The Politicization of Academia

This is an open secret.  For years now, academia has become more and more politicized, and only in one way.  It used to be that universities were bastions of the exchange of ideas and the pursuit of knowledge.  Now, they are nothing more than highfalutin madrassas of the left, redoubts protecting liberal zealots masquerading as professors trying to inculcate young, impressionable and quite malleable minds with the only true religion, liberalism.

Or so it seems.

There has been a spate of revelations over the past few months where liberal professors have been outed by the very people whom they see as acolytes:  Their students.  Lest you think I'm making this up:

Don't discredit the message because of the messenger. Remember, José Canseco, not noted for being balanced and insightful, did out Major League Baseball's use of performance enhancing drugs.  These are the very people who seek to convert students to the cause of liberalism.

The drumbeat goes on:

Note the schools at which these professors teach.  These aren't marginal schools that aren't accredited, but fine schools like MIT, Michigan, Akron, Alabama (I know, I know) and other schools worthy of the lofty title of university.

But if you think this is all hearsay, try this one on for size:  There's a site called profaganda.com where college students are invited to rate their professors by their political bias, whether it be liberal or conservative.  I clicked on recent ratings and this is what I found:

http://profaganda.com/recent-professor-ratings/


Admittedly, the number of reviews provides a small sample size, but the reviews are consistent in labeling professors as Far Left Leaning or Left Leaning.  It's hard to argue with that.

Think about it for a minute:  What school in the country is identified as being conservative?  Chicago, perhaps?  But is it really?  I did a brief online search for conservative schools in the US and came up with this:

http://www.thebestschools.org/rankings/20-best-conservative-colleges-america/

Although I recognize some of the schools on that list, two things jump out at me:  Of the twenty schools listed, only three would be considered immediately identifiable:  BYU, Texas A&M and Pepperdine.  The rest are either quite small or very, very religious (which includes BYU).  Missing on this list are the likes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, Notre Dame....in other words, there's a huge disparity.  Well, at least I think there is.  When I changed my search from What are the most conservative schools in the country?  to What are the most liberal schools in the country?  I could only find one list -- by the Huffington Post.  Most of the results to my second query dealt with a liberal arts education.  But my first search resulted in a few dozen such lists, almost as if the schools deserved to be on a list equal to a sex offenders registry to warn people what schools not to attend.  It's also worth pointing out that many of the schools on the HuffPo list were baby Ivy League schools.

Having been in academia as both a student -- Master's and Law -- and a professor, I've seen first hand how liberal most faculties can be.  It's nauseating.  What is supposed to be a petri dish of thought and debate is instead at once an incubator for one side's message as well as a rallying point for attacks on the opposition.  That's not what universities are supposed to be.

In fact, the notion that universities are the functional equivalent to madrassas is quite apt.  Think about it:  About the only thing different between the two scenarios is the dress and the language.

Otherwise, the message is the same:  Do not tolerate opposition.

That is positively un-American.

(c) 2015 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles