By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Over the past 10 years, I have written columns variously
titled "Academic Cesspools," "Academic Dishonesty,"
"The Shame of Higher Education," "Academic Rot" and
"Indoctrination of Our Youth." Therefore, I was not surprised by
David Feith's April 5th Wall Street Journal article, "The Golf Shot Heard
Round the Academic World." In it, Feith tells of a golf course
conversation between Barry Mills, the president of Bowdoin College, in
Brunswick, Maine, and philanthropist Thomas Klingenstein. Klingenstein voiced
disapproval of campus celebration of diversity and ethnic differences while
there's "not enough celebration of our common American identity."
Because Klingenstein wouldn't help finance the college's
diversity craze, Mills insinuated, in remarks to the student body, that
Klingenstein is a racist. Mills also told students: "We must be willing to
entertain diverse perspectives throughout our community. ... Diversity of ideas
at all levels of the college is crucial for our credibility and for our
educational mission."
Klingenstein decided to check out Mills' commitment to
diverse perspectives by commissioning the National Association of Scholars to
examine Bowdoin's intellectual diversity, rigorous academics and civic
identity. Its report -- "What Does Bowdoin Teach?" -- isn't pretty.
There are "no curricular requirements that center on the American founding
or the history of the nation." Even history majors aren't required to take
a single course in American history. In the history department, no course is
devoted to American political, military, diplomatic or intellectual history;
the only ones available are organized around some aspect of race, class, gender
or sexuality.
Some of the 37 seminars designated for freshmen are
"Affirmative Action and U.S. Society," "Fictions of
Freedom," "Racism," "Queer Gardens," "Sexual Life
of Colonialism" and "Modern Western Prostitutes." As for
political diversity, the report estimates that "four or five out of
approximately 182 full-time faculty members might be described as politically
conservative." During the 2012 presidential campaign, 100 percent of
faculty donations went to President Barack Obama. Despite political bias and
mediocrity, in 2012, Bowdoin was ranked sixth among the nation's liberal arts
colleges in U.S. News & World Report and was ranked 14th on Forbes
magazine's list of America's top colleges. That ought to tell us how much faith
should be put in college rankings.
I applaud Klingenstein for not making a contribution to a
college agenda that is so common today. Wealthy donors are generous but tend to
be lazy and uninformed in their giving. They give large sums of money that
winds up supporting college agendas that are contemptuous of donors' values,
such as enlightened racism, anti-capitalism and Marxism. A rough rule of thumb
to discover modern-day racism is to search a college's website to see whether
it has vice presidents or deans of diversity and diversity programs. If so,
keep your money.
Recent evidence has emerged that some colleges have
become bold enough to hire former terrorists to teach and possibly indoctrinate
our young people. That's the case with Columbia University in the hiring of
convicted Weather Underground terrorist Kathy Boudin, who spent 22 years in
prison for the murder of two policemen and a Brink's guard. She now holds a
professorship at Columbia's School of Social Work. Her Weather Underground
comrade William Ayers is a professor of education on the faculty of the
University of Illinois at Chicago. Unrepentant, in the wake of 9/11, Ayers told
us: ''I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.'' Bernardine
Dohrn, his wife, is a professor at Northwestern University School of Law. Her
stated mission is to overthrow capitalism. Ayers and Dohrn, as well as the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright, are people who hate our nation and are longtime associates of
President Obama's. That might help in explaining our president's vision.
What we see on college campuses represents a dereliction
of duty by boards of trustees, which bear the ultimate responsibility. Wealthy
donors who care about the fraud of higher education should recognize that
there's nothing like the sound of pocketbooks snapping shut to open the closed
minds of college administrators.
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