By Larry Elder
Thursday, April 25, 2013
That the older Boston bombing suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev,
became a terrorist strikes one as disturbing. That younger brother Dzhokhar
also became a terrorist strikes one as frightening.
Adjusting to new country can be trying and stressful. The
brothers' parents came to America, only to return to Russia. Tamerlan came at
age 16. A widely reported quote attributed to Tamerlan from 2010 says: "I
don't have one American friend. I don't understand them." According to his
aunt, Tamerlan became a devout Muslim. He reportedly once stood up and shouted
down his imam for praising Martin Luther King. One shocked witness recalled
Tamerlan yelling, "You cannot mention this guy because he's not a Muslim!"
So teenager Tamerlan found adjusting to America
difficult. But how to explain Dzhokhar, who came to America a year earlier than
his brother, at the age of 8?
Friends describe Dzhokhar as "Americanized" --
an outgoing, friendly pot-smoker who became a popular captain of his wrestling
team, a bright boy who never spoke about religion or Russia and never expressed
hostility toward America.
Dzhokhar attended high school at Cambridge Rindge and
Latin, a highly regarded school full of prominent alumni, including actors Ben
Affleck and Matt Damon, poet e.e. cummings, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eric
Cornell and basketball Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing. Dzhokhar then attended
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth in 2011, where he was a sophomore at the
time of the bombings.
What about the "education," especially in the
social sciences, that Dzhokhar likely received in high school and college? Did
the usual left-wing professors, who dominate in number and influence on nearly
all of America's college campuses, teach his courses? Did his instructors
stress America's imperfections and teach that racism, sexism and homophobia
remain major problems in America, that America is an imperial power that
dominates the world, that "Bush lied, people died" on the Iraq War,
that Abu Ghraib represents our American "military culture of abuse,"
which explains why so many foreigners "legitimately hate America,"
etc.?
How many in-class discussions and dorm bull sessions --
conducted among similarly educated and like-minded students sitting beneath
wall posters of Che Guevara -- turned into a chorus of attacks against American
"imperialism"?
The National Association of Scholars, a self-described
"independent membership association of academics," released a report
last year on the effect of academic bias in the University of California
system. Because of the lopsided domination in the number of liberal humanities
professors vs. the small number of conservatives in the same field, the 10 UC
campuses, they write, have become "a sanctuary for a narrow ideological
segment of the spectrum of social and political ideas."
Recent UC, San Diego syllabi include history courses like
"'Race, Riots and Violence in the U.S.' Exploring how different groups of
Americans have constructed competing notions of race, gender, labor and
national belonging by participating in street violence." And "African
American History in the 20th Century," which covers the transformation of
African America by "imperialism, migration, urbanization, desegregation,
and deindustrialization." And "American Women/American
Womanhood" includes topics in relation to "a dominant ideology of
womanhood ... witchcraft, evangelicalism, cult of domesticity, sexuality, rise
of industrial capitalism."
OK, that's far-left-wing California. But the Texas
affiliate found the same thing. In its recently released report on bias in
history classes at The University of Texas and Texas A&M University, NAS
Texas found "all too often the course readings gave strong emphasis to
race, class or gender (RCG) social history, an emphasis so strong that it
diminished the attention given to other subjects in American history (such as
military, diplomatic, religious, intellectual history)."
Our colleges and universities today find themselves
stocked with '60s radicals, some of whom even committed acts of violence. They
include:
Former fugitive Weather Underground co-founder terrorist
Bill Ayers -- a now-retired professor who enjoyed tenure as a professor of
education at University of Illinois at Chicago.
Bernardine Dohrn -- Ayers' wife and a former WU leader,
who declared war on the U.S., spent three years on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted
list and became an associate professor of law at Northwestern University School
of Law.
Convicted murderer and former Weather Underground
terrorist Kathy Boudin -- a Columbia University professor and
scholar-in-residence at NYU.
Former WU member Howard Machtinger -- linked to a deadly
unsolved bombing of a San Francisco police station, he enjoys retirement from
his career as professor at North Carolina Central University and teaching
fellows director at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill's School of
Education.
WU member Susan Rosenberg -- spent years on the run after
her indictment for WU's Brinks robbery and triple murder, until apprehended for
moving, according to The New York Times, "740 pounds of dynamite and
weapons, including a submachine gun." Rosenberg spent 16 years in prison
until President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence, after which she took a job
teaching at John Jay College.
After the Tsarnaevs became suspects, the president of
Chechnya said: "Any attempt to link Chechnya and the Tsarnaevs, if indeed
they are guilty, is futile. They grew up in the U.S.A., their viewpoints and
beliefs were formed there. You must look for the roots of their evil in
America."
He is right. The search for the "why" starts
right here.
