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kittynana's avatar

As an adult student (read: graduated at 52) of a local prestigious university, I saw the indoctrination first hand. Those poor kids didn't stand a chance. But they would swarm me after classes asking questions when I brought up counterpoints in class. They WANT both sides.

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Timothy Grier's avatar

Your comment brings to mind this scene from Back to School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSLscJ2cY04

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kittynana's avatar

@Timothy- while I, and the professors (except one), were more gracious than that during exchanges....YES!!!!!!!!!!! Also: "Oh, Michael. Senators don't have people killed." "Who's the naive one now, Kay?" (Godfather)

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Gregg wolf's avatar

While I agree, I would also argue all subsidies to all Universities, of any kind should be abolished completely.

When government is involved in Education and research, they are both politicized, and corruption runs rampant.

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THG's avatar

The most dangerous subsidies are from foreign entities. One may wonder why Qatar would "donate" at least $5 billion in our universities and unknown amount in K-12. NYC schools received millions from Qatar. We will now see the result: Mamdani as a mayor.

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Gregg wolf's avatar

Eliminating all public funding of education, allowing parents to then choose where their children go to school, and who is hired to teach them, would render that influence meaningless.

There should be a separation of government and the economy, education, healthcare, as there is with religion, for the same reasons.

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Fell Choice's avatar

Ditto for corporate subsidies, which have corrupted the epistemological chain exactly as all the smart people were predicting in the 70s.

But the only thing that’s going to end the pretense of these leprous education doppelgängers is the reappearance and success of the real thing, and I don’t mean a tiny conservative outpost like Hillsdale, but the rise and dominance of actual, factual institutions of liberal education.

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THG's avatar

Public universities, by their statute, are sponsored and subsidized by the states.

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mrdoug1's avatar

That's true but that implies nothing about them being entitled to federal funding, which is outrageous and should cease immediately.

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Elizabeth Rome's avatar

Yes the universities should be the ones guaranteeing the student loans. Bet tuition would drop dramatically and useless administrator positions would disappear.

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Owain Glyndŵr's avatar

Can any one articulate why any universities - public or private but especially the private, so called prestigious cadre, with billions in endowments - should have any Federal funding?

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THG's avatar
15hEdited

Unfortunately, the Marxist oppressor-oppressed race-based indoctrination permeates the entire K-12 system. The continued education credits for teachers now include Teach Palestine, instead of phonics or math. Universities are only a tip of the iceberg.

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Bull Hubbard's avatar

Absolutely. Inside those icebergs are colleges/schools of education that are still operating under the poisonous smog of Paolo Friere's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." James Lindsay at New Discourses has that Marxist charlatan pegged. If you can ignore his (I hope) brief descent into petty dust-ups over Left/Right, his critique is well worth reading.

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Karen Bernstein's avatar

Totally! We should take on both at the same time -- the universities and K-12. These poor kids are getting brainwashed at the same time that they aren't being taught how to read or write or add or subtract.

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mrdoug1's avatar

Which is one of the reasons I support Hillsdale College's Barney Charter Schools being established around the country. They teach classical education to K-12 students. I contribute to them instead of to my woke alma mater.

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me's avatar

You are absolutely, precisely correct. The twisting of the tenure rules and hiring practices in universities has allowed all the conservatives to be pushed out and replace with anti-America leftists.

And because teachers are required to have a college degree, the teachers are fully indoctrinated in anti-America leftism and their twisted fantasies. Thus, kindergarten through post graduate schools are taught by fully indoctrinated leftists.

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Uncle Samuel's avatar

Spitting truth. The universities should look carefully at the slow then accelerating decline of Public Broadcasting, leading to public disgust and defunding.

The same is happening to our previously highly regarded universities, and if they select the path of bias and intellectual repression then they will suffer the same fate.

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Mark In Houston's avatar

As usual Chris, your premise is beautifully and logically argued. MIT President Sally Kornbluth is arrogant enough to believe that MIT can have their Federal subsidies and their forced adherence to leftist monoculture. Trump has challenged that shibboleth and forced their hand.

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Timothy Tobin's avatar

Absolutely agree with your positions on this ideological imbalance that exists on college campuses! Thank you!

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Sam Frazer's avatar

Another home run by CR!Absolutely annihilated MIT’s position, point-by-point. Agree with his suggestions to deal with the refusal to accept the compact. Let’s stop this nonsense going on at “Higher Education” institutions.

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Nicholas White's avatar

One of the worst mistakes in US policy and social thinking since WWII has been the tendency to treeat universities as holy temples. At first it didn't seem very harmful, but universities are of course populated by human beings who are far from perfectly high-minded seekers of truth. They nowadays subvert all the values they're expected to defend.

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Bull Hubbard's avatar

That veneration is a direct result of the move away from organized religion. Something has to fill the void, but so far every attempt has failed. This is why we're seeing a mild resurgence of Christianity outside the so-called "bible belt."

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Denise Smith's avatar

Right on target, as usual Chris. Thank you for exposing these institutions. All federal subsidies should stop immediately.

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mrdoug1's avatar

Right. It's long past time to jettison the erroneous assumption that universities are entitled to any federal taxpayers' largess.

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Jim Williams's avatar

AMEN … Christopher RUFO !! Well reasoned and stated !

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Joshua Barnett's avatar

I can't grasp how anyone doesn't understand this basic concept - you accept federal largesse, you abide by federal law. It's really not that complicated; I can't see how this is even a debate.

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me's avatar

They see themselves as 'special' and deserving of worship and gifts from the common, working class folk, in this case funnelled though the IRS and other government agencies.

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The Great Santini's avatar

My Alma Maters ask for money constantly, yet continue this DEI BS. No. Just No.

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mrdoug1's avatar

They get "no" from me, too, and I tell them why. I believe letting them know is essential.

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rural counsel's avatar

As an alumni of MIT (both BS and ScD) I can say that the last few MIT administrations have been incredibly disappointing. I have refused to make any alumni donations for many years.

Though to be honest, even back in the 1970's when I was there as an undergrad, I found the campus atmosphere to be tainted toward east and west coast elitist liberal nonsense. In the early 70's, they allowed a draft dodger to live in the Stratton Student Center, as one example.

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Bull Hubbard's avatar

The anti-war "revolutionaries" that infested colleges in the late '60s/early '70s began the ideological capture of higher ed.

I used to think MIT and Cal Tech were immune to such nonsense, but I was wrong.

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Marie's avatar

Yes I was there then and I found the x rated movies in Kresge to be amazingly offensive. Here they were trying to admit more "coeds" and the first thing we get is that. I never would have gone there had I known. This was not disclosed in the admission materials.

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rural counsel's avatar

I'm surprised that that tradition lived on as long as it did (assuming that it no longer exists). I don't think it was an officially sanctioned event. More of a "don't ask, don't tell" situation with the student-run Lecture Series Committee (LSC). The upperclassmen in my living group took us freshmen there without telling us what was going to be shown. I was pretty surprised.

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mrdoug1's avatar

I attended Cornell from 1976 - 1980 and saw the same. Definitely the Zeitgeist was Leftist, although not nearly as doctrinaire or enforced as today.

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Pacificus's avatar

Defund, dismantle, and re-invent higher education--Now.

Anything less will not yield real results.

Let's start with abolishing tenure--the tightest academic sphincter of them all.

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Anne Marie V. Quin's avatar

Extraordinarily well-said!

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Peter Cohee's avatar

Agreed, absolutely. Ivy League arrogants have no right to define “a free marketplace of ideas” to suit their own ideology.

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