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]]]]]]]]]] THE RADICALIZED UNIVERSITIES [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
by Natalie and Gerald Serkin (AtE Subscribers) (1/2/1989)
From CITIZEN NEWS, New Fairfield, Conn., 12/21/88
[Kindly uploaded by Freeman 06784LOEB]
At Dartmouth College, a student newspaper reports on an evidently
incompetent and foul-mouthed professor. When the reporters call the
professor to ask if he would care to respond, he treats them to an abusive
tirade: "You're racist dogs, man. You're the scum of the m------f----n
earth." Because the professor is black, the college charges the students
with racism and suspends for a year-and-a-half three of the four.
At the University of Pennsylvania, a lecturer in legal studies wonders
innocently why blacks do not commemorate the Thirteenth Amendment
prohibiting slavery as the Jews commemorate at Passover the end of Jewish
slavery in Egypt. He is compelled to apologize, is suspended for one
semester, and is required to enroll in a "racial sensitivity" seminar.
At Harvard University, a professor discussing race and social mobility
is charged with racism. At another college, a professor conducting a sur-
vey is told that his question about age is "ageism," which is taboo.
These examples of erratic behavior at our colleges and universities
are virtually unknown to the general public. Less dramatic but more sig-
nificant examples of the degeneration of higher education are even less
known to the public. Faculties and administrations have the means to pun-
ish whistle-blowers like the student reporters at Dartmouth.
To bring the facts into the open and rally the opposition, the Nation-
al Association of Scholars held a three-day conference from November 11 to
13 in New York City on the theme, "Reclaiming the Academy: Responses to
the Radicalization of the University."
The prevailing notion of people outside the universities is that those
institutions have returned to normal since the turbulence of the 1960s.
But the peace of the campuses is the peace that follows capture and subju-
gation. The storm-troopers of the '60s are the faculty and administrators
of today. The radical ideas of the '60s are the new orthodoxy in the uni-
versities today.
The decay of education through radicalization takes three paths.
OPPRESSION STUDIES
First, we find a proliferation of courses introduced for political in-
doctrination rather than for their educational value. Courses in Black
Studies, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Peace
Studies, and the rest of the melange that Professor Thomas Short of Kenyon
College called "Oppression Studies," are hardly the stuff that produces an
educated person.
Secondly, radicalization has trashed the traditional courses. As Paul
Hollander, Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, put it, the adversary culture of a few years ago is now the
dominant force of the academy.
MARXISM THRIVES
Marxism, discredited everywhere else in the world, survives and
thrives in American universities.
The teaching in the typical American university has these basic prem-
ises: American society is unjust, the United States and other Western
democracies are responsible for the poverty in the rest of the world,
there are no foreign threats to the United States, anti-Communism is re-
sponsible for wrong policies of the United States; and Western culture is
so tainted by racism, sexism, and imperialism that it must not be trans-
mitted to the next generation.
Recall how Stanford University gutted its Western Civilization course
to the chant of "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture's got to go"!
DECONSTRUCTIONISM
In some disciplines at our more "progressive" universities, the con-
cept of "deconstructionism" is in vogue. Deconstructionism says that
writing means anything that a reader wants it to mean, regardless of what
the writer meant. Proponents define deconstructionism, in arcane phrase-
ology designed to cover up its destructive irrationality, as "destroying
the illusion that the signifier has any fixed relation to the signified."
Our elite universities are well on their way to producing the most
confused despisers of their own culture and country that the world has
ever seen, at the cost of only $80,000 per muddled head.
THE THOUGHT POLICE
Finally, radicalization is wrecking the academy by closing out oppos-
ing viewpoints. The one-sided political character of the faculty is pre-
served by the appointment-and-tenure process. As for the remnants of the
non-radical faculty, their teaching and research are subject to being re-
viewed by the campus "thought police" to be sure they do not offend the
new orthodoxy. In this and other ways, the non-radical faculty are intim-
idated into submission.
Visiting speakers unacceptable to the radicals are shouted down. Am-
bassador Jeane J. Kirkpatric described how her lectures at several univer-
sities were disrupted with the acquiescence of the university authorities.
Thirty to fifty protesters unconnected with the university would be bussed
in; would distribute a "Fact Sheet on Jeane Kirkpatrick," sometimes in
Spanish, without a single fact correct, the identical fact sheet on the
East Coast and the West; would spread themselves throughout the auditorium
and disrupt, making civil discourse impossible.
The intolerance of the left flourishes on the campuses because the
faculty and administrators have created a politicized environment that
permits it. These sick institutions are out of step with their society.
Yet insulated from criticism and controlled by a self-perpetuating clique
as they are, it is difficult to see how they are to be cured.
But that isn't preventing the resolute members of the National Asso-
ciation of Scholars from trying.
Copyright, N & G Sirkin, Sherman, Connecticut, 1988
[The writers, residence of Sherman, Connecticut, write biweekly in the
weekly CITIZEB BEWS of New Fairfield, Connecticut. The newspaper is
delivered free to all households in New Fairfield and Sherman.]
* * *
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