“The
source of our current ills – the lawlessness in our streets, the
destruction of our borders, the racist ‘equity’ policies of the
Democrat Party, the “woke” derelictions of our military leaders,
can all be traced to the indoctrination of our educated classes in
hatreds spawned by cultural Marxism.”
–David
Horowitz, ‘De-Fund the Universities!’
The
Duke of Wellington reportedly stated that the battle of Waterloo was
won on the fields of Eton College. George Orwell countered that,
“Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of
Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost
there.”
America’s
battles against foreign and domestic enemies have been lost in our
‘Etons’, our schools and universities which have turned their
graduates against the country and its values.
The
source of our social and political crises is the destruction of our
educational institutions through a successful fifty-year effort by
radical activists to purge conservatives and patriots from American
academic faculties. This was followed by a massive reconstruction of
the academic curriculum and the transformation of universities into
one-party indoctrination and recruitment centers for the
anti-American left.
We at
the David Horowitz Freedom Center were among the first to confront
the problem and take the battle to campuses across the country, but
as the last conservative faculty are purged and conservative students
are silenced, the old remedies of adversarial dialogue and debate are
no longer available. Conservative speakers are violently assaulted on
campuses and events are shut down. College administrators are finding
ways to force out even tenured conservative faculty while mandatory
anti-white, anti-Jewish, anti-Asian and anti-patriotic “diversity”
measures keep the doors firmly closed to conservatives and patriots.
It’s
time to recognize that this is an existential threat to America and
to take action against it. That’s why we’re calling for the
defunding of universities.
A
Survey of the Problem
Universities
have become efficient indoctrination centers that couldn’t be any
more destructive if they were being run by China and Russia.
A
Harvard University survey of the 2022 graduates showed that only 4%
were Republicans while the majority were Democrats. The 7% of
students that were conservative when they entered college declined to
4% when they graduated. 55% support the Green New Deal, 54% want to
eliminate border security, and 33% back the terrorist-sponsored
boycott of Israel.
This
indoctrination is the work of a university where 82% of the faculty
are leftists, 16% are moderates and only 1.4% are conservatives.
Harvard is America’s Eton: shaping the leaders of the country, and
those leaders are being indoctrinated to destroy the nation. .
Biden’s
proposal to cancel student loan debt would be a disproportionately
Democrat bailout with Harvard students owing over $1 billion and Yale
students (where only 5% would admit to voting for Trump) at $760
million. Not only shouldn’t we be spending billions on bailouts for
this corrupt leftist system, we should, as David Horowitz wrote,
defund it altogether.
A
report by Open the Books found that eight Ivy League schools received
$4.3 billion in federal funding every year in the previous decade. In
2021-2022, the government spent $234 billion on grants, loans and
other subsidies for college students. Biden’s illegal student loan
bailout alone could cost over $400 billion. State spending on public
colleges topped $100 billion. In the midst of massive inflation,
unsustainable amounts of money are being spent on colleges. Students
are going deeply into debt and that debt is eventually passed on to
the American People.
What
have taxpayers gotten for the billions lavished on these elite
indoctrination centers?
Crime
Wave
Studies
estimate the annual costs of crime in the trillions. A single murder
costs $17 million. Around 5,000 more people were murdered in 2020 due
to the devastating impact of Black Lives Matter’s de-fund the
police campaign, the decriminalization of crimes and pandemic prison
releases. Aside from the horrific suffering, that’s $85 billion in
costs created by policies that came out of academia.
8 in
10 college students supported the BLM race riots which caused
billions in damages. Support for the race riots increased with each
level of education. High school graduates were the least likely to
support the riots while postgraduate degree holders were the most
likely to. Nearly every university administration endorsed the riots
and the racist hatred behind them.
BLM
activists were more likely to have college degrees and campuses
served as organizing hubs for the racist movement. But the crime wave
destroying our communities is even more deeply rooted in campuses
than that. From Michel Foucault to Angela Davis to Mariame Kaba,
eliminating police, prisons and the criminal justice system were the
inventions of academics and were incubated at college campuses,
including Kaba at Barnard University and Davis at UC Santa Cruz which
has received millions to promote the idea, and at Harvard, which
teaches a course on it.
Restorative
Justice, which proposes to replace crime and punishment with
forgiveness for the perpetrator, originated in part from Goshen
College in Indiana which now offers both a major and a minor in
letting criminals go unpunished. Police defunding has been often
directly credited to Alex Vitale: a sociology professor at Brooklyn
College. The misery, the robberies, rapes and murders that have
engulfed entire cities, were hatched out of academic theories at
colleges that, like UC Santa Cruz and Brooklyn College, are taxpayer
funded.
But
this legalization of crime would not have been possible without the
academic hate of “Critical Race Theory” that has poisoned race
relations and pitted Americans against each other.
Racism
In
2007, 75% of white people and 55% of black people believed race
relations were good. Today only 43% of white people and 33% of black
still do. Rather than bringing us together, universities tore us
apart with racist descriptions of America as a “white supremacist”
society created and still defined by white racists which poisoned
generations of their graduates.
A Pew
survey found that black people with college degrees “are more
likely than those with less education to say being black has hurt
their ability to get ahead.” White people with college degrees were
more likely to believe in the racist myth of “white skin
privilege,” – a term invented by the terrorist Weather
Underground in the 1960s whose leaders subsequently became
influential college teachers. College graduates in other surveys were
more likely to attribute problems to systemic racism – which is
outlawed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act – than to individual
choices, and to support discriminatory equity policies such as
affirmative action.
With
critical race theory courses being taught in every leading law
school, including Harvard, Columbia and Yale, and ‘whiteness
studies’ courses in colleges across the country, billions in
taxpayers money are being spent to employ and train a generation of
racists.
Some
of the country’s most notorious bigots enjoy comfortable academic
perches including Ibram X. Kendi: the inventor of the bogus term
“anti-racism,” which he defines as agreeing with the
anti-American racist left. Kendi heads the $10 million Center for
Antiracist Research at Boston University, Robin DiAngelo, the author
of ‘White Fragility’, is an associate professor at the University
of Washington, and Cornel West, was until recently positioned at
Harvard where he helped to popularize the slogan “Treason to
Whiteness Is Loyalty To Humanity” of the academic journal, ‘Race
Traitor’ in the racist field of ‘whiteness studies’.
And
it’s paying off.
A 2022
survey of college students found that 78% believe “systemic racism
is a big problem in our society – even though it is illegal and
there is no tsunami of lawsuits, which would be the case if this
claim had any truth in it. 50% believe “America is inextricably
linked to white supremacy”. Why would anyone support such a
country, or believe such intellectual garbage?
Because
they’ve been relentlessly indoctrinated to hate their country.
Indoctrination
College
campuses have come to resemble Communist China with constant
indoctrination and harsh penalties for political dissent.
At
MIT, 68% of students were afraid to disagree with a professor about a
controversial topic and 40% of faculty members were keeping quiet to
avoid getting into trouble. A majority of students at the University
of Wisconsin have stayed quiet in class and 37%, mostly conservative,
felt pressured to agree with an instructor’s position.
These
numbers hold true in national surveys where majorities of students
are keeping quiet.
Universities
have become a political monoculture and the indoctrination is going
one way.
Over
half the college of college departments in one survey did not have a
single registered Republican faculty member. Only 61 Republican
professors were found in 65 departments with Democrats outnumbering
Republicans ten to one. It was estimated that, “Republicans make up
4% of historians, 3% of sociologists, and a mere 2% of literature
professors.”
Mandatory
diversity statements and racial quotas are used to keep a new
generation of conservative professors from even being able to get
inside to become tenure-track faculty. That systemic discrimination
ought to be illegal, instead it’s being funded by conservative
taxpayers.
Dominated
by leftist faculty, universities are indoctrinating students with
their ideology.
55% of
liberal students, 37% of independent students, and 32% of
conservative students in one survey said that their classes left them
with a negative view of America. 57% of the liberal students, 35% of
the independents and 12% of the conservative students were not proud
to be Americans. 61% of the liberals, 38% of the independents and 16%
of the conservatives came away with a negative view of capitalism. Is
that American education or Marxist education?
College
has become a standard rite of passage and the radical indoctrination
on campuses is warping not only a select group, but the country as a
whole. Generations are emerging who are not merely liberal, but
support criminals and racists, and the destruction of America.
With
no pride in their own country, college students are more likely to
support dismantling it.
Open
Borders and Illegal Invaders
As
many as half a million illegal aliens attend colleges in the United
States. Beyond the huge numbers of illegals benefiting from taxpayer
funds, open borders are a university project.
After
President Trump’s victory, the American Association of University
Professors called for colleges to become “sanctuary campuses”.
Columbia University’s Provost declared that the college would not
“allow immigration officials on our campuses without a warrant.”
Chancellor Timothy P. White asserted that Cal State “will not enter
into agreements with state or local law enforcement agencies,
Homeland Security or any other federal department for the enforcement
of federal immigration law.”
Over
600 college presidents signed a letter in support of the DACA illegal
alien program.
The
2022 Open Borders Conference was sponsored by the University of Texas
at Austin. A previous conference featured an Academics Against
Borders panel.
César
Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a prominent supporter of eliminating
ICE, uses his platform as a civil rights professor at Ohio State to
wage war on the nation’s borders. And he’s not alone. Faculty at
Northwestern and Johns Hopkins have pressured their institutions to
end contracts with ICE. Appearances by ICE officials have been shut
down by protests.
Books
and articles like “The Case for Getting Rid of Borders—Completely”
and “Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration” flow
from George Mason University professors.
Some
universities actively urge students to engage in anti-border activism
while others even transport them down to the border and provide
college credit for anti-border activism.
All of
that open borders activism has trickled down to the student body.
In a
poll asking whether the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
should be abolished, 44% of students wanted to eliminate it and only
30% wanted to keep it.
A
majority of white high school graduates supported expanding the
border wall to stem the invasion. 63% of white college students
opposed such a move. So did 72% of post-grads.
Universities
have indoctrinated students to believe that America should not exist.
A nation that should not exist, also should not have borders. Or the
right to defend itself against enemies.
Disloyalty
and Treason
A
Quinnipiac survey asked if America were invaded, would they stay and
fight or leave the country. Those who had college degrees were more
likely to leave than those without. And young people were the most
likely to leave and the least likely to stay and fight. They’re
also the likeliest to have positive views of China and other enemy
nations.
College
students at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton and many others, who
are taught that America is racist and evil, are turning against their
country and siding with our enemies. Surveys have found that high
school students are more likely to be patriotic than college
students.
A New
York Times poll showed that only 26% of Democrat voters with a
bachelor’s degree agreed that America is the greatest country in
the world. Only 12% of Democrats 18-29 believed that America was the
greatest nation. And why would they when they’re taught otherwise?
Universities
aren’t just critical of the country, they harbor the worst enemies
of America, Israel, Europe and other free nations. That’s why
campuses are where American and Israeli flags are burned, and
conservative and Jewish students are harassed on a regular basis.
From
Edward Said’s Orientalism to Hatem Bazian, the co-founder of
Students for Justice in Palestine, university campuses have become
terror hubs. It’s not unusual to find PFLP terrorist flags waved
during Israeli Apartheid Week or to see college paper editorials like
Amherst College’s ‘In Defense of Hamas’. On American campuses,
32% of Jewish college students reported experiencing antisemitism,
50% hid their identity and 65% felt unsafe. And no wonder when
college students will openly pledge money to Hamas to bomb Israeli
schools.
Exploiting
this treasonous atmosphere, the People’s Republic of China has
riddled campuses with its Confucius Institutes that act at the
direction of the Chinese Communist Party, and foreign donors have
used campuses to direct money to politicians, including Joe Biden,
through the Penn Biden Center. With $12 billion in foreign money
going to universities, much of it untraced, the potential for
corruption is endless. Millions have flowed from terror sponsors
including Qatar, Pakistan and even Iran. And it’s no coincidence
that they are funding educational systems that undermine patriotism
and promote the cause of America’s enemies.
Universities
are being funded to indoctrinate students with hatred for America and
for Jews. And they’re ‘double-dipping’ by taking money from
America’s enemies and from American taxpayers.
The
Corruption of Institutions
We are
surrounded by national institutions that have been corrupted from
their original purposes by the indoctrination that their leaders and
employees received at universities. Big Tech censorship, military
wokeness, the end of objective reporting and the radicalization of
corporations are the consequences of a university education that puts
wokeness above all else.
Media
bias begins in the communications courses and journalism schools that
teach that objectivity is a fallacy. Arizona State University’s
Cronkite School of Journalism urges going “beyond objectivity”
and “explores how the idea of objectivity has evolved” with “the
values of younger journalists and modern newsrooms to better serve
today’s diverse audiences.”
Military
wokeness began with the takeover of service branch academies by
non-military faculty from outside universities. It’s been embedded
at the top by brass like Gen. Mark Milley, who has a master’s
degree in international relations from Columbia University, and
refers to Trump supporters as “Nazis” and is concerned about
right-wing “domestic terrorists” and “white rage.”
Big
Tech companies used to uphold libertarian values until they were
flooded by a new generation of graduates who demanded that they go
woke. Corporate wokeness across industries is being driven by younger
workers, a phenomenon captured from the New York Times, “The
37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them” to
the Daily Mail, “Gen Z workers are Terrifying Millennial Bosses
with Woke Demands”
Campus
politics, safe spaces, entitlement and political intimidation moved
over to the workplace and transformed Corporate America. Instead of
graduates encountering the “real world”, the real world
accommodated them so that, whether we want to or not, we all live on
college campuses.
The
college experience is transforming all of our lives even if we never
set foot on a campus.
The
Democrats, corporations, judges and entertainers all take their cues
from the academic Left and dramatically upend our lives based on the
latest theory coming out of academia. Universities have successfully
radicalized the leaders, the executives, and the generals who
actually run our society and put their values ahead of voters and
shareholders.
A
leftist minority that has used its disproportionate presence at
universities as a ‘lever’ to fundamentally shift our country out
of its place. Everyone successfully indoctrinated by that system has
entered the workforce ready to execute its most extreme ideas from
sexualizing children to eliminating prisons. Our leaders no longer
represent our values, only leftist values.
The
cost of that power grab has been the destruction of institutional
trust. Every institution taken over by the Left has lost its trust
rating. Last year, Gallup marked record low confidence in all
institutions. Average confidence is now at 27% which is lower than it
has been in over 40 years.
While
the media and public schools have been rated poorly for some time, in
the last few years there has been a sharp decline in trust for the
military and banks due to their growing wokeness. Universities have
led to a profound divide in our culture in which we no longer agree
on basic moral and legal issues like the value of human life, the
right to free speech, how elections are run and whether entire races
share collective guilt.
These
deep ruptures have led to two Americas and are leading both sides
toward civil war.
Why
De-Funding Matters
Universities
were once a vital link in the chain of knowledge and there are a
handful of principled institutions that may continue to serve that
role, but the majority no longer want to.
The
only hope of saving academic institutions of higher learning is to
force them to restore academic values and scholarly inquiries as the
basic and inviolable principles and practices of their classrooms.
And to withhold all funding from all sources to their ideological
programs, fields, and faculties. Some states are forcing universities
to cease demanding diversity statements and that’s a start, but
they should all be defunded until academics replace ideology.
The
‘self-defunding’ of the ideology-ridden humanities is already
underway with a sharp decline in students majoring in them, from 20%
to 7% at Harvard in only a decade, a decline of half at Vassar, Tufts
and many other leading colleges, but as long as universities have
infinite taxpayer money and endless endowments, the leftists who have
hijacked them will continue to pour their poisons into the nation’s
bloodstream.
In
order to restore their funding, university faculties have to become
ideologically and politically diverse. They have to restore standards
that are not shaped by racist equity agendas, but by the requirements
of scholarly inquiry and disinterested knowledge.
The
massive pile of institutional and student debt, and the runaway
growth of administrators, has made universities financially
unsustainable for both students and institutions. Defunding them is
the only way to deliver a ‘shock to the system’ that can save
higher learning in America, and America itself.
by
Daniel Greenfield at frontpagemag.com on March 10, 2023
