Bias on American campuses

Larry Elder writes in this week’s JWR about an overwhelming Leftist bias among professors at American universities:

On college campuses across America, teachers influence students by running down America, demeaning capitalism, exaggerating “oppression” against minorities and women, and denouncing Republicans in general and George W. Bush in particular.

Actually, there is a dangerous trend in the United States whereby secular universities are moving further to the Left, and Christian religious colleges further to the right. This is creating a divided society among the “leaders of tomorrow” because what happens to the secular right? The religious left? Most of all, what happens to the centre?

Education, ideally, isn’t learning facts but is learning how to think critically. However, anyone who pretends that education isn’t a form of brainwashing is kidding themselves. After three to four years studying in a university, faculty, or department with a certain ideological bent, most people are absorbed into it no matter what happens. If the education system is only giving half of the picture, that’s a giant failing.

For example, in this week’s online version of the Link, an article discusses the possibility that Sheila Copps may run for the leadership of the Liberal party. An online user poll then asks students if they would vote for her as prime minister. The options – while predictably lame – don’t give any choice for students who wouldn’t because they find her too far to the left – only not left enough.

Concordia’s campus politics reflect a similar picture. There’s no left, right, and center in most CSU elections. There’s only left, lefter, and leftest. Of course, this is a union election, so that’s to be expected to some extent. But it does create a particular problem where the most left-wing slates automatically have an entire platform essentially custom-written for them. All they have to do is steal the latest ideas from socialism and – voila – a platform built on “human” (read: Palestinian) rights, aid for the poor, disabled and homeless, fighting for gender advocacy, support services, anti-corporate control on campus and in the media, and lower tuition. They don’t even have to think about it, and in an election campaign their issues come across as credible, well-researched, and powerful.

Anyone running in opposition has two choices. They can present a clear alternative to them by putting forth a more right-wing platform, which is immediate political suicide. Even a hint of it is enough to kill a campaign. Take last year’s CSU elections for example. The main group opposing the current extremist CSU was tarnished with allegations of being “right-wing” even though its politics probably fell slightly left of the NDP. The other alternative is to put forth a sort of non-platform, with issues that seem to be much less important. Either way is recipe for disaster.

Students who believe that tuition should be raised in order to improve education quality, those who don’t mind and even welcome advertising in the bathrooms, and those who believe that a person should be hired on merit, not skin colour, to administrate the university find that they are quickly drowned out. For professors, it’s even worse; academia being what it is, hold the wrong views and profs find themselves ostracized, unpublishable, and virtually unemployable.

I’ve said many times that too far Left is just as bad as too far Right. What is happening on university campuses deserves some attention.