The Left’s Siege of Our Universities

David Horowitz’s latest book chronicles the Left’s transformation of academic institutions into doctrinal training centers.

Barbara Kay January 5, 2018

Below is Barbara Kay's review of David Horowitz’s new book, “The Left in the Universities" which is volume 8 of The Black Book of the American Left, a multi-volume collection of David Horowitz's conservative writings that will, when completed, be the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to define the Left and its agenda. (Order HERE.) We encourage our readers to visit BlackBookOfTheAmericanLeft.com – which features Horowitz’s introductions to Volumes 1-8 of this 10-volume series, along with their tables of contents, reviews and interviews with the author.

In November, an incident regarding freedom of speech on campus took place at Ontario’s Wilfrid Laurier University that galvanized the attention of Canadians and of those with an interest in this subject beyond our borders.

A graduate student in the field of Communications, Lindsay Shepherd, used a short segment in class from a debate on TVOntario’s nightly issues show, The Agenda, to illustrate to her students how linguistic terminology can become contested terrain in the realm of ideas.

The presenting issue was freedom of speech; the vehicle for debate was the use of transgender pronouns. The segment Shepherd showed – without either approval or condemnation - included forceful pushback against “compelled speech” by Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto professor whose publicly avowed refusal to use constructed gender pronouns has in the past 18 months rocketed him, via a tsunami of vlogs and public appearances, from virtual obscurity outside the academy to continental celebrity.........

Here is a summary of what the Academic Bill of Rights would ensure:

• Faculty would be hired for their competence and knowledge and granted tenure “with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives.
• No faculty would be hired or fired or denied tenure “on the basis of his or her political beliefs”;
• Students would be graded on the basis of “reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge,” not on the basis of political or religious beliefs;
• Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences would “reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate.” Teachers are free to pursue to their own interests and perspectives, but “they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints”;
• Faculty should not use their courses “for the purpose of political, ideological, religious or anti-religious indoctrination”;
• Selection of speakers and allocation of funds for speakers programs should “promote intellectual pluralism”;
• Given that an environment of civil exchange is essential to a university, “the obstruction of invited campus speakers, destruction of campus literature or other effort to obstruct this exchange will not be tolerated”;
• Integrity of the research process and the professional societies formed to advance such research must be maintained. Thus, “academic institutions and professional societies should maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions within, or outside, their fields of inquiry.”..........To Read More....

My Take - While I conceptually agree with the rules outlined in the Academic Bill of Rights - this isn't attainable - this would require constant surveillance, and that simply won't work.

The one thing that will generate the changes listed is singular - economics. Take away the grant money, eliminate tenure, left they teach or promote what ever it is they want, but make all colleges and universities self funding. Get the government out of education, and end student loans. 

 Once all of that happens, the tuition will drop, and a whole lot of loser "professors" will lose their jobs because student enrollment will drop like a stone and I say good! 

 First, Because there's a lot of courses that are worthless to anyone except the universities and the loons who teach those courses. Second, the kids graduate with degrees that won't earn them enough money to pay back their loans - and they are their loans, they're not my loan and I shouldn't have my taxes go toward paying them. And third, there's entirely too many kids in college that shouldn't be there, and there are a lot of universites that need to shut down.

Take away those loans and sanity will set in and the universities will find a lot of empty classroom seats - at least for a while - until a bunch go out of business and the world of academia becomes far smaller, less influential, and far less expensive.

There will be one drawback to this though. This will dump a boat load of leftist loons into the employee market place who will become unemployable, and a drain on the welfare system.