usurp their free speech rights; however, conservatives deserve equal representation. America's college campuses need equal representation in the true sense - in diversity of thoughts and ideas. Conservatives professors are the real minority on college campuses. The bottom line becomes this. In a state where the Republicans control the House and Senate, why are Missourians' children being taught ideas that directly contradict what they've been taught at home? If there is going to be a plethora of liberal professors who share their opinions in class, there should be an equal amount of conservative professors willing to do the same. It is one thing to represent both sides of a debate and let students decide for themselves, but professors are accusing conservatives of being racist--an unacceptable state of affairs. This is precisely what is wrong with academia today and it is up to the students and parents to push for a change and for real equal representation in our nation's universities. http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/2259/students-for-academic-freedom-a-new-campus-movement Conservative activists and students press campaigns against perceived bias on campuses. Conservative activists and students press campaigns against perceived bias on campuses Opinion: 'Intellectual Diversity': the Trojan Horse of a Dark Design Colloquy Live: Join a live, online discussion with David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, about policies that would promote "intellectual diversity" on campuses and protect students and faculty members with unpopular political and religious views, on Wednesday, February 18, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time. One View on Violation of Students' Rights Excerpts From 'Academic Bill of Rights'By SARA HEBEL Gerald Wilson, a history professor at Duke University, says a student's question on the first day of class last semester caught him off guard: "Do you have any prejudices?" Unsure what the young man meant, Mr. Wilson decided to reply with a joke. "Yeah, Republicans," he recalls saying. (He found out later that the student was asking about writing styles.) "Everybody laughed," the professor says. Well, not quite everybody. Matt Bettis, a senior in the class, thought the comment among others was inappropriate and sent an e-mail message to Mr. Wilson telling him so. The professor apologized to Mr. Bettis, who had dropped the course, "American Dreams/American Realities." "I was absolutely dumbfounded," Mr. Bettis later wrote about Mr. Wilson's comments in a letter to Students for Academic Freedom, a national group that is collecting stories about political bias on campuses. "What worried me was the excited and proud manner in which he stated it, thus implying that his politics would be a large part of the classroom experience." While Mr. Wilson calls the incident "regrettable," he says his remark reflected his tendency to use humor to engage students. "Everybody knows I'm very political," he says. "But, dear God, I make jokes about Democrats as well as Republicans. This is a course where we're going to talk about different viewpoints." To some college students -- and legislators -- who hold conservative views, however, comments like Mr. Wilson's raise a red flag. Professors who unnecessarily interject their political views into the classroom contribute to conservative students' feelings of isolation on campuses that often seem to be dominated by faculty members with liberal views, these critics say. Several students who say they have Republican leanings argue that their grades have suffered or that their participation in classroom discussions has been stifled by liberal professors. "Our institutions of higher education have become institutions of indoctrination," declares Stephen Miller, a freshman at Duke. "That's a frightening trend." Now conservative activists are fighting back. David Horowitz, president of the California-based Center for the Study of Popular Culture, is leading a national campaign to change campus climates. The centerpiece of his efforts is an "Academic Bill of Rights," which he is urging Congress and state legislatures to adopt. It enumerates several principles that colleges should follow, among which is that they should foster a variety of political and religious beliefs in such areas as making tenure decisions, developing reading lists for courses, and selecting campus speakers. Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced as legislation a version of the proposal. In Colorado, a visit paid by Mr. Horowitz to state officials led the president of the State Senate, a Republican, to ask the heads of the state's 29 public institutions to specify their processes for handling complaints about bias and the steps they are taking to promote "intellectual diversity" in classes and faculty recruiting. Now Colorado's Republican lawmakers are pushing for legislation that would force college governing boards to develop and publicize processes for resolving students' complaints about bias. Mr. Horowitz says he believes that his proposal, or similar ones, could be introduced in as many as a half-dozen more state legislatures, which he declines to identify, as well as in the U.S. Senate, by this spring. He is also urging campus administrators and student-government leaders to adopt policies that would spell out students' rights to academic freedom. "The university should not be a political place,"says Mr. Horowitz. "It's a place where there ought to be reasoned discourse." He has conducted studies finding that at 32 universities he deemed "elite," Democratic professors and administrators outnumbered Republican colleagues by a ratio of more than 10 to 1. He says he took a lot of time crafting his bill of rights so that it would protect faculty members and students who hold views across the political spectrum. Practically, though, most of the students and politicians who are backing such legislation are Republicans who complain of liberal bias on campuses. As viewpoint-neutral as Mr. Horowitz's proposal may be, some argue that the principles it lays out are likely to give other conservative activists and lawmakers ammunition to push more-controversial plans in the name of intellectual diversity. For instance, Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, argues in this week's Chronicle Review that lawmakers may try to use the goal of ideological balance as a rationale for requiring institutions to hire additional conservative scholars or to monitor students' assigned reading to make sure it is sufficiently "pro-American." "It is obvious that for Horowitz these are debating points designed to hoist the left by its own petard," writes Mr. Fish, "but the trouble with debating points is that they can't be kept in bounds." A Matter of Balance Many university administrators, faculty members, and state lawmakers believe that Mr. Horowitz's plan, or similar proposals, would invite too much meddling by lawmakers in academic matters. Some insist that such legislative efforts might actually hinder debate on campuses and restrict professors' ability to appropriately balance classroom discussions of significant scholarly ideas. The American Association of University Professors issued a statement saying that Mr. Horowitz's proposal would encourage state and campus officials to exert oversight on faculty members on academic matters rather than trust their professional judgment. The group took specific exception to language in the proposal that would encourage institutions to make faculty employment decisions "with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives." "The danger of such guidelines is that they invite diversity to be measured by political standards that diverge from the academic criteria of the scholarly profession," the statement reads. For example, it said, a political-theory department might be required to hire a professor espousing Nazi philosophy if a college were forced to provide a real "plurality of methodologies and perspectives" in its academic courses. Mr. Horowitz argues that the group has misread his proposal, and that it clearly states that professors' independence should be protected. He says he wants to promote "intellectual diversity," not "political pluralism." "Political balance implies political interference (to correct any imbalance)," he wrote to the AAUP. "By contrast, intellectual diversity calls for intellectual standards to replace the existing political ones." Political bias, rather than academic standards, has driven too many decisions by professors and other people on campuses, he says, citing a course in "Modern Industrial Societies" that he sat in on at Bates College a few years ago. The sole text, he says, was a 500-page document, put together by editors of the New Left Review, that included only Marxist views. In a letter to the editor of the Web site Salon, which ran an article about Mr. Horowitz's visit to Bates, the professor, Kiran Asher, replied that the text that Mr. Horowitz complained about included "serious engagement of such conservative icons" as Francis Fukuyama. Ms. Asher, who is no longer at Bates, added that she also required her students to read The Economist, which she called "not exactly a bastion of leftist doctrine." Colorado at Center Stage Across the country, college students who hold conservative views are coming forward with dozens of reports of incidents in which they assert that professors treated them differently than their more-liberal peers. On Web sites that collect such anecdotes and in other forums, the students tell stories of faculty members who made demeaning jokes about Republicans and spent class time urging students to protest the war in Iraq. Some of the students expressed the belief that their conservative opinions, no matter how well argued, have resulted in low grades. Others describe reading lists that include controversial material that is unrelated to the subject matter. Much of the debate in the past several months has centered in Colorado. State Sen. John Andrews, president of the chamber, who surveyed the state's public colleges about their policies, says he has long been concerned about bias against conservative students and faculty members. After reviewing the colleges' policies on academic freedom, he concluded that they are well established but that the procedures for filing complaints are "more ragged" and not well known to students. Following up, State Rep. Shawn Mitchell, a Republican, introduced legislation last month that would require the governing boards of public colleges in Colorado to create and make known a process for students to challenge any discrimination they experience because of their political beliefs. The proposal also would amend Colorado's existing "bill of rights" for students by spelling out the protections against political discrimination that students should be guaranteed. The legislation requires, among other things, that students' grades be unaffected by their political or religious views, that professors refrain from introducing controversial topics unrelated to their courses, and that student fees be distributed among campus groups only on a viewpoint-neutral basis. "This isn't about stifling political debate," Mr. Mitchell says. "It's about allowing political debate and trying to create a fair environment for everyone." Some members of Colorado's legislature, however, say legislation to reaffirm the political rights of students isn't high on their agendas. "There are some huge challenges facing Colorado's higher-education system; this isn't one of them," says State Rep. Andrew Romanoff, a Democrat who is minority leader in the House of Representatives. "I haven't heard from any of my constituents who have identified the liberal-college conspiracy as a problem worth our time." Instead, he says, his colleagues should focus on improving high-school graduation rates and college participation among Colorado residents, and providing more money for financial aid. Robert Nero, spokesman for the University of Colorado System, argues that the legislation is unnecessary because the institution has adequate policies to protect students, and that it would be "demoralizing to the faculty." Administrators also believe it would be harder to draw top scholars to Colorado if the legislation passed, he says, because it would appear that lawmakers were "micromanaging" university affairs. Mr. Horowitz acknowledges that involving lawmakers was not his first choice as a tactic for raising the issue of bias on campuses. But he decided to take that approach, he says, after public-university officials in various states failed to adopt stronger policy statements about the issue. "I at least wanted to open the discussion," he says, arguing that his proposed legislation would make a difference in protecting students. "You can tell," he says, "by the resistance." Campaigns on Campuses As Mr. Horowitz works to drum up support, students on some campuses are taking their own actions. Student-government leaders at Occidental College, Utah State University, and Wichita State University have adopted a "Student Bill of Rights" modeled after Mr. Horowitz's. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, the College Republicans last month placed a form on their Web site for students to report experiences of bias based on political beliefs. The group says it wants to use the stories to help demonstrate the extent of the discrimination they see on the campus as they talk with state lawmakers and university administrators. One Boulder student who has filed a complaint through the Web site is Meaghan McCarty, a junior. In her "Social Problems" class, she says, the professor would often speak over her and try to discredit her arguments during class discussions of issues like poverty. When she raised her concerns with the professor after class, Ms. McCarty says, he told her that no one agreed with her, and that she should consider taking a course with a more conservative professor. Ms. McCarty's professor could not be reached for comment. "I'm not here for my views to be popular," Ms. McCarty says. But "it goes too far when a professor starts to stifle students' own thoughts. There should be less of their own opinion and more facts from both perspectives." While many professors agree that courses should include healthy debates, some worry that legislation aimed at protecting students from political bias would place too much emphasis on simply balancing facts in course material. "Learning is simply more than facts," says Mr. Wilson, the Duke professor. "What we need is intelligent discourse on these kinds of things. To do that, we should have flexibility and freedom." But students who support Mr. Horowitz's campaign argue that his bill of rights seeks to foster just the kind of wide-ranging discourse that Mr. Wilson seeks, by protecting the expression of more viewpoints. "When students like myself feel alienated, that drastically compromises the educational environment," says Mr. Miller, the Duke freshman. "We need a completely, utterly, entirely unbiased pursuit of knowledge." As part of a national effort to protect students with unpopular political views from discrimination on campuses, the group Students for Academic Freedom is collecting anecdotes from students who believe they have been treated unfairly. The group's Web site (http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org) contains an "Academic Freedom Complaint Form." It lists several ways in which, the group believes, students' academic freedom can be violated, including: •Requiring readings or texts that cover only one side of an issue. EXCERPTS FROM 'ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS' •All faculty shall be hired, fired, promoted and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of their expertise and, in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives. No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs. http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=23206 It is a rare conservative UCLA student who would willingly take a class in which the professor's second job is executive director of the Southern California ACLU. But I did just that and my reason was a simple one: I needed the class credit. "Can Law Change Society?" fulfilled the requirement for my American politics concentration in the political science major, and it was the only one still open. In the end, I endured the ten weeks, and observed just how political the already heavily politicized (and uniformly left-wing) courses in UCLA's curriculum could be. It was clear by the end of the first lecture that our professor, Ramona Ripston, was there not to teach, but to recruit us for her causes. Like too many UCLA professors, Ripston could never be bothered to treat with respect both sides of a debate or allow students to make up their own minds. This was either a function of her disrespect for the intelligence of her students, or an unintentional acknowledgement that many liberal arguments can't withstand scrutiny. Instead of presenting a spectrum of opinion or soliciting student inputs, she ruthlessly controlled the class debate, using the power of her position to dismiss any opposition that might surface. Ripston expected students to agree with her position on the day's topic and they almost always obliged. Abortion? Great! Proposition 209 (Ward Connerly's anti-racial preferences initiative): Bad! Dissent was rare. When someone did disagree, another student could be counted on to adopt a hurt expression, and whine, "As a member of (insert aggrieved minority group here), I feel hurt by your remarks. I can't believe that you're allowed to say those things out loud." To which Ripston would cry encouragingly "Did everyone hear that?" (No doubt this encouraged such responses.) Strong counter-arguments to her personal views - and the lesson for the day was always about her personal views - would receive only a curt nod and a quick return to the prevailing liberal dittoism. The best example of the group-think Ripston pushed in class was a venomous anecdote she told about Chief Justice William Rehnquist. She informed her students of exactly one thing about the most important judge in America - that in 1952, as a young law clerk for Justice Robert Jackson, he drafted a memo on Brown v. Board of Education holding that Plessy v. Ferguson is "right and should be affirmed." This issue was brought up by the left and dismissed in both his 1971 confirmation hearings and those for his elevation to Chief Justice in 1986. As a law clerk, Rehnquist was drafting the opinion based on Jackson's feelings, which did not represent his own. Yet half a century later, Ripston revived this false and discredited allegation and slander and presented it as fact. Ripston repeated the story in the class not once, but on three separate occasions. By the term's end, members of the class could repeat back the tale from memory, to her glowing approval. Some students later criticized her approach in their course evaluations - one noting that "She always says she is very open and liberal but she turns out to be the most close-minded professor I know, which affects the grading a lot!" Most students have unfortunately stopped thinking critically, or at least letting on that they think critically. They found out years ago that a "go along, get along" philosophy, not analytical engagement, is the key to UCLA success. An integral part of Ripston's indoctrination involved importing guest lecturers from her ACLU office. It was an attempt to provide a facade of intellectual variety - but in the end, one song sung by different voices is still the same tune. Her first guest was her husband - technically her fifth - Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Stephen Reinhardt, identified by the Weekly Standard as "one of the most overturned judges in history." His was the second vote in the recent decision which found the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. Not coincidentally, Reinhardt's biggest foe in the Supreme Court turned out to be Chief Justice Rehnquist - the man his wife relished bashing. In his presentation, Reinhardt first analogized the Florida court case Bush v. Gore to Plessy v. Ferguson. He subsequently implied that due to the Rehnquist Court, we live in a police state with no right to resist arrest or search of our possessions. Reinhardt then provided unintended comedy for a few of us with his contention that the reputation of rampant liberalism in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was a myth. Self-reflection is clearly not the strong suit of liberals like Reinhardt whom even the Los Angeles Times referred to as "the most liberal judge on the circuit." Like his wife, Reinhardt showed no inclination to present a second side to any question. In his mind, the 2000 presidential election was illegitimately settled by thuggish Republicans who instigated a riot at the Miami-Dade vote-counting in a desperate attempt to head off a certain victory by Gore. And the Supreme Court's decision to take up the case on a writ of certiorari? No Supreme Court scholar ever saw that coming - not a one. Ripston then invited anti-death penalty activist (and former M*A*S*H* actor) Mike Farrell, but couldn't find an opponent for him (probably because of a dearth of death penalty supporters in the ACLU office). While Farrell made his presentation at the lectern, Ripston passed around a misleading petition for a death penalty moratorium, with students left to decide whether ignoring the petition would affect their grade. Since nobody else seemed willing to challenge this charade, I broached the subject of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Not only did Farrell stand up for Mumia, but he misrepresented the facts of the case, calling the convicted killer a "journalist" merely "accused" of the crime. The first was at best a misrepresentation, the second blatantly false. When I challenged his claims, Farrell turned, well, feral. "So what's your problem?" he snarled. As I began answering his question, Ripston herself grabbed the microphone to shout hostile questions of her own. In addition to being intolerant, liberals like Ripston seem to be instinctive bullies. My resolve seemed to affect her however, as though she realized she had stepped too far over the line. Ending our exchange abruptly, she announced that she was in no way endorsing the petition, but had only agreed to distribute it as a favor to a student. True to the course's spirit, the guest lecturers were all equally partisan and intolerant. There was the presentation on gay/lesbian issues by a left-wing lawyer from Ripston's office actively involved in promoting one side of those issues. This lecturer was followed by another from Stephen Rohde, president of the Southern California ACLU. Dan Tokaji, also from Ripston's office, rounded out the quarter. Ripston's willingness to "reach out" for a diverse group of lecturers was literal - every guest was someone who had walked within arm's length of her desk at the ACLU. Unfortunately, Ripston's disregard for presenting both sides of an issue is mirrored in many other courses at UCLA. The only question is whether the popularity of this teaching method is the result of intellectual laziness, or is a calculated attempt to manipulate impressionable students in behalf of a liberal agenda. (There are no conservatives to speak of on the UCLA faculty.) If the guest lectures were bad, the class readings were no better. Racial preferences (always referred to as "affirmative action") and abortion were the issues comprising the first six weeks' reading, and on both the readings reflected the ACLU party line - there's a pressing need for more of both. Ripston put little emphasis on the negative aspects of either issue: the hours of daily busing to achieve "racial balance" of debatable value, or the moral implications of killing an unborn child. The second half of the class was only marginally better. On racial profiling, she did offer students John Derbyshire's seven-page National Review article "In Defense of Racial Profiling," in a rare gesture of even-handedness. But the "balance" she provided was a 25-page ACLU special report on the subject, replete with graphs and statistical analyses. The reading was intended to produce a simple, manipulated conclusion for students: racial profiling is bad. As a conservative at a liberal school, I am used to disagreeing with my professors. But this class crossed a line of partisanship that even a department employing only one Republican professor out of forty-seven had so far avoided. In an attempt to work through the system, I decided to make an appeal to department chair Michael Lofchie, to whom I complained about the blatant political agenda of the class. Lofchie freely admitted that Ripston's class was one-sided, but refused to see that this might present a problem. He dismissed my concerns, remarking that "a professor in a classroom will say things to be provocative, to get students worked up." He further assured me, "We would never monitor a professor's point of view in the classroom." Obviously he doesn't have to, since all but one of his professors is from the left. The faculty search committee, which does the department's hiring, is evidently run by a group imbued with the Ripston educational philosophy - no dissenters allowed. In fact, Lofchie's only regret was that "we just don't have the budget for her." Budgetary issues, not gross abuse of student's academic freedom is the only reason that Ripston will not be returning for the 2002-2003 academic year. Needless to say, the often abysmal quality of its undergraduate education is not something that UCLA likes to publicize. Instead, the fundraising solicitations, visitor brochures, and press releases by Chancellor Albert Carnesale continue to advertise UCLA's "intellectual rigor." On the other hand, if rigor means indoctrinating captive students in partisan political agendas, then UCLA's educational program is an unqualified success. http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=18423 How to identify the political left? Current usage refers to everyone left of center as "liberal." Yet what are currently identified liberals liberal about except hard drugs and sex? In regard to everything else, they are determined to intervene, regulate and control your life, or redistribute your income. Obviously, when terror-hugging radicals like Ramsey Clark and Communist hacks like Angela Davis are referred to as "liberals" -- as they routinely are -- the obfuscation works to their advantage and against the interests of veracity and democracy. The term "liberal" should be reserved for those who occupy the center of the political spectrum; those to the left should be referred to as leftists, which is what they are. This is the easy part of rectifying the political lexicon. There is another more difficult aspect, however, which is how to identify the "hard" left, which is to say, those who are dedicated enemies of America and its purposes? In practice, it easy to identify such leftists and it is not difficult to describe them. They are people who identify with hostile regimes like North Korea, Cuba, and China, or -- more commonly -- believe the United States to be the imperialist guardian of a world system that radicals must defeat before they can establish "social justice" on the planet. Adherents of this anti-American creed variously describe themselves as "Marxists," "anti-globalists," "anti-war activists" or, more generally, "progressives." Their secular worldview holds claims that America is responsible for reaction, oppression, and exploitation across the globe and causes them to regard this country as the moral equivalent of militant Islam's "Great Satan." This explains the otherwise incomprehensible practical alliances that individuals who claim to be avatars of social justice make with Islamo-fascists like Saddam Hussein. Among the intellectual leaders of this left are Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Edward Said and Cornel West; among its figureheads, Angela Davis and Ramsey Clark; among its cultural icons, Tim Robbins, Barbara Kingsolver, Arundhhti Roy and Michael Moore; among its political leaders, Ralph Nader and the heads of the three major "peace" organizations (Leslie Cagan, Brian Becker and Clark Kissinger); among its electoral organizations, the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party; among its elected officials Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-California) and Congressman Dennis Kucinch (D-Ohio); among its organizations, the misnamed Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild; among its publications and media institutions, The Nation, Z Magazine, The Progressive, Counterpunch, Pacifica radio, Indymedia.org and commondreams.org. Like the Communist Party in the heyday of the Soviet empire, the influence of the hard left --intellectually and organizationally -- extends far beyond the institutions, organizations and publications it controls. Yet what to call them? One of the hard left's survival secrets has been its ability to embargo attempts to identify it by labeling those who do "red-baiters" and "witch-hunters," as though even to name it is to persecute it. These same people, on the other hand, think nothing of labeling their opponents "racists" and "fascists," or calling the President of the United States a "Nazi" puppet of the oil cartel. Yet their defense strategy is highly effective in the tolerant democracy they are determined to destroy. I myself have been called a "red-baiter" and "McCarthyite" for pointing out that the current "peace" organizations like International ANSWER and Not In Our Name are fronts for the Workers World Party -- a Marxist-Leninist vanguard that identifies with North Korea -- and the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist sect. The facts are obvious and unarguable, but their implications are unpleasant and therefore suspect. Nothwithstanding this difficulty, a more significant concern is that the term "Communist" in the context of the contemporary left can be misleading. While the Communist Party still exists and is even growing, it is a minor player and enjoys nothing approaching its former influence or power in the left. Even in the hard left, the Communist Party USA is only a constituent part of the whole whereas once, along with its front groups, it dominated progressive politics. In these circumstances, for reasons I will soon make apparent, the best term to describe this left is "neo-communist," or "neo-coms" for short. The place to begin an understanding of the neo-coms is the period following 1956, when the left sloughed off its Communist shell and became first a "new left" and then what might be called a "post-new left." In my own writings, particularly Radical Son and The Politics of Bad Faith I have shown that the "new left," was in reality no such thing. While starting out as a rejection of Stalinism, by the end of the Sixties the "new left" had devolved into a movement virtually indistinguishable from the Communist predecessor it had claimed to reject. This was as true of its Marxist underpinnings, as its anti-Americanism or its indiscriminate embrace of totalitarian revolutions and revolutionaries abroad. The new left imploded at the end of the Sixties a victim of its own revolutionary enthusiasms, which led it to pursue a violent politics it could not sustain. America's withdrawal from Vietnam in the early Seventies, deprived the left of the immediate pretext for its radical agendas. Many of its cadre retired from the "revolution in the streets" they had tried to launch and entered the Democratic Party. Others turned to careers in journalism and teaching, the professions of choice for secular missionaries. Still others took up local agitations and discrete campaigns in behalf of saving the environment, feminist issues and gay rights -- without giving up their radical illusions. In the 1980s, spurred by the Soviet-sponsored "nuclear freeze" campaign and by the "solidarity" movements for Communist forces in Central America, the left began to regroup without formally announcing its re-emergence or proclaiming a new collective identity as its Sixties predecessor had done. At the end of the decade, the collapse of the Soviet empire ushered in an interregnum of confusion for the left, calling a temporary halt to this radical progress. In the Soviet debacle "revolutionary" leftists confronted the catastrophic failure of everything they had believed and fought for during the previous 70 years. Even those radicals who recognized the political failures of the Soviet regime, believe in what Trotksy had called "the gains of October" -- the superior forces of socialist production. But the leftist faith proved impervious to this rebuttal by historical events. Insulated by its religious devotion to the progressive idea, the left survived the refutation of its socialist dreams. Instead of acknowledging their wrongheaded commitment to the socialist cause, they looked on the demise of what they had once hailed as "the first socialist state," as no more than an albatross that providence had lifted from their shoulders. In short, having defended the indefensible for 70 years, they were suddenly relieved that they would no longer have to defend it. Turning their backs on their own past, they pretended it was someone else's. They said, "The collapse of socialism doesn't prove anything because it wasn't real socialism. Real socialism hasn't been tried." This subterfuge rescued them from having to make apologies for abetting regimes that had killed tens of millions and enslaved tens of millions more. Broken eggs with no omelet to show for it -- not a workable socialist result. Better yet, there was no need to acknowledge that the country whose efforts they had opposed and whose actions they had condemned had liberated a billion people from the most oppressive empire the world had ever seen. They had no need for second thoughts about what they had done. They just went on to the next destruction, the newest incarnation of the radical cause. This act of cosmic bad faith was the foundation of the left's revival in the decade that followed. It was the necessary premise of its re-emergence as leader of the anti-globalization and "antiwar" movements that came at the end of the Nineties and the beginning of the millennium. The hard left was now ready to resurrect its internal war against America at home and abroad. If one looks at almost any aspect of this left -- its self-identified intellectual lineage (Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Heidegger, Fanon, Gramsci -- in sum, the totalitarian tradition), its analytic model (hierarchy and oppression), its redemptive agenda (social justice as state-enforced leveling) and its enemies -- imperialist America and the American "ruling class" -- one would be hard put to find a scintilla of difference with the Communist past. Of course leftists themselves will have none of this. Most of them will proclaim their anti-Stalinism (even as they embrace its practices); and will not defend the Communist systems that have in any case collapsed. But so what? The Soviet rulers denounced Stalin. Were they any less Communists for that? It seems appropriate, therefore, to call the unreconstructed hard-liners, "neo-communists" --a term that accurately identifies their negative assaults on American capitalism and their anti-American "internationalist" agendas. It may be objected that the term "neo-communist" does not describe a group, which itself identifies with the term, but then neither does "neo-conservative." There is, for example, no current movement calling itself "neo-conservative," nor do the individuals so designated refer to their own ideas as "neo-conservative." "Neo-conservative" is, in fact, a label that was imposed by the left on a group of former Democrats, loosely grouped around Senator "Scoop" Jackson who left the party fold at the end of the Seventies to join and support the Reagan Administration. It was accepted out of necessity for a while, because the left so dominates the political culture that resisting it was futile. But it is no longer used by neo-conservatives because, as Norman Podhoretz long ago observed, "neo-conservatism" is indistinguishable from conservatism itself. No "neo-conservative" that I am aware of has challenged Podhoretz's conclusion. Yet others insist on describing conservatives -- particularly those whom they regard as "hard-line" conservatives -- with this label. If the "neo" shoe can be made to fit conservatives, why not the hard-line left? David Horowitz is the founder of The David Horowitz Freedom Center (http://www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org/) and author of the new book, One Party Classroom (http://www.amazon.com/One-Party-Classroom-Professors-Indoctrinate-Undermine/dp/0307452557). http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=18398 I have argued that the contemporary left, which opposed the American war and opposes the America peace, which denounces American corporations and the global capitalist system, should be called "neo-communist," a term to denote anti-American leftists who demonize the American economic system and identify it as a "root cause" of global problems. An objection to the term is that some members of this left -- perhaps many -- no longer advocate a Communist future sensu strictu. Many in fact call themselves anarchists and would be eager to deno |
