Pajamas Media

College Mind Police Live to Brainwash Another Day

University of Delaware freshmen are made to undergo a "treatment" of political and cultural indoctrination. A scandal? You bet. Too bad nothing's being done about it.

April 9, 2008 - by Candace de Russy

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Last fall, University of Delaware President Patrick Harker appeared to pull the plug, once and for all, on a totalitarian-style dorm program for indoctrinating freshmen in the full complement of today’s radical dicta. But in fact, as the Wilmington News-Journal now reports, Harker passed the buck, as university administrators are wont to do in time of controversy, by lobbing the program to the faculty for what has proven to be a feckless “review.”

This “Residence Life,” so-called “citizenship” program would have remained under wraps except for whistle-blowing by indignant students and their parents, as well as groundbreaking efforts by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the National Association of Scholars (NAS) to investigate and expose the character of what the university, in its own Orwellian materials, called “the treatment.”

The program’s stated intent was for the approximately 7,000 students in U.D.’s residence halls to espouse, in FIRE’s words, “highly specific university-approved views on politics, race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism.”

Program materials for this ideological reeducation, which have been removed from the U.D. Website, included race/gender/class/sexual orientation “trainer” Shakti Butler’s definition of a racist as “all white people living in the United States” and her edict that “people of color cannot be racists.” An intrusive rating instrument, “Discovery Wheel,” was used to prompt students to admit to their putative racism, and they were instructed that the U.S. is as “an oppressive society” whose “structures of oppression” it is their “duty” to eliminate.

“The treatment” was also mandatory and punitive. Students were required to attend training sessions, group floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Advisers (RAs), who, having been coached in interrogating vulnerable freshmen, plied them with invasive questions. Thereafter students were rated on a scale of “best” to “worst,” according to how they complied with the prescribed campus orthodoxy. For example, students were grilled about when they first discovered their sexual identity. One resistant student who replied, “That is none of your damn business,” was written up as having one of the “wors[t] one-on-one” sessions, and identified by name and room number.

To its shame, the U.D. Faculty Senate could not muster the gumption in its review even to name, much less denounce, these abominations. It registered no outrage at a systemic thought-control process that mocks students’ constitutional right to freedom of conscience and expression — although it did, gingerly, chide the Residence Life staff for “on several occasions … [not] encouraging students to have an open and honest discussion.” The faculty pledged “that no one will be forced to participate, no notes will be taken or ratings applied,” as though these assurances guarantee an end to the verbal and psychological intimidation of students, and to cramming “correct” views down their throats. And, surely disingenuously, the faculty declared that there had been a lack of “clear understanding” of whether the program was voluntary or mandatory.

However, the faculty’s overriding failure, as the News-Journal and others strongly decried, was not to give example to all higher education by terminating the program, simply and irrevocably. Instead, as Faculty Senate President Alan Fox now vaguely notes, the faculty anticipates approving, later in the year, a “new program” with a continued but less narrow focus on diversity and gender. Moreover, the same Gestapo-like Residence Life administrators, who ought to have been summarily fired, will continue to administer it, albeit with annual faculty oversight.

One of Fox’s lamer, not to mention damning, excuses for the U.D. “treatment” is that “Every university has such programs available for students.” Thus he inadvertently raises an important, larger question, the extent of programs such as the one at U.D. on other campuses.

The N.A.S.’s Thomas Wood raises this issue in “How Many Delawares?,” a formidable investigative report on indoctrination in residence life. Wood’s research makes clear that the U.D. case is part of a broader phenomenon, a nationwide, progressivist, socially ruinous “movement” aimed, via behavior-modification techniques, at making “politically and culturally radical positions seem normal to campus life and uncontroversial.” As summarized in the “Editor’s Introduction” to what is perhaps Wood’s most insightful essay on the subject, “The Marriage of Affirmative Action and Transformative Education”:

The ideological force-feeding of undergraduate students that characterized the University of Delaware’s residential life program had numerous components: radical environmentalism, an attempt to stigmatize traditional moral sentiments, foregrounding questions of sexual orientation, efforts to promote deep distrust of American society, promotion of identity politics, and an aggressive focus on racial grievance. As we looked at other colleges and universities, we found this combination of themes to be widespread, but organized in a variety of ways. Residence halls aren’t the only venue. Many campuses have a contingent of administrators whose job seems to be to turn late adolescent social anxieties into radical alienation from American society … .

U.D. President Harker got it right when he decreed — with false promise as it turned out — that the campus’s repressive dorm program had to “be stopped immediately.” Shame on him, and all other university administrators, trustees and professors who cower before despotic campus “change agents” intent on upending American society. Shame on them all for flagrantly violating the public trust.

Dr. Candace de Russy, a nationally recognized writer and lecturer on education and cultural issues, is a regular contributor to National Review Online’s Phi Beta Cons.

56 Comments

John:

I can’t believe what I’m reading here… What happened to the idea of going to school to learn something useful?

Although I can believe the American educational system is in total disrepair. We teach math at the JC level, each year freshmen arrive for college level instruction unable to comprehend 8th grade arithmetic. Such a huge portion of the instruction time during the student’s first years are devoted to remedial course work, to the extent that it now takes 6 years to get a 4 year degree.

The nation’s schools are badly broken, and throwing money at the problem has seemingly not fixed it.

Apr 9, 2008 - 4:50 am Paul:

I’ve been reading University horror stories like this for almost three decades now. They have increased in severity over that time.

Nobody seems to have a plan on how to stop this nonsense. Being outraged and trotting out the ever present lawyers isn’t getting the job done.

Apr 9, 2008 - 5:21 am Sissy Willis:

We’re tasting the rotten fruits of the Soviet Union’s toxic targeting of our elite cultural institutions — the government, the entertainment industry, the press and academia — last century with memetic exudations of politically correct, multi-cultural Gramscian discourse designed to destroy the roots of the Tree of Liberty and replace the shining city upon a hill with the soul-deadening monoculture of a totalitarian state.

Apr 9, 2008 - 6:46 am dvd:

Fear Not, the educational establishment will be left without customers soon enough. How So you might rightfully ask? Truth is, the institutional left wing, is being unwound, Bandwidth will provide aleternatives to established locations where educational indoctrination has replaced learning. The shills so engaged, will wake up one day to the recognition that in the process of dumbing down, they themselves have fallen to such low standards, that their customers, parents and students will begin disconnecting en mass. By 2010 we will be well on our way to replacing the whole compromised bunch.

Apr 9, 2008 - 6:52 am Saltherring:

America’s education system is a national disgrace. Public schools, controlled by radical leftist unions, are more about introctrination than educating. And utopian universities are ever more endeavored to complete the brain-draining that began in K-12 than imparting knowledge and teaching critical thinking skills. What passes for 21st century education has become all about producing generations of obedient, simple-minded sheeple. Hitler, Stalin and Mao would smile and nod approvingly.

Apr 9, 2008 - 7:04 am Christian:

I spent 12 yrs working in residence life for a small college that effectively avoided the pc silliness that is present at most schools. I left, ultimately, because a new administration had come in and was pushing for this kind of thing so as not to appear “archaic.” I lost the war, so I sought and found a different career elsewhere.

Two observations here: National acredidation groups like SACS often pressure schools to add multi-culti programs under threat of a bad review. The bigger and UNMENTIONED problem at most schools is the lack of discipline from the Judicial office. Schools maintain a huge focus on retention, and to do so, they now excuse all sorts of campus crimes (drugs especially) to avoid the loss of students. The biggest problem on campus today is not racism or homophobia… it’s rampant lawlessness from students, threatening phonecalls from parents who want their kids’ behavior excused, and an administration that is clueless about the real and actual damage being done to the student body every single day.

Apr 9, 2008 - 7:19 am D:

Actually, it’s the Wilmington News Journal, not the Delaware News Journal.

Wilmington is Delaware’s largest city and the News Journal is the only major daily.

Apr 9, 2008 - 7:44 am wGraves:

One course of action is to go to their class and debate their ‘trainers’, pointing out the absurdity of their position. After they kick you out of school, sue for half of their endowment. Most 18 year olds don’t have the self-confidence to do this, but there are soldiers mustering out to go back to school who are a bit older, and who probably won’t stand for the BS.

Apr 9, 2008 - 8:12 am bianchi_roadie:

Eh, when I was a freshman (our school called them the more PC term “First Years”) we had a similar course. I really wouldn’t worry too much since kids just out of public high school are savvy enough to know BS when they see it and how to deal with it with as little of hassle as possible.

I predict all will go through the program, repeat the answers they know the instructors want to hear, then go on with their lives and forget the whole mess. Just like we all did.

Apr 9, 2008 - 8:27 am Fox2!:

The obvious answer is to provide only name, rank and student number.

Apr 9, 2008 - 8:53 am richard:

Who pays the wages of these inquisitors? Are they employees of the University? Is this their job? Some savings can surely be made here by dismissing them?

Apr 9, 2008 - 9:18 am Paulie:

UD alumni should withhold any contributions until the PC Nazis are history.

Apr 9, 2008 - 9:37 am Fat Man:

Optimistic Take: The thing about teenagers is that they are so contrary. Indoctrination like this will produce a generation of ferociously conservative kids.

Pessimistic Take: “It’s dead, Jim.” Stick a fork in it. The idea of paying $30,000 a year for this crap is offensive. But we will have no choice.

Apr 9, 2008 - 9:45 am Larry J:

Since the University of Deleware is a state institution, perhaps the only way to end this abomination is for the state legislature to zero fund the program. The best place to apply pressure is on the legislators. Have them call up the university officials and make them testify on the record that all white people are racists.

Apr 9, 2008 - 10:14 am tanstaafl:

Having heard actual college professors state it is their responsibility to inculcate their own personal (correct) belief structure/system into their captive audience…

…an in house dorm program to brainwash the residents into idiotic “thinking” goes hand in hand.

While parents pay actual money (quite a bit of it, these days) for their children to be subjected to such monumental and catastrophic ignorance.

Apr 9, 2008 - 10:22 am Doc LMNO:

When I went to college I was a commuter. I lived at home. Once in a while I felt like I missed out on something for not living on campus. Now It seems that I was simply unintentionally saving myself from the silliness of this garbage. I’m sure my eyes would have been aching from all the rolling they’d be doing anyway.

I don’t know if my college does anything like this. I plan to find out.

Apr 9, 2008 - 10:40 am AJ:

campuses are as dangerous as the fields in Iraq

these profs would do us all a favor and actually work a day in the real world and perhaps get a clue

marxists and fascists always indoctrinate the youth in order to achieve their goals

Apr 9, 2008 - 11:12 am jerry:

Perhaps we are taking the wrong approach by appealing to reason. Let us take the true American Way of dealing with the totalitarians who run State Universities and take this to the criminal and civil courts.

It would seem that the University of Delaware administration, public employees all, are engaged in a systematic conspiracy to violate the civil rights of its students. Seems to me that instead of FIRE appealing to the University to stop its unconstitutional assault on civil liberties they should instead go to the local federal prosecutor and push for a Grand Jury to investigate whether the University of Delaware is violating the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Getting hauled in front of a Grand Jury to explain why they should not be charged under the law would be a sobering experience for the PC crowd.

Apr 9, 2008 - 12:02 pm Increase Mather:

It’s worse than many think. Some large and not so large universities in the midwest will not hire anyone they think might be a Republican.

If you have a Ph.D and a strong business background you could be the “enemy”. I know of cases where search committees have eliminated resumes for interview because they looked Republican.

I’m not kidding.

Apr 9, 2008 - 12:05 pm David Thomson:

“…of a racist as “all white people living in the United States” and her edict that “people of color cannot be racists.”

This also well explains much of the “Barry” Obama campaign. The defenders of Rev. Jeremiah Wright truly don’t believe he is guilty of racism. At the end of the day, it is subtly hinted that all whites are racists unless they support Obama’s presidential ambitions. The very concept of “post racialism” is something of a con job. This is simply another way of saying that whites are forevermore guilty and must be make amends. Race hustlers never get past race. They want to make sure the wounds never heal.

Apr 9, 2008 - 12:18 pm R B:

Kids go into college quite open to what they are being told. Not giving them a well rounded view of everything that is being taught is quite dishonest on the professors side.They are very aware of what they are doing. Its to bad that the prof are so insecure with their beliefs that that feel that they have to take advantage of young adults in such a matter. Its kinda like a divorced parent continualy bad mouthing the other parent to their children to make themselves look good.

Apr 9, 2008 - 12:22 pm R&R:

Universities, especially humanities and social science departments, have long since ceased channeling received wisdom and have turned into liberal advocacy organizations. A good deal of what they do either subtly or overtly pushes liberal ideology.

One would have to be a fool to publicly be a Republican when applying for a tenure job or for rank advancement in the faculty in many departments. That is like painting a target on your back.

One should hold one’s head low and get a technically oriented degree at a university.

Apr 9, 2008 - 12:54 pm Brett:

The only indoctrination I remember from my time at U of Texas a decade ago was advice on studying in dorm rooms. Basically, it went: “There are only two things most people think about doing in their bedroom and neither is studying. You might want to find a place outside your dorm room to study.”

Good advice that was, too.

Apr 9, 2008 - 12:59 pm Ed:

Well, of course such programs should be required at all universities. They should teach that the sun goes around the Earth, too…

Apr 9, 2008 - 1:37 pm Chris:

I went to Brigham Young University. Not surprisingly, I didn’t get the kind of liberal indoctrinization that is being discussed here.

Apr 9, 2008 - 2:09 pm Dennis:

I just read a study that was conducted that said that the education people get in College does not change their political views.
If we take this at face value, (which is hard, I know), these programs are a waste of time and money.
They will most likely cause a backlash AFTER the kids have left and get old enough to realize what a bunch of crap had been thrown at them.
Having been in College later in life (Veteran), the kids mainly believe everything their teachers tell them, since it sounds just like what their high school and middle school teachers told them.
These programs are just a continuation of the “education” they had already been getting.
It takes a hard dose of reality for these ideas, which have been so smugly pushed at them their whole life, to change.
My favorite story is my friend who became a social worker. It took her about three months to realize everything she had been taught about poverty was a load of crap.
But let’s face it. Most people do not come in contact with hard reality (unless mugged), and continue to live in the fantasy land our educators (who have lived in an Ivory tower their whole lives) have constructed for them.
Just the fact many liberal arts professors still take communism seriously (at least as an intellectual branch of thinking) shows just how out there they are.
It is a proven failure, but they love it just the same.
The thing we have to take away from all of these “programs” is these academics believe so confidently they are right, they are willing to treat people badly to make them conform.
Of course, it is all to make “a better man” and the “perfect society”.

Apr 9, 2008 - 2:09 pm rob:

Keep in mind these are the same people who absolutely would go ape about any kind of non-denominational prayer or patriotic expression (those are not inclusive)in any public setting. It is not enough that you don’t have do those things, they cannot even be allowed around. Yet, this stuff is mandatory. And if you question it, you are a hatemonger. Democracies can die very quickly when totalitarians are not stopped.

Apr 9, 2008 - 2:18 pm KenB:

Let’s cut to the chase and call the Resident Advisers what they are: commissars.

Apr 9, 2008 - 2:47 pm mojo:

Too bad they didn’t try this in my dorm when I was in school. Woulda been some fun.

I’ve never seen an actual auto-da-fe, believe it or not.

Apr 9, 2008 - 2:49 pm Tom A:

The REALLY scary aspect of this “diversity” indoctrination is that it CONTINUES ON in the Corporate World. If you challenge or try to opt out of the program you can lose your job. Or, maybe even worse, you get to keep your job but are stigmatized, harassed and marginalized for the rest of your career.

Programs for diversity “training” or “awareness” are, of course, thinly veiled vehicles for forcing people of non-color to believe and accept that they are solely to blame for racial discrimination.

Apr 9, 2008 - 2:51 pm Kenneth:

I’m worried that these inquisitions will be applied not to just to the student body, but to the admissions office. Imagine having to pass a “one-on-one” session with one of these fascist busybodies before being admitted. Widespread use of these tactics could result in less access to higher education for conservative minded folks.

Apr 9, 2008 - 3:16 pm tanstaafl:

Democracies can die very quickly when totalitarians are not stopped.

The tactics and the agenda of the Left are dictatorial in spirit. The Left wants to foist its (limited and unimaginative) ways of thinking and seeing onto the society at large.

Already, it shamelessly uses courts and academic institutions to effect its agenda. Many courts and schools seem right on board with the plan. Self-proclaimed intellectuals see themselves as enlightened and responsible for the mind conditioning of we poor schlubs.

Several members of the Supreme Court, as we speak, believe a more enlightened approach is to look to standards of our European brethren in making rulings, rather than out own Constitution. A ruling like “Kelo” (eminent domain) should not have been possible in this country.

The Left and its politicians are responsible for the stupid and limiting “identity politics” in which this country has become immersed. Identity politics divides and sub divides people into “identity” groups, so you’re constantly seen in the context of whatever race/gender/nationality…whatever…you might match rather than simply an AHB (actual human being).

Under the Left’s ideal conditions, the only speech that would be “free” is the politically correct, pre-approved kind. All other speech could be prosecuted under “hate speech” statutes.

“Be afwaid, be very, very afwaid” (Elmer Fudd).

I consider the threat from all this to be a greater than that emanating from Islamo-fascists whose agenda (killing or enslaving we “unbelievers”) is at least more up front than the insidious and invidious Left in America today.

Apr 9, 2008 - 3:30 pm John D:

You would think that these institutions would at least have classes where the students learn the correct pronunciation of Chinese and Indian names. It is so embarassing when you mispronounce the bosses’ name.

Apr 9, 2008 - 3:52 pm P-Cakes:

As I sit in the Union Lounge at Cal State Sacramento, hoping to graduate in 6 weeks, I can’t help but feel the pain of students who will be coming in as freshmen in the fall. My college, like many if not all others, is infested with those who believe their liberal way is the only way.

I have been required to take courses in “multi-cultural” studies in “support” of my Criminal Justice major. Each and every class was nothing but a 50 minute bashing of “white oppressors” and “the evil American empire.” Instead of employing professors who have worked in law enforcement, the faculty (with a couple exceptions) is stacked with Ph.D.s who preach about how every white male cop is a power hungry racist.

I’m glad I commuted during my time here, being able to avoid the campus life that is nothing more than a daily protest against America. I truly feel that 90% of my time here was a complete waste. I feel for anyone who is thinking about going to college in order to get an education. It’s nothing more than a bought piece of paper for getting a job. So sad.

Apr 9, 2008 - 5:01 pm Brian Macker:

“For example, students were grilled about when they first discovered their sexual identity. One resistant student who replied, “That is none of your damn business,” was written up as having one of the “wors[t] one-on-one” sessions, and identified by name and room number.”

Sounds like scientology where you have to rat yourself out in order to “become clear”. Of course the information thus gained is later used to blackmail you.

Everyone has skeletons in their closets. It’s a big mistake to share your skeletons with someone who is not working in your best interest.

Apr 9, 2008 - 6:05 pm barb:

Heck, my son graduated from the Univ of Alaska/Anchorage in about 1997 and he was subjected to much of the same stuff that is noted in this article! He was a SA (student advisor) and all 3 RA’s on campus were openly gay, bi-sexual or Lesbian. They told the SA’s on a 2 day retreat and then asked the Student Advisors to identify their sexuality!! I was livid..my son said, forget it I will just deal with it. When I said I would complain anyway he said..’who do you think hired these RAs? Of course the Univ. knows their sexual orientation.”
The gay women were called ‘the Family’ and had gatherings that they expected him to attend as an SA.
I was so discouraged. He on the other hand just came to detest the whole thing.

Apr 9, 2008 - 8:21 pm Hyram Haram:

Someone needs to start a website where students can write about these indoctrination programs. Would help future students and parents to make good decisions about school selection.

Apr 9, 2008 - 8:24 pm M. Simon:

I was so discouraged. He on the other hand just came to detest the whole thing.

There is a backlash coming. A big backlash. I have read other articles on the subject where all involved (including the RAs) remarked “glad that is over”.

Apr 9, 2008 - 10:06 pm Chris R.:

Hyram has a good idea there. My wife and I own a web development company and we’ve decided to create that website.

My wife didn’t see that kind of stuff at SMU and I attended a technical school sans dorms. This is a terrible situation and parents need to have more information about schools before sending their kids off for attempted indoctrination.

We’ll have a site ready to go in two weeks and we will need data. If you have a story to share, use the link on my name above then the contact link on our site. I realize some schools may elect to block the website on their networks but they’re out of luck - I can easily bypass their countermeasures.

Publicly available testimonials will shine a very bright light on the offenders, and they will scurry away like their insect brethren.

Apr 10, 2008 - 1:06 am From the South:

I spent almost two decades at a state university in the deep South, leaving just a couple of years ago. I had colleagues who gave extra credit to students if they would attend church socials or even church services. The state college board interrupted a meeting devoted to the impending bankrupcy of the system to affirm that all dorms had to be single sex, and that single sex by floor or by tower was unacceptable. There were random room checks for men in the women’s dorms at night. (But not for women in the men’s dorms.) Many university functions,including graduation, opened with prayers to Jesus.

Overly zealous indoctrination comes from both ends of the spectrum. Ironically, I went from being regarded as a dreaded secular humanist radical at a state university in the South to being viewed as a conservative reactionary at a religous university in the West. My views did not change when I moved, the politics did. At both schools, there were many faculty members, especially in the sciences, who viewed all of the indoctrination - left and right - as utterly inappropriate for a university. The loud braying of leftist, multi-culti ideologists drowns out the moderate and centrist views often held by the majority of faculty members. Also, just as some very conservative faculty members welcome vigorous debate and eschew indoctrination, so do some of the folks on the left.

Apr 10, 2008 - 1:21 am Bill:

The REAL problem? We’re paying for all of this with tax dollars, and it’s a growth industry. Almost as bad as pulling up to the gas pump and knowing that a percentage of every gallon of gas is funding the terrorists.

Apr 10, 2008 - 6:39 am Joe Buzz:

Shew..I’m so glad while I type and struggle to stay focused that all the booze and drugs I liberally applied to my white guilt at Mary Washington College didnt mess me up like the buzz killing PC crap described above would have…..I did try to work on my sexual awareness but that effort left me feeling empty and used.
HH + ChrisR and his wife demonstrate the awesome power and abilities of the online community. Cheers and good luck with that site.

Apr 10, 2008 - 9:57 am Robert:

What our current SCHOOLING (NOT “education”!) system could use most is competing schools that actually will educate, not indoctrinate. I imagine such schools would also be very attractive to those of a non-totalitarian mindset, for teachers, parents, and pupils. The tech companies might even find it worthwhile to set up their own universities. Dumbed-down, brainwashed, and de-humanized people pushed through the schooling system meat grinder are of no use to tech companies that need educated people, who can actually think. Considering the schooling system here, is it any wonder our industries that require educated workers have to look to India, China, and elsewhere in Asia? There is a very interesting book, An Underground History of American Education at http://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com that I recently read which seems very credible in documenting how we got this abomination of a forced schooling system today. Worthwhile to spend about 50 free hours reading. At least university isn’t compulsory as well.

Apr 10, 2008 - 11:56 am Al Fin:

This type of indoctrination is very common. It is most accurately described as academic lobotomy .
Unfortunately, PC multiculturalism cannot be stopped. “It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are assimilated or dead.”

Apr 10, 2008 - 12:15 pm SPO:

Just imagine what happens when they run into a kid who calls them out on this stuff. I can say with absolute certainly that, even at 18, I would have told these morons to go to hell, and I would have used a lot more salty terms. And if some administrator had hectored me for not responding to questions about orientation etc., I would have told them in no uncertain terms and in salty language what they could do.

When people insult you, you get to insult them back.

Apr 10, 2008 - 1:27 pm PersonFromPorlock:

Jerry makes a very good point; FIRE plays too nicely and the way to stop this sort of thing is to put a Dean or two in jail: ’twill concentrate the academic mind wonderfully.

Apr 10, 2008 - 2:12 pm Gozer the Carpathian:

This is just another example of why ITT and other trade schools are on the rise. They don’t do this BS and just focus on information you NEED for a JOB. Sheesh.

When I went to College we didn’t have this crap in my dorm. Though I was invited to a few “activities” and “gatherings” in the student center. Though I kindly told the folks to stuff it and never attended.

Apr 10, 2008 - 5:10 pm Ellen K:

Does anyone else see the ultimate irony in this? Teens have always gone to college to rebel against authority. So what happens when the authority in charge is rampantly liberal? They become just as adamantly conservative. I teach teens, they are contrary folks. It’s going to be fun on down the road.

Apr 10, 2008 - 8:22 pm jw:

The University of Delaware, and similar institutions, no longer respect the power of reason and try to make people have beliefs by intimidation. It is the denial of the very basis of education.

Apr 11, 2008 - 12:31 am Dennis:

Some smart student will eventually sue these totalitarian educators and become very rich.

Apr 11, 2008 - 6:46 pm Polonius:

A similar experience happened to me way back in 1969 at the University of California at Snata Barbara, when sudent radicals decided that protesting American involvement was jsutification for burning down buidlings and cancelling classes. I voted with my feet, transferring to a small, private college to complete my undergraduate degree. I’ve never regretted the decision.

Apr 14, 2008 - 10:49 am LibertyFreedomPatriot:

Hilarious stuff!

These comments are a superb collection of anecdotes, hasty generalizations, rumors, and hearsay — indeed, all your favorite right-wing logical fallacies. “From the South” was the lone voice of reason amidst the juvenile babbling.

First, I doubt this story is true, since the Right is not exactly known for its ethics (eg, the “lying for Jesus” phenomenon). Second, if it does exist in some form, the indoctrination certainly cuts both ways, as “From the South” said. Indeed, it’s a false equivalency argument: in reality, the US is dominated by right-wing propaganda at all levels of society… except for a tiny percentage of universities, the last remaining oases of reason.

The Right LOVES to play the pitiful victim of liberal aggression. Like I said, hilarious!

Apr 24, 2008 - 8:02 am