Countering Indoctrination and Deception on Campus
The universities will not change without serious pressure.
Gentle persuasion and transparency will not do. Abolishing entire departments and firing the most egregious violators of equal opportunity have a much better chance of achieving needed reform at our universities.
This cynicism has been formed in recent years when I’ve had the chance to review a variety of organizations that have implemented Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies.
What I’ve found is that the DEI proponents are wily and ruthless operators. They are not Fifties liberals, the sort of people who twice voted for Adlai Stevenson for president or even the Sixties idealists who “got clean for Gene” McCarthy in New Hampshire. The modern-day faculty and administration zealots are hard-core leftists who are reluctant to accept that reasonable opposition even exists. When you possess that mindset, it is easy to justify almost anything.
Consider the deceptiveness of DEI.
The “Diversity” component was allegedly supposed to produce a diverse group with diverse viewpoints, the classic marketplace of ideas. The actual practice has fostered an intolerant league of the like-minded. You can find a larger array of political differences in a car repair shop than in a university sociology department.
The “Equity” part is also a ruse, because although it may give lip service to equal opportunity, its real aim is equal result; a goal which often cannot be achieved without illegal discrimination.
The “Inclusion” portion is a cruel joke. It is clear that even the mildest dissent can quickly end one’s career.
Those principles have produced practices that are designed to hide, distract, and intimidate.
That’s why any reviewers of university practices are well-advised to look beneath the surface. It has become common knowledge that the English Departments at many schools keep their name but instead of celebrating the genius of authors, they treat those poor scribblers as if they were insects on a pin and carefully scrutinize them for signs of racism, sexism, colonialism, and homophobia.
Other university departments have their own types of camouflage. The most extreme case I found is a university Medieval and Renaissance Studies Department’s program “to change the way literature, history, and culture is (sic) taught in higher education. Giving educators the tools they need to engage students in discussions of the historical arcs of race-making and systemic racism will change the way future scholars, leaders and innovators in our country will think about equity and inclusion.”
In other words, a leftist indoctrination, but who would expect to find that in a Medieval and Renaissance Studies Department?
Keep in mind that such clever twists achieve far more than a jobs program for errant scholars. Instead of declaring “No moderates or conservatives need apply” they have slanted the standards so no moderates or conservatives would even waste time applying.
The political tilt also sends a chilling message to the students: We can get away with this.
When such bias goes unchallenged and uncorrected, this is also clear: “There is only one acceptable way of thinking here. Deviate from it at your own risk.”
In other words, shut up.
When a group is willing to distort the institutions and the common understanding of various terms to promote its agenda, it is important to stress transparency, so the general public learns about the problem.
Unfortunately, far more than transparency is needed. Steps must be taken to restore the vitality of the institutions and to promote genuine viewpoint diversity.
Fortunately, both of those goals are natural allies.
John Stuart Mill described the problem in his famous treatise On Liberty:
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
Let’s consider the ramifications of what Mill observed. A one-sided Political Science or History or Economics or Sociology Department is not a genuine department with healthy discourse and debate. It is as fake as a Hollywood film set.
Lose viewpoint diversity and in many subjects - aside from mathematics and a few others - the effectiveness, knowledge, and credibility of the department have been lost.
What that means is that departments where viewpoint diversity is absent or minimal should be abolished unless serious efforts are made to correct the problem by hiring or importing outsiders with diverse viewpoints.
Now as soon as such a proposal is surfaced, you’ll have critics alleging that it would mean the equivalent of putting witch doctors in medical schools. That straw man argument is far from sociology, political science, or economics departments that have next to no Republican faculty members and where the students (or the faculty for that matter) have never heard of Thomas Sowell.
Real transparency requires truth and the truth is that a slanted department is missing the scholarly debate that has long been recognized as a crucial part of academia.
Professor John M. Ellis wrote one of the best books on campus radicalism in 2020: The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, The Damage It Does, & What Can Be Done. He is aware of the general fear that reforms can create but reaches this conclusion:
There are well-known dangers in bringing governmental and public pressures to bear on institutions of higher education, and in normal times we should indeed respect their need for independence, which they usually require if they are to function properly. But when colleges and universities have so willfully ignored the purposes for which their independence was granted, and have corrupted themselves beyond their ability to self-repair, only outside intervention can restore them to the purpose for which they were created. It is certainly predictable that any serious attempt at reform of higher education will be met with howls of outrage from the campus radicals, and those howls will certainly include the cry of “political interference.” But such a protest need only be met with derision. Campus radicals complaining about political interference on campus, indeed!
All of the strategies outlined in this essay are needed. Their results will help many a student and faculty member who has been awaiting rescue.
But let’s be clear about a central point. Administrative and scholarly malpractice in our schools and universities has left many victims in its wake. There are people whose careers were thwarted or destroyed. There are students who had to work around or completely avoid the areas in which only one perspective was permitted.
Apologies and reforms are appropriate and yet ultimately, they will mainly help the scholars of the future. The ones affected by past and current practices are less likely to get the justice they deserve.
[FYI: My latest book, Pilate’s Magician: A Novel of the Resurrection, is now available on Amazon.]