We’ve seen numerous examples of colleges persecuting those who exhibit free thought and critical thinking recently. One of the most recent examples is that of Lindsay Shepherd — a graduate student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.
She showed a video which has appeared on public television, and discussed a controversial subject, a professor who opposed Bill C16; a law that requires all people to use the chosen gender pronouns of people who claim to identify as other than their born biological gender.
Shepherd showed the video as a starting point for discussion, initially not taking a side. Nevertheless, she was dragged before a secret tribunal and had her motivations questioned by a panel of student supervisors who had no interest in honest debate. They told her that submitting that video for the consideration of first-year students was like uncritically showing a Hitler speech.
This is the level to which we have descended.
We could spend days summarizing the number of cases over the previous 12 months in which students were raked over the coals for so much as flirting with conservative ideas. But unfortunately, the condition of concision limits our ability to cover them all.
So we are limited to only the most shining examples.
Recently, one, possibly more, professors at the University of Kutztown have been offering rewards to students for staging protests against Trump’s new tax bill.
The call to action read as follows;
“Please join your faculty as we rally against the GOP Tax Bill that has serious implications for you and on Higher Education. This is an opportunity to gain additional extra credit,” the email states, with a bolded subject line of “Additional Extra Credit Opportunity!”
The broadly disseminated email was drafted by Dr. Mauricia John, a member of the school’s anthropology department. But the fact that a teacher studied in the sciences is pushing such an anti-academic idea, should serve as an indicator that this call to action represents the right edge of the political spectrum among the faculty at that school.
It has long been the case that left-wing professors have encouraged their students to raise political protest to the level of art. But today, we see teachers not only directing the students to think a certain way, but also rewarding them for enacting unreasoned political partisanship.
It may be the final indication that true intellectual rigor no longer exists in American colleges. But of course, the real damage began revealing itself fairly recently.
Over the past two years, we’ve seen an escalation of left-wing totalitarian thugs starting fires at major campuses in an attempt to stop conservative speakers from being heard by paying audiences. We’ve seen the ongoing double standard of race baiting where white people can be condemned for the color of their skin — but anyone who disagrees with that version of racism is derided as the most hideous form of bigot since Hitler.
Again and again, we have seen academics taking to the streets to engage in the initiation of violence against Trump supporters, conservatives, and anyone who challenges the leftist narrative in even the slightest way. Even strident leftists who do not agree with the hard-line party platform are cast aside and persecuted as the next worst thing since the leader of the Third Reich.
It is a level of insanity that few people believed they would see in their lifetimes, but many have predicted.
Indeed, it is the very edict of Saul Alinsky who has directed the modern leftist to attack his enemies at the point of their virtue, and hold them to it to such a degree that they cannot help but admit to falling short.
Well, politics is downstream from culture, culture is downstream from the academy, and the academy has been compromised.
~ Liberty Planet
