Michael Bloomberg as mayor of New York City was famous for his finger-waving nanny bans on Big Gulps, super-sized fast food, and decrees on salt levels in restaurant foods. He wasn’t content with warning labels. He should have been content with warning labels. In contrast to Hizzoner, I’m suggesting only a warning label be placed on every college application – not in 2-point font in a footnote at the bottom of the page – to caution every parent and student of the danger in going to college in America. It might read something this:
“Warning: Any student matriculating to this college or university may procure revolutionary beliefs and a record of convictions for assault, murder, destruction of public and private property, threats to the rights of others, and other acts of disorder in furtherance of a historically proven dystopia.”
The connection between college and malignant left-wing radicalism is at least as strong as the relationship between tobacco smoking and lung cancer.
There are many historical instances of crass and brutal left-wing radicalism coming from the ranks of the college-educated with disastrous results. Take Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – aka Lenin – for instance. His dad (Illya) was a college professor at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, and his sons were college students: Lenin at Kazan University and his older brother, Alexander, at College of Simbirsk and the University of Saint Petersburg. Later, Alexander would be executed in the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Czar Alexander III. The radical bona fides of the siblings were insinuated in the college culture of the time. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn amply described the setting in many of his writings. Sound familiar?
If it sounds familiar, it should . . . because it is! Let’s take a look at what happened to Michael Brase, a second-year dental student at the University of Iowa. David Johnsen, the dean of the University of Iowa’s College of Dentistry, mass-distributed an email condemning Pres. Trump for withdrawing federal funding for the propaganda and Maoist struggle sessions known as “diversity training” – in the words of the executive order, “race/sex stereotyping” and “scapegoating”.
Brase responded in a logical reply to Prof. Johnsen’s opinionated missive: “By condemning Executive Order 13950, does the [College of Dentistry] support using federal funds to promote trainings that include race/sex stereotyping and/or race/sex scapegoating?”
For Mr. Brase, the sh#! hit the fan. Brase was quickly ordered to appear before a disciplinary hearing for “unprofessional behavior”. Rather than prostrate himself before his accusers, he went to the press and his elected representatives in the Iowa state legislature whose House Oversight Committee launched an investigation. Facts were made clear and the lefty cabal in the professoriate was exposed. Under the glaring spotlight of public scrutiny, the professorial lynch mob scattered like cockroaches who were startled by the light. The professorial ring leader, Prof. Johnsen, ended up delivering a mea culpa.
Or take the experience of Economics Professor Frank Gunter at Lehigh University. He had the temerity to deliver a talk on poverty in response to the Biden Administration’s request for faculty advice, but his views didn’t jibe with the lefty groupthink on campus (see below). He dared to counter three myths about poverty that are constantly trotted out by lefty faculty and racialized students in furtherance of the revolution. The three falsehoods according to Prof. Gunter are the following: (1) poverty is a matter of race – racial minorities are its chief victims; (2) poverty is a generational curse – once poor, always poor for generations; and (3) the poor have no agency because they are victims of large, impersonal forces (“systemic racism”, articulated in “critical race theory”).
For this, the lefty hive on the U. of Iowa campus erupted into a swarm. Black Lives Matter went to the barricades and the College of Business – Gunter’s teaching assignment – feverishly tried to blunt this exercise in academic free speech and academic freedom. The lesson is clear: stick out your neck for truth and be forever ostracized.
That’s the setting for our young adult freshmen who wish to broaden their minds and opportunities. Parents, they may enter college one way, and may exit completely different. And don’t assume it’ll be an improvement.
The pervasiveness of the above experiences is frightening. It’s also absolutely disgusting. State legislatures get to work and mandate the warning label.
RogerG