Leftist indoctrination on campus?

My conservative Republican spouse went back to school in the '80s to get her BA here in California. A number of Liberal Arts classes she took were radical Left indoctrinations with little or no relation to the course descriptions. Needless to say, my spouse did not become a leftist--these tenured radicals only hardened her conservative worldview.

The same thing happened to a young conservative friend a few years ago when she went to San Francisco State University to get her BA in Psychology. Many of her teachers were both leftists and militant feminists who taught that men are the enemy.

OTOH I've know younger people with vaguely liberal backgrounds who did become indoctrinated.

My guess is that there are indeed many leftist professors who don't just expose students to leftist/feminist ideas but do their best to indoctrinate students--that is, by brooking no dissent.

The danger is in giving students a narrative that's internally coherent (even though it doesn't map to reality). Humans find coherent narratives remarkably compelling, as every trial lawyer knows.

That said, I wholeheartedly agree with the authors. These false, internally consistent narratives would have a lot less effect if students all got a solid fundamental education instead of being allowed/forced to specialize right off the bat. These narratives have force because they have no competition.

Both right wing and left wing ideologue live within such narratives, and they fit everything they encounter into their narratives. Liberals are taught how to do this by their college professors. Conservatives get it from talk radio demagogues like Limbaugh and Savage, and from GOP--er, Fox--TV. Both are badly served.

America is centrifuging itself into politically homogeneous enclaves in which the other side's point of view is never entertained--only despised and ridiculed.

As a centrist I find both sides scary. And I would certainly love to see colleges become actual marketplaces of ideas instead of leftist madrassahs. Both sides devote their energy to silencing opposing voices instead of debating them. Even on TV most political debates have degenerated into shouting matching in which the most unscrupulous and aggressive participants "win."

At least we still have the Lehrer News Hour, which actually is fair and balanced.

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