By Kate Hardiman
Thursday, June 16, 2016
At least one professor in America does not feel the Bern.
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Professor Jack
Stauder says his political and ideological conversion away from socialism and
Marxism occurred when he actually witnessed these systems in action.
After traveling to more than 110 countries to pursue
various forms of research, notably cultural anthropology, Stauder described his
conversion from Marxism as a process of disillusionment.
“I gradually became disenchanted with Marxism by visiting
many of the countries that had tried to shape their societies to conform to its
doctrines. I was disillusioned by the realities I saw in … socialist countries
– the USSR, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, etc,” Stauder told The College Fix via email.
“I came to recognize that socialism doesn’t work, and
that its ‘revolutionary’ imposition inevitably leads to cruelty, injustice and
the loss of freedom,” the professor continued.
“I could see the same pattern in the many failed
left-wing revolutions of Latin America and elsewhere. By combining actual
travel with the historical study of socialism and revolution, I succeeded in
disabusing myself of the utopian notions that fatally attract people to leftist
ideas.”
Re-embracing his Western farming and ranching homes of
Colorado and New Mexico also helped solidify Stauder’s rejection of leftist
ideals, he said.
“Returning to my roots also helped my transition away
from the leftist ideology that exists in the intellectual atmosphere of
university life,” Stauder noted. “By spending my summers in the Southwest in the
company of rural working people, farmers and ranchers, I developed perspectives
on the real world very different from those that prevail in the academic
world.”
Academic institutions are breeding grounds for leftist
ideals, according to Stauder, as “academics in general are intellectuals, and
hence susceptible to ideologies.”
“People seem to feel the need to believe in something,
and when intellectuals abandon traditional religion, as most have done, they
tend to seek substitutes,” he said.
Political campus movements against the Vietnam war in the
1960s and 1970s inspired Stauder’s initial interest in leftist political
ideals. For many years, he identified as a Marxist and a radical.
These protests were common and influential on the
campuses where he studied and worked, notably that of Harvard College. There,
Stauder began his undergraduate career studying American history and literature
and eventually switched to cultural anthropology after working with a Maya
community in Chiapas, Mexico. This experience inspired him to pursue a Ph.D. in
anthropology at Cambridge University in England.
Stauder’s most recent research bridges anthropology and
ecology and he recently published The
Blue and the Green: A Cultural Ecological History of an Arizona Ranching
Community.
When asked about the current bias in academia, Stauder
pointed to the overwhelming amount of research confirming a leftist bias.
“Academia has developed its own culture, a subset of the
wider elite culture of the ‘new upper class’ (see Charles Murray, Coming Apart). As in all cultures,
pressures exist to conform one’s thoughts and actions, and those who do not
conform tend to be marginalized or suppressed,” Stauder said.
Though it may be challenging, Stauder encourages
professors simply to “be individuals. Seek the truth, and stand by it.”
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