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Colleges Teaching Students What To Think Rather Than How To Think
Herb Denenberg
By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin
Millions of Americans are spending $10,000 to $40,000 a year or more to send their children to colleges and universities where they are being taught by professors in the business of indoctrination, not teaching. They are often being indoctrinated to hate America; to hate free-market, free-enterprise capitalism; to believe America is totally racist; and to be instilled with radical prejudices and to be recruited into radical causes.
That’s the finding of an important new book on America’s colleges and universities by David Horowitz and Jacob Laskin titled, One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine our Democracy: Including the 150 Worst Courses. You’ll recall Mr. Horowitz is also an author of two other important books on this subject: The Professors, and Indoctrination U. So this book completes a trilogy on one of the most important, but most neglected, topics of our time — the conversion of America’s great universities and colleges into instruments for indoctrinating students into radical ideologies. This development is accelerating with little attention or objection from university and college trustees, legislatures responsible for public institutions, the media, students or their parents or anyone else. Mr. Horowitz, the president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and founder of the online magazine FrontPage.com, has emerged as the most important voice to protect academic integrity and end the abuses rampant throughout higher education.
When you read any of this trilogy, you, at first, find it almost impossible to believe what Mr. Horowitz relates. But you soon realize he has meticulously and convincingly documented his conclusions and the more you question his findings and fact check on your own, the more you become convinced Mr. Horowitz is right on target and we better start listening to what he has to say.
The problem is centered in liberal arts programs and that is especially damaging in our information and technology age, in which the working environment and working requirements change so fast you have to learn to think, not just learn some bit of technology or vocational foundation, which may become obsolete overnight.
Learning to think is what a liberal arts course is supposed to do for someone and that’s why it’s such a valuable course of study. But now the liberal arts courses are shifting from teaching students how to think, into indoctrinating them in what to think.
The authors selected 12 universities at random , including Columbia, Duke, Texas, Penn State, Temple, Arizona State, and University of California at Santa Cruz. The authors report, “Since there are 4,000 universities nationally, it is reasonable to assume that there are well over 10,000 indoctrination courses offered, and millions of students passing through them every year. The evidence presented in our book that indoctrination is a real problem and one that is widespread is irrefutable. It is time to stop denying the obvious and taking steps to remedy it.”
One of the best ways to get a feel for the book is to look at some of the courses and their instructors. Here is the description of Community Studies 100P at the University of California Santa Cruz: “The goal of this seminar is to learn how to organize a revolution. We will learn what communities past and present have done and are doing to resist, challenge and overcome systems of power including (but not limited to) global capitalism, state oppression and racism.”
The catalogue listing indicates the course is designed for political indoctrination into a particular radical ideology. Note that global capitalism is not something to be studied, but to be overthrown.
This is typical of the courses in the Community Studies Department at Santa Cruz (UCSC). The authors write, “[T]he clear purpose of the Community Studies Program (as described in the departmental Web page) is overtly political rather than academic: ‘The UCSC faculty offers courses related20to social justice — including broad structural and social changes and community based organizing.’ The use of the term ‘social justice’ signals, as we’ve seen, a left-wing perspective, and sure enough, the departmental Web site provides several telling examples of politicized curricula. Department course fall under several ‘social justice domains,’ such as ‘labor studies, including the history of the working class,’ ‘youth cultures, youth activism and empowerment,” ‘race and racism’ ‘cultural work in social change,’ ‘gay and lesbian issues,’ ‘social justice, sustenance and sustainability in agro-food systems,’ and ‘resistance and social movements.’ ”
The department makes explicit its commitment to training political activists when it states that the Community Studies major ‘provides an opportunity for the student who is committed to social justice to work on a full-time basis beyond the university.’”
In addition to the indoctrination trend, there’s also a trend to abandon the traditional expertise required to teach a course. For example, Santa Cruz offers “Theory and Practice of Economic Justice.” The syllabus of the course is fixated on “economic justice in the U.S.” and its “targeting of inequalities arising from contemporary capitalist structures ...” The instructor has a degree in geography, not economics. Her resume indicates she hasn’t published a single scholarly article on subsistence agriculture in the 19th century. So you have to wonder why she is qualified to teach an economics course and how, with her thin resume, she obtained tenure at a major university, let alone a departmental chair. But that’s the way it is in the new academic world of radicalism and indoctrination — unqualified professors indoctrinating students in radical ideologies.
One of the most common themes that runs through courses dedicated to indoctrination involves teaching that America is a hopelessly racist society. For example, a course at the University of Colorado titled “Sociology of Race and Ethnicity,” uses only one text, and here is its view of race relations in the U.S.: “One can accurately describe the United States as a ‘total racist society’ in which every major aspect of life is shaped to some degree by racist realities … In the United States racism is structured into the rhythms of everyday life … Every part of the life cycle, and most aspects of one’s life, are shaped by the racism that is integral to the foundation of the United States.”
This text is full of assertions and claims, but is generally devoid of evidence. The author of the text writes, “Historical data on white images of and attitudes toward black Americans suggest that for centuries the overwhelming majority of white have been openly and unapologetically racist.” There is no historical data supporting that conclusion.
In addition, a book of readings is assigned that stays with the same theme of America as a racist society, and that minority groups in the U.S. are victims of pervasive racism and discrimination. Only one of the many readings expresses a contrary view.
Many of the courses obviously indoctrinate political radicalism, but some are positively bizarre. For example, there’s a course taught at the University of California Santa Cruz entitled “Foundations in Science Studies.” The professor promotes her view there is not a significant distinction to be drawn between humans and other animals. The course syllabus has language dressed up to sound academic and impressive, but it says, in effect, students who take this course must accept her claim that humans and animals cannot, and should not, be understood separately. That is a clear statement of indoctrination and violates the principles of professionalism that University of California regulations call for — teaching and not indoctrination. So the students are being indoctrinated with pure bull roar.
You also find professors whose qualification might cause you to wonder what is going on. Take the professor who teaches a course called “Radical Critiques of Penalty”: Angela Y. Davis, a full professor, is a Communist and former Black Panther. Typical of the textbooks used in the course is one that calls for the abolition of prisons. In fact, Ms. Davis believes people are not in prison to be punished for crimes, but rather (in the words of the authors) “to carry out the sinister agendas of capitalist elites against minorities and the poor. Even Marx did not believe nonsense like this.”
Many of the courses in feminine studies and related fields involving gender also indoctrinate students with claims that are ridiculous on their face but are presented as they are scientific truths beyond challenge. At Duke University, there is a course in the Department of Cultural Anthropology called “Gender and Culture.” The starting point of the course is that gender is not a product of innate biological differences between sexes but is a “cultural construction.” In other words, men and women are identical but for the “cultural construction” focusing on the sexes. Instead of the cry, “Long live the difference,” this course turns it into, “There is no difference.”
The authors write, “Although this claim contradicts the finding of modern neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and biology, it is advanced as a central tenet of cultural anthropology: ‘Anthropology’s most important insights point to the cultural construction of gender as well as to the complexities of gender construction. This course will develop a critical stance toward the study of gender by taking anthropology’s insights into the cultural construction of gender as its point of departure.’
“In other words, a controversial claim is to be treated as a given — an unexamined assumption on which the entire course is premised.”
This course is not one wild aberration, but is just one of many at Duke designed for radical indoctrination. That kind of academic thinking may explain some of the recent strange behavior at Duke.
The authors write, “But just from these samples it becomes clear how such a large group of professors, supposedly committed to rational thought and the pursuit of the truth, could have so quickly and furiously condemned the accused lacrosse players before they had even been formally charged with any crime, let alone convicted.” You have to give the professors at Duke credit — they really live their irrationality.
This kind of left-wing indoctrination and radical propagandizing has spread like an epidemic not only at Ivy League schools like Columbia, but to state schools such as Penn State, the University of Texas and the University of Colorado.
The University of Colorado is an interesting study because it shows how someone like the infamous Ward Churchill can rise to the top in academia and survive for many years if not for life. His career was only cut short by some intemperate comments he made that focused public attention on him. Had he been slightly more discreet, he could have probably continued to perpetrate his academic fraud for life.
The remarks that started to expose this academic fraud involved Mr. Churchill describing the victims of 9/11 as “Little Eichmanns” and likening the United State to Nazi Germany, as a “genocidal” nation.
For many years, Mr. Churchill’s questionable scholarly credentials had been well known in academic circles, but nothing was done to address the matter. Only when the governor of Colorado and other public officials got into the act did things finally start to happen. Finally in 2006, the University of Colorado brought together a panel of Mr. Churchill’s academic peers to investigate his work and the charges that had been forthcoming for years.
The panel called witnesses, interviewed Mr. Churchill, and held hearings that formed the basis of a devastating 125-page report. The authors described the findings of the report, as follows:
“Among its findings were that Churchill had plagiarized other scholars’ works, falsified historical evidence, and even invented historical events in the service of his political agenda. Focusing solely on Churchill’s academic work, and resolutely ignoring his extreme anti-American views, the panel found ‘repeated instances of his practice of fabricating details or ostensible written evidence to buttress his broader ideological arguments,’ and noted that Churchill lacked any formal academic training in his areas of ‘expertise.’ ”
“He had written about legal issues, for instance, without any academic training or background in the subject. And although he had been hired as an Ethnic Studies professor (on questionable grounds that he was a native American) and promoted to full professor, his only advanced degree was an M.A. in ‘communications studies’ from an experimental college that offered no grades and was now defunct. In the panel’s collective judgment Churchill was unqualified to teach in his academic field and did not understand the principles of academic inquiry.”
The panel was equally severe in condemning the University of Colorado for letting Mr. Churchill get away with what might be called academic murder and for not investigating him until embarrassed into doing so by national publicity.
If you really want to understand how sick the system is, consider the remarks made by the chairman of the University of Colorado Regents, the body that finally fired Mr. Churchill. She told reporters that firing an incompetent, dishonest and unqualified professor “was not an easy decision for the board.” As the authors observe, that statement sums up the plight of American universities as they have degenerated in recent years.
What is equally shocking is Mr. Churchill received support from hundreds of university professors throughout the controversy. So Mr. Churchill not only disgraced himself, but also disgraced his university, which did nothing to discipline him for many years. The disgrace also extends to his department, which awarded him tenure and made him a department chairman — even while the well-known allegations about his misrepresentations shadowed his career.
This shows you the sad state of affairs at the University of Colorado. But that institution is all too representative of colleges and universities across the country. To borrow Mr. Churchill’s own language there are thousands of “little Churchill’s” at our colleges and universities, and we truly have an “indoctrination” nation of higher education.
What can you do about these radical professors who are undermining our democracy and delivering radical indoctrination instead of education? For starters, you can write your state legislators and your governor and ask for a legislative investigation. You might sight this book, and note two institutions covered unfavorably are Penn State and Temple, both of which are state-supported.
If you are aware of any problems at specific schools, you can also complain to the president and board of trustees or other governing body. If you are a graduate of a college or university that is violating academic principles, your voice carries extra weight, and you should consider withholding contributions, and let the institution know of your decision.
If you are involved as a parent or student in attendance at a college or university, you should certainly pick courses with care to avoid indoctrination courses. As this book suggests, the course description often makes it clear that it is devoted to indoctrination. In some cases you can also look at the syllabus in advance of taking the course, and that provides extensive detail not found in the course description in the catalog.
You can also check any relevant Web sites, such as that of the professor or the department. You might also pay the professor a visit to see for yourself what he is made of and what kind of teacher he is likely to be.
It has reached a sorry point of academic degeneration, but before taking a course you may want to check the professors degrees and other qualifications. As the book demonstrates, many professors are teaching courses beyond their expertise. This sometimes shows up in professors who have no degrees or special academic training in the area of their teaching.
Finally, you might consult course guides often published by students. When I was at the University of Pennsylvania, the student course guide was a must read. You can also find out a lot about a course and its professor by asking other students who have taken it and asking your academic advisers about what they know about any given course or professor.
You can also fight for academic integrity by supporting Mr. Horowitz’s organization, The Freedom Foundation, reading his books and other publications, and staying up to date on education issues on his Web site, frontpage.com.
These professors and institutions that allow indoctrination courses are ripping off students in multiple ways. First, they are delivering a product that violates the most basic academic standards. Second, they are not delivering an education and are not teaching students how to think. Third, they are often teaching nonsense or something close to it.
The importance of putting an end to these academic abuses cannot be overstated. The colleges and universities are turning out students who don’t know how to think, who are often political zombies brainwashed into accepting radical idea, who are inclined to radical and often socialist values and who often come out hating their country instead of loving it.
This means they also come out ill-prepared to be productive citizens with sound ideas about government and our society. Nothing could be more destructive to America and what it stands for than the one-party classrooms described in this important volume.
On another note, read the chapter on Columbia University, President Obama’s alma mater, and you will quickly understand how President Obama picked up some of his socialist and other radical ideas and how he developed a hate-America strain.
Yes, teachers and teaching have consequences and they help determine the nature and future of a nation. And with the war on terror, we sometimes forget some of the most serious internal threats, such as the undermining of our democracy by colleges and universities.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
That’s the finding of an important new book on America’s colleges and universities by David Horowitz and Jacob Laskin titled, One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine our Democracy: Including the 150 Worst Courses. You’ll recall Mr. Horowitz is also an author of two other important books on this subject: The Professors, and Indoctrination U. So this book completes a trilogy on one of the most important, but most neglected, topics of our time — the conversion of America’s great universities and colleges into instruments for indoctrinating students into radical ideologies. This development is accelerating with little attention or objection from university and college trustees, legislatures responsible for public institutions, the media, students or their parents or anyone else. Mr. Horowitz, the president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and founder of the online magazine FrontPage.com, has emerged as the most important voice to protect academic integrity and end the abuses rampant throughout higher education.
When you read any of this trilogy, you, at first, find it almost impossible to believe what Mr. Horowitz relates. But you soon realize he has meticulously and convincingly documented his conclusions and the more you question his findings and fact check on your own, the more you become convinced Mr. Horowitz is right on target and we better start listening to what he has to say.
The problem is centered in liberal arts programs and that is especially damaging in our information and technology age, in which the working environment and working requirements change so fast you have to learn to think, not just learn some bit of technology or vocational foundation, which may become obsolete overnight.
Learning to think is what a liberal arts course is supposed to do for someone and that’s why it’s such a valuable course of study. But now the liberal arts courses are shifting from teaching students how to think, into indoctrinating them in what to think.
The authors selected 12 universities at random , including Columbia, Duke, Texas, Penn State, Temple, Arizona State, and University of California at Santa Cruz. The authors report, “Since there are 4,000 universities nationally, it is reasonable to assume that there are well over 10,000 indoctrination courses offered, and millions of students passing through them every year. The evidence presented in our book that indoctrination is a real problem and one that is widespread is irrefutable. It is time to stop denying the obvious and taking steps to remedy it.”
One of the best ways to get a feel for the book is to look at some of the courses and their instructors. Here is the description of Community Studies 100P at the University of California Santa Cruz: “The goal of this seminar is to learn how to organize a revolution. We will learn what communities past and present have done and are doing to resist, challenge and overcome systems of power including (but not limited to) global capitalism, state oppression and racism.”
The catalogue listing indicates the course is designed for political indoctrination into a particular radical ideology. Note that global capitalism is not something to be studied, but to be overthrown.
This is typical of the courses in the Community Studies Department at Santa Cruz (UCSC). The authors write, “[T]he clear purpose of the Community Studies Program (as described in the departmental Web page) is overtly political rather than academic: ‘The UCSC faculty offers courses related20to social justice — including broad structural and social changes and community based organizing.’ The use of the term ‘social justice’ signals, as we’ve seen, a left-wing perspective, and sure enough, the departmental Web site provides several telling examples of politicized curricula. Department course fall under several ‘social justice domains,’ such as ‘labor studies, including the history of the working class,’ ‘youth cultures, youth activism and empowerment,” ‘race and racism’ ‘cultural work in social change,’ ‘gay and lesbian issues,’ ‘social justice, sustenance and sustainability in agro-food systems,’ and ‘resistance and social movements.’ ”
The department makes explicit its commitment to training political activists when it states that the Community Studies major ‘provides an opportunity for the student who is committed to social justice to work on a full-time basis beyond the university.’”
In addition to the indoctrination trend, there’s also a trend to abandon the traditional expertise required to teach a course. For example, Santa Cruz offers “Theory and Practice of Economic Justice.” The syllabus of the course is fixated on “economic justice in the U.S.” and its “targeting of inequalities arising from contemporary capitalist structures ...” The instructor has a degree in geography, not economics. Her resume indicates she hasn’t published a single scholarly article on subsistence agriculture in the 19th century. So you have to wonder why she is qualified to teach an economics course and how, with her thin resume, she obtained tenure at a major university, let alone a departmental chair. But that’s the way it is in the new academic world of radicalism and indoctrination — unqualified professors indoctrinating students in radical ideologies.
One of the most common themes that runs through courses dedicated to indoctrination involves teaching that America is a hopelessly racist society. For example, a course at the University of Colorado titled “Sociology of Race and Ethnicity,” uses only one text, and here is its view of race relations in the U.S.: “One can accurately describe the United States as a ‘total racist society’ in which every major aspect of life is shaped to some degree by racist realities … In the United States racism is structured into the rhythms of everyday life … Every part of the life cycle, and most aspects of one’s life, are shaped by the racism that is integral to the foundation of the United States.”
This text is full of assertions and claims, but is generally devoid of evidence. The author of the text writes, “Historical data on white images of and attitudes toward black Americans suggest that for centuries the overwhelming majority of white have been openly and unapologetically racist.” There is no historical data supporting that conclusion.
In addition, a book of readings is assigned that stays with the same theme of America as a racist society, and that minority groups in the U.S. are victims of pervasive racism and discrimination. Only one of the many readings expresses a contrary view.
Many of the courses obviously indoctrinate political radicalism, but some are positively bizarre. For example, there’s a course taught at the University of California Santa Cruz entitled “Foundations in Science Studies.” The professor promotes her view there is not a significant distinction to be drawn between humans and other animals. The course syllabus has language dressed up to sound academic and impressive, but it says, in effect, students who take this course must accept her claim that humans and animals cannot, and should not, be understood separately. That is a clear statement of indoctrination and violates the principles of professionalism that University of California regulations call for — teaching and not indoctrination. So the students are being indoctrinated with pure bull roar.
You also find professors whose qualification might cause you to wonder what is going on. Take the professor who teaches a course called “Radical Critiques of Penalty”: Angela Y. Davis, a full professor, is a Communist and former Black Panther. Typical of the textbooks used in the course is one that calls for the abolition of prisons. In fact, Ms. Davis believes people are not in prison to be punished for crimes, but rather (in the words of the authors) “to carry out the sinister agendas of capitalist elites against minorities and the poor. Even Marx did not believe nonsense like this.”
Many of the courses in feminine studies and related fields involving gender also indoctrinate students with claims that are ridiculous on their face but are presented as they are scientific truths beyond challenge. At Duke University, there is a course in the Department of Cultural Anthropology called “Gender and Culture.” The starting point of the course is that gender is not a product of innate biological differences between sexes but is a “cultural construction.” In other words, men and women are identical but for the “cultural construction” focusing on the sexes. Instead of the cry, “Long live the difference,” this course turns it into, “There is no difference.”
The authors write, “Although this claim contradicts the finding of modern neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and biology, it is advanced as a central tenet of cultural anthropology: ‘Anthropology’s most important insights point to the cultural construction of gender as well as to the complexities of gender construction. This course will develop a critical stance toward the study of gender by taking anthropology’s insights into the cultural construction of gender as its point of departure.’
“In other words, a controversial claim is to be treated as a given — an unexamined assumption on which the entire course is premised.”
This course is not one wild aberration, but is just one of many at Duke designed for radical indoctrination. That kind of academic thinking may explain some of the recent strange behavior at Duke.
The authors write, “But just from these samples it becomes clear how such a large group of professors, supposedly committed to rational thought and the pursuit of the truth, could have so quickly and furiously condemned the accused lacrosse players before they had even been formally charged with any crime, let alone convicted.” You have to give the professors at Duke credit — they really live their irrationality.
This kind of left-wing indoctrination and radical propagandizing has spread like an epidemic not only at Ivy League schools like Columbia, but to state schools such as Penn State, the University of Texas and the University of Colorado.
The University of Colorado is an interesting study because it shows how someone like the infamous Ward Churchill can rise to the top in academia and survive for many years if not for life. His career was only cut short by some intemperate comments he made that focused public attention on him. Had he been slightly more discreet, he could have probably continued to perpetrate his academic fraud for life.
The remarks that started to expose this academic fraud involved Mr. Churchill describing the victims of 9/11 as “Little Eichmanns” and likening the United State to Nazi Germany, as a “genocidal” nation.
For many years, Mr. Churchill’s questionable scholarly credentials had been well known in academic circles, but nothing was done to address the matter. Only when the governor of Colorado and other public officials got into the act did things finally start to happen. Finally in 2006, the University of Colorado brought together a panel of Mr. Churchill’s academic peers to investigate his work and the charges that had been forthcoming for years.
The panel called witnesses, interviewed Mr. Churchill, and held hearings that formed the basis of a devastating 125-page report. The authors described the findings of the report, as follows:
“Among its findings were that Churchill had plagiarized other scholars’ works, falsified historical evidence, and even invented historical events in the service of his political agenda. Focusing solely on Churchill’s academic work, and resolutely ignoring his extreme anti-American views, the panel found ‘repeated instances of his practice of fabricating details or ostensible written evidence to buttress his broader ideological arguments,’ and noted that Churchill lacked any formal academic training in his areas of ‘expertise.’ ”
“He had written about legal issues, for instance, without any academic training or background in the subject. And although he had been hired as an Ethnic Studies professor (on questionable grounds that he was a native American) and promoted to full professor, his only advanced degree was an M.A. in ‘communications studies’ from an experimental college that offered no grades and was now defunct. In the panel’s collective judgment Churchill was unqualified to teach in his academic field and did not understand the principles of academic inquiry.”
The panel was equally severe in condemning the University of Colorado for letting Mr. Churchill get away with what might be called academic murder and for not investigating him until embarrassed into doing so by national publicity.
If you really want to understand how sick the system is, consider the remarks made by the chairman of the University of Colorado Regents, the body that finally fired Mr. Churchill. She told reporters that firing an incompetent, dishonest and unqualified professor “was not an easy decision for the board.” As the authors observe, that statement sums up the plight of American universities as they have degenerated in recent years.
What is equally shocking is Mr. Churchill received support from hundreds of university professors throughout the controversy. So Mr. Churchill not only disgraced himself, but also disgraced his university, which did nothing to discipline him for many years. The disgrace also extends to his department, which awarded him tenure and made him a department chairman — even while the well-known allegations about his misrepresentations shadowed his career.
This shows you the sad state of affairs at the University of Colorado. But that institution is all too representative of colleges and universities across the country. To borrow Mr. Churchill’s own language there are thousands of “little Churchill’s” at our colleges and universities, and we truly have an “indoctrination” nation of higher education.
What can you do about these radical professors who are undermining our democracy and delivering radical indoctrination instead of education? For starters, you can write your state legislators and your governor and ask for a legislative investigation. You might sight this book, and note two institutions covered unfavorably are Penn State and Temple, both of which are state-supported.
If you are aware of any problems at specific schools, you can also complain to the president and board of trustees or other governing body. If you are a graduate of a college or university that is violating academic principles, your voice carries extra weight, and you should consider withholding contributions, and let the institution know of your decision.
If you are involved as a parent or student in attendance at a college or university, you should certainly pick courses with care to avoid indoctrination courses. As this book suggests, the course description often makes it clear that it is devoted to indoctrination. In some cases you can also look at the syllabus in advance of taking the course, and that provides extensive detail not found in the course description in the catalog.
You can also check any relevant Web sites, such as that of the professor or the department. You might also pay the professor a visit to see for yourself what he is made of and what kind of teacher he is likely to be.
It has reached a sorry point of academic degeneration, but before taking a course you may want to check the professors degrees and other qualifications. As the book demonstrates, many professors are teaching courses beyond their expertise. This sometimes shows up in professors who have no degrees or special academic training in the area of their teaching.
Finally, you might consult course guides often published by students. When I was at the University of Pennsylvania, the student course guide was a must read. You can also find out a lot about a course and its professor by asking other students who have taken it and asking your academic advisers about what they know about any given course or professor.
You can also fight for academic integrity by supporting Mr. Horowitz’s organization, The Freedom Foundation, reading his books and other publications, and staying up to date on education issues on his Web site, frontpage.com.
These professors and institutions that allow indoctrination courses are ripping off students in multiple ways. First, they are delivering a product that violates the most basic academic standards. Second, they are not delivering an education and are not teaching students how to think. Third, they are often teaching nonsense or something close to it.
The importance of putting an end to these academic abuses cannot be overstated. The colleges and universities are turning out students who don’t know how to think, who are often political zombies brainwashed into accepting radical idea, who are inclined to radical and often socialist values and who often come out hating their country instead of loving it.
This means they also come out ill-prepared to be productive citizens with sound ideas about government and our society. Nothing could be more destructive to America and what it stands for than the one-party classrooms described in this important volume.
On another note, read the chapter on Columbia University, President Obama’s alma mater, and you will quickly understand how President Obama picked up some of his socialist and other radical ideas and how he developed a hate-America strain.
Yes, teachers and teaching have consequences and they help determine the nature and future of a nation. And with the war on terror, we sometimes forget some of the most serious internal threats, such as the undermining of our democracy by colleges and universities.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
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theguy01010 wrote on Mar 19, 2009 2:25 AM:
Seriously? Are you really saying that US society wasn't overtly racist before the Civil Rights movement? Are you saying we had segregated our army and sports league just for the fun of it? Lynchings didn't really happen? Birth of the Nation did so well because of the cinematography? "