Fork Over and Shut Up
Many Americans who love their country have no conception of the depth
of the hated
of this country and its values by large numbers of academics.
By Thomas Sowell
FORBES
A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, and a drawing in a recent issue of The Chronicle of High Education certainly fills that bill. It shows an academic in cap and gown facing a donor holding a bag of money. The academic has his left hand on the beg and his right hand convering the donor's mouth. In other words, give us the money and shut up.
As alumni around the country have become alarmed by the prostitution of college education to ideological indoctrination, and by the totalitarian mind-set behind "speech codes" and the kangaroo courts to which they have led, many have tried to influence their alma maters in the direction of traditional education. This has been depicted by academics and by their freinds in the media as interferience with academic freedom.
If ever the distinction between freedom and license was crucial, it is on American college campuses today. Courses ostensibly set up to teach freshman writing are routinely turned into courses featuring leftist crusades du jour. Freshman orientation is treated as an opporunity to have spokemen for homosexual, radical feminist, environmentalist and other causes get a shot at a captive audience.
Conversely, views to the contrary are not only screened out but shouted down, whether originating on campus or in lectures by outside speakers. Blatantly political questions get asked in academic job interviews, and those whose answers are out of step are out of luck.
This is not academic freedom. It is a breach of faith.