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Chapter 4
Indoctrination U.
In a democracy, the purpose of an education is to teach students how to think, not what to think—so goes the common wisdom. In the more formal phrasing of the 1915 “Declaration of Principles” on academic freedom, the purpose of a university education “is not to provide . . . students with ready-made conclusions, but to train them to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently.” In other words, a democratic education should not force-feed students opinions on controversial issues that teachers deem “politically correct.” It should create citizens who are able to figure out what conclusions they wish to draw on their own. This is the idea that lies at the heart of the existing academic freedom provisions of virtually every university in America; the failure to observe these provisions is the crux of the educational crisis that the Academic Bill of Rights seeks to address.
The situation has been made possible because university administrators have increasingly abdicated their oversight of what faculty say and do on the job. With their attention focused on financial concerns, administrators have turned a blind eye to radical advocacy in the classroom and to the increasingly prevalent substitution of political posturing for scholarly discourse and research. As a result, academic standards have plummeted, while important segments of the faculty have become accustomed to engaging in conduct that is irresponsible and unprofessional, and have been able to do so without consequence, and therefore have come to regard such license as their academic right.
A second element of this crisis is the growing power of faculty radicals. This has led to the creation of academic programs that are overtly ideological in nature, and to agendas that are shaped by political rather than scholarly goals. An advanced stage of this intellectual corruption is manifest in courses and even entire departments that are devoted to indoctrination in sectarian dogmas. To take one at random, a course in “Modern Marxist Theory,” taught by Martha Gimenez at the University of Colorado and listed in the university catalogue as Sociology 5055, describes its curriculum in this way: “This seminar is designed to give students the ability to apply Marx’s theoretical and methodological insights to the study of current topics of theoretical and political importance.” In other words, this is a course in how to be a Marxist. It is not—by its own description—an academic examination of Marxism that might also consider how Marxism has failed or why it might not provide “insights” into current topics of importance.
This anti-intellectual development in higher education is also manifest in the Women’s Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where faculty radicals have even changed the departmental name to reflect the ideological nature of its mission. It is now called the Department of Feminist Studies, and its curriculum represents an undisguised program of ideological indoctrination in the theory and practice of radical feminism. This includes the recruitment of students to radical causes. Thus, the official departmental website lists “Career Opportunities” under the heading “What Can I Do with a Major in Feminist Studies,” a question it answers as follows:
Employment Opportunities for Feminist Studies Majors
With a background in women’s and minorities’ histories and an understanding of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and other forms of oppression, graduates have a good background for work with policy-making and lobbying organizations, research centers, trade and international associations, and unions. Graduates’ knowledge about power relationships and injustice often leads them to choose careers in government and politics, because they are determined to use their skills to change the world. . . .
This is not an academic curriculum; it is a party agenda. The Department of Feminist Studies at Santa Cruz is a training program for a radical cause that violates the fundamental principles of the academic profession in general and the University of California in particular. Yet apparently, not a single state official or UC administrator is concerned.
“Peace studies” is an entire field—among several that could be mentioned—whose agenda is obviously not academic but political. In the case of peace studies, this agenda is antimilitary and anticapitalist. Among the more than 250 peace studies programs in America, for example, there does not appear to be one that includes on its faculty a professor of military science, although the sole rationale for the military in a democracy is to keep the peace. The point is not that this rationale for the military cannot or should not be challenged. It is that an academic course worthy of the name would need to confront such questions, not answer them in advance. The curricula of peace studies programs show beyond any reasonable doubt that the answers to questions concerning the role of the military have already been determined by the faculties that administer them, and that their specific agenda is to recruit students to the antimilitary left.
Brett Mock, a political science major at Ball State University in Indiana, enrolled in its Peace Studies program with the idea that the curriculum would fill out his resumé for the political career he was planning. Mock did so even though he was a College Republican because the program was billed as an academic course in the causes of war and peace—“the study of methods of achieving peace within communities and among nations; history of peace movements and the causes of conflict; and analysis of principles to resolve conflict using case studies.”
Once enrolled in the introductory class taught by the program’s director, Professor George Wolfe, student Mock discovered to his dismay that the class was a recruitment and training course in left-wing politics and antimilitary attitudes. Without exception, the course lectures and texts guided him and his classmates to a view of America as an enemy of global peace, and to a sympathetic understanding of the terrorists who have attacked it. Among the “methods of achieving peace” recommended by Professor Wolfe was a menu of radical organizations that students were encouraged to join. These included PeaceWorkers, which is part of a coalition that includes the pro-terrorist Muslim Students Association and the Young Communist League, and for which Professor Wolfe is the campus adviser. Students who traveled to Washington to oppose America’s efforts to topple Iraq’s dictatorship were given academic credit for doing so; students who supported their country had no similar opportunity.
Not only is Professor Wolfe a political activist in the classroom, he is academically unqualified to teach this subject with its broad-ranging forays into history, geopolitics and global economics. Wolfe is a performance artist in the Department of Music at Ball State. His academic credential is a doctorate in education and his specific expertise is the saxophone. Apprised of these facts, the national campus director of Students for Academic Freedom sent a letter to the administration at Ball State expressing concern about the nature of the course and its failure to conform to educational standards. The reply came from the provost and vice president for academic affairs, Beverley Pitts, who said that she had investigated Brett Mock’s claims (without interviewing Mock) and concluded that they were mistaken. In particular, she wrote that the course met academic standards and was not one-sided; but she did not provide any evidence for her claim.
Addressing the issue of how a professor of the saxophone was academically qualified to teach the social, economic and cultural causes of war and peace, the provost wrote: “Dr. Wolfe has a doctorate in higher education from Indiana University; has received mediator training; is on the advisory board of the Toda Institute for Peace, Policy, and Global Research at the University of Hawaii; and has taught and published in the area of peace studies.” Pitts did not explain how a doctorate in higher education would qualify Wolfe to head a program on the causes of war and peace, or how a training session in mediation techniques would do so either. The Toda Institute referred to in her letter, and on whose board Professor Wolfe serves as an adviser, is run by the Soka Gokkai, a Zen Buddhist pacifist cult.
Regarding Mock’s complaint that the course involved indoctrination rather than a disinterested examination of the subject matter, Provost Pitts asserted: “Dr. Wolfe’s class emphasizes critical thinking with respect to peace issues. The primary text for the class is Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies (Sage Publications, 2002), which presented various sides of peace- and war-related issues.” Pitts’ view of Peace and Conflict Studies would come as a surprise to its authors. In the preface to their book, Professors David Barash and Charles Webel write: “The field [of peace studies] differs from most other human sciences in that it is value-oriented, and unabashedly so. Accordingly we wish to be up front about our own values, which are frankly anti-war, anti-violence, anti-nuclear, anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, pro-environment, pro-human rights, pro-social justice, pro-peace and politically progressive.”
In other words, the class text—Peace and Conflict Studies—makes no pretension to being an academic exploration of the complex issues of war and peace. It does not examine the different views of the problems that might lead to conflict, or the various assessments that might be made of the history of peace movements. It is, in fact, a left-wing manual whose purpose is to indoctrinate students in the radical view of the world shared by “progressives” like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Michael Moore.
