College Education: The Art of Indoctrinating Students to Leftism

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Hello John,

When it came to getting a college education free of bias and rich in open debate, Davis Soderberg was robbed.

In a National Center blog post excerpted here, Davis – an associate with the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project – explains the extremes of political intimidation in higher education and how this drowns out good conservative ideas beyond the campus:

Once upon a time, young adults would venture from the supervision of their parents to an institution where free speech, debate, and unbiased education flourished. They would embark on a journey that would groom them to be the strong future leaders of tomorrow.

Who remembers these days? I sure don’t.

As a recent graduate from a public university, I have never been more convinced that these institutions aggressively try to persuade the student body that liberal ideologies and left-wing governance are the way forward. I often sat in lecture halls generating conservative counterarguments to my outspoken liberal classmates, yet remaining silent in fear of what I would be called or how I would be perceived.

With the rise of cancel culture, conservatives increasingly find themselves being called racists, sexists, bigots, and other demonizing terms whenever they take right-leaning positions, and especially when they support the policies of President Trump. Not only do conservative students remain silent because of fear of the woke student mob, they also recognize that a large majority of the professors are ideologically against them. Thus, the silence of conservative students only makes those on the left move further to their side of the political spectrum. Liberal students rarely hear an argument from the other side, and on the unique occasion that they do, they consider that belief radical because it is so foreign to what they are used to hearing.

There is no shortage of studies proving that college campuses have become increasingly liberal and have played into viewpoint discrimination resulting in a complete overhaul of conservative values. One study, conducted by The Conversation at the University of North Carolina, asked students how many times during the semester they kept a sincere opinion to themselves because they were worried about the consequences of expressing it. The results demonstrated a massive liberal/conservative divide: 23% of self-identified liberals said they censored themselves at least once, while 68% of self-identified conservatives did so…

[A] Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) survey of nearly 1,600 higher education institutions nationwide founded that the percentage of faculty that identifies with the left far outweighs those who identify with the right, and the discrepancy has only widened over time. In 1989-1990, when HERI first conducted this survey, 42% of faculty identified as being on the left, 40% were moderate, and another 18% were on the right. Almost three decades later, in 2016-2017, HERI found that 60% of the faculty identified as either far left or liberal compared to just 12% being conservative or far right. In just thirty years, the discrepancy of the liberal to conservative ratio among faculty has doubled, from 24% to 48%.

This sharp move to the left among higher education professoriates is disproportionate to the shifts we’ve seen in United States population as a whole. In 1989-1990, 26% of Americans identified as liberal, 42% as moderate, and 29% as conservative. Three decades later, the ratio remained nearly unchanged. In 2016-17, 24% of Americans identified as liberal or very liberal, 43% as moderate, and 31% as conservative or very conservative…

The threat of being called hateful and bigoted naturally silences those who find their viewpoints disfavored by the campus majority. This absolutely diminishes what college campuses are supposed to be: open arenas of speech and ideas to advance debate and learning.

If conservatives remain silent, leftism advances and becomes mainstream. If conservatives speak up, they are demonized and placed in categories of right-wing extremism. The core attribute of learning – debate – is under attack in the one place where it MUST thrive: university campuses.

This cannot become the norm of college academia.

To read all of Scott’s post – “College Education: The Art of Indoctrinating Students to Leftism” –click here.

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