Last week’s column discussed
the highly publicized university corruption scheme wherein wealthy parents
bought admission at prestigious universities for their children. That is
dishonest and gives an unfair advantage to those young people but won’t destroy
the missions of the universities. There is little or no attention given by the mainstream media to the
true cancer eating away at most of our institutions of higher learning. Philip
Carl Salzman, emeritus professor of anthropology at McGill University, explains
that cancer in a Minding the Campus article, titled “What Your Sons and
Daughters Will Learn at University” (https://tinyurl.com/y9ds7e7t).
Professor Salzman argues that for most of
the 20th century, universities were dedicated to the advancement of knowledge.
There was open exchange and competition in the marketplace of ideas. Different
opinions were argued and respected. Most notably in the social sciences, social
work, the humanities, education and law, this is no longer the case. Leftist
political ideology has emerged. The most important thing to today’s university
communities is diversity of race, ethnicity, sex and economic class, on which
they have spent billions of dollars. Conspicuously absent is diversity of
ideology.
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Students are taught that all cultural values are morally equivalent.
That’s ludicrous. Here are a few questions for those who make such a claim. Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30
sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural
value? Slavery is currently practiced in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and
Sudan; is it morally equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous
limitations placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment and
education. Under Islamic law in some countries, female adulterers face death by
stoning. Thieves face the punishment of having their hands severed.
Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death in some countries. Are these
cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to Western values?
Social
justice theory holds the vision that the world is divided between oppressors
and victims. The theory holds that by their toxic masculinity, heterosexual
white males are oppressors. Among their victims are females, people of color
and male and female homosexuals. The world’s Christians and Jews are
oppressors, and Muslims are victims.
Increasingly, the classics of Western
civilization are being ignored. Why? Because they represent the work,
almost exclusively, of “dead white men.” Only works of females, people of color
and non-Western authors are seen as virtuous. The same is true with political
history. The U.S. Constitution should be less respected because its writers
were white slaveholders. The academics who teach this nonsense to students are
grossly ignorant of the struggle over the slavery issue at our 1787
Constitutional Convention.
Professor Salzman concludes
his article with the observation that “Marxist social justice offers all the
answers anyone needs, so no inquiry or serious research is required. Be
confident that at university your children will learn ‘the right side’ to be on,
if little else.” As a result of leftist indoctrination, many college students
graduate illiterate, innumerate and resistant to understanding. A survey of
employers showed that over 70 percent found college graduates were not
well-prepared in skills such as “written communication,” “working with
numbers/statistics,” “critical/analytical thinking” and second-language
proficiency (http://tinyurl.com/yymfsrg4).
The American Council of
Trustees and Alumni publishes occasional reports on what college students know.
One report found that nearly 10 percent of the college graduates surveyed
thought Judith Sheindlin, TV’s Judge Judy, is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Less than 20 percent of the college graduates knew the effect of the
Emancipation Proclamation. More than a quarter of the college graduates did not
know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during World War II; one-third did not
know he was the president who spearheaded the New Deal. Such ignorance might
explain why these young people are the supporters of today’s presidential
candidates calling for America to become a socialist nation.
By
the way, one need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. One just has to
accept the sanctity of the individual above all else.
Walter
E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George
Mason University, and a nationally syndicated columnist. To find out more about
Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and
cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page.
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