Academic Tyranny (It's Not Just At Marquette)

Michelle Malkin tells the story of a student at Marquette University who stood up for police in class, saying that he saw police officers being called "racist" by a Hispanic driver they'd pulled over for a traffic offense. The professor then chastised him in class and pulled him aside after class to inform him that his comments could have been interpreted as offensive and made him apologize to the class.

In my last post, I mentioned that the sort of thinking that Obama displayed, surprising to many, is simply not uncommon on college campuses. Similarly, this is totally unsurprising to me. I have heard innumerable instances of professors here at State abusing their power to promote a certain agenda; my philosophy class, for example, was once given a guest lecture by one of our resident feminist philosophers. One student spoke up to disagree with what she said, and she verbally abused him in a way I've rarely heard before in a classroom. Interesting coming from someone who decries power inequality based on social arrangements. It's the only time I remember considering speaking to the ombudsman.

But the Left has long considered it their job to use higher education to indoctrinate students. They pay lip service, sometimes, to honoring both sides of debates, but in the end what they teach as fact is often simply liberal dogma. I think a lot of people would be surprised at how many college professors simply take for granted that George W. Bush is a criminal, that opponents of affirmative action are racists, and that America is a basically evil country. The best way to draw looks of derision or of mystified curiosity is to say that you disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming, that you voted for George W. Bush, or that you approve of the Iraq War.

The best part is that they don't even think of themselves as radicals.