Colleges (and once-scholarly organizations) that have thrown their lot in with the woke crusade are a rapidly growing problem. Professors are now expected to advance “antiracism” instead of speaking and seeking truth as they find it.
In the Washington Examiner, Rick Hess of AEI has a great article about this.
He observes that colleges are now demanding the equivalent of loyalty oaths that leftists used to indignantly denounce. Today, what is required is a loyalty oath to a set of “progressive” notions. Moreover, there are plenty of academics who think this is just fine. They’ve been raised with the belief that education is supposed to be “transformative,” turning students into true believers in leftist socio-economic goals.
What is to be done? Hess has a number of sharp ideas:
If the powers that be in higher education are increasingly disinclined to hold up their end of that bargain, taxpayers and policymakers should respond appropriately. Colleges that choose to abandon their unique mission in service of ideological agendas should be treated accordingly. They should be stripped of public largesse and rendered ineligible for taxpayer-provided student loans. Their privileged tax status and regulatory privileges should be reexamined. Public institutions should be subjected to rigorous oversight. Officials should bar academics from using public funds to pay dues, fees, or travel expenses to “scholarly” associations that have abandoned their scholarly purpose. And policymakers and thought leaders should seek ways to create new institutions and associations that are committed to free inquiry, truth-seeking, and the robust exchange of ideas.
I like it. The Left has taken over education in the U.S. and unabashedly uses it to indoctrinate students. We are in a terrible fix because so many people have been taught to believe in the mega-state that is necessary for the leftist agenda. We must push back.