ABOUT FAITH & FREEDOM

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Universities Breed Evil


Have you ever wondered why kids who have been raised by good, moral ---even Christian parents suddenly turn away from loving parents, family, and sometimes their faith to follow the nonsense of the Leftists?

Stanford University is an example of why Dennis Prager and others are warning parents to beware of where they send their children for a so-called "college education."

Be informed, not misled.

DEI conquers Stanford

Christopher Rufo writes, "Stanford University, its campus lined with redwoods and eucalyptus trees, has long been known as a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship. But in recent years, another ideological force has taken root: “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” a euphemism for left-wing racialism. DEI, in fact, has conquered Stanford."

He says, "I have obtained exclusive analysis from inside Stanford outlining the incredible size and scope of the university’s DEI bureaucracy. According to this analysis, Stanford employs at least 177 full-time DEI bureaucrats, spread throughout the university’s various divisions and departments."

Stanford’s DEI mandate is the same as those of other universities: advance the principles of left-wing racialism, hire faculty and admit students according to identity, and suppress dissent on campus under the guise of fostering a “culture of inclusion” and “protected identity harm reporting.”

Ivan Marinovic, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that DEI programs have had a disastrous impact on campus. He describes DEI as a “Trojan horse ideology” that undermines “equality before the law, freedom of expression, and due process.”

Stanford’s new interim president, Richard Saller, was hired partly to moderate ideological influence on campus. However, according to sources familiar with Saller in his previous role as dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, he probably lacks the strength to push back against DEI.

Rufo says, "The fight ahead will be tough. As it has been before, Stanford may once again serve as a leading indicator of where American higher education is going."

Rufo is not the only one suggesting that the institution of "education" in America may be beyond restoring to its original state---educating people rather than indoctrinating them.

Universities breed evil.

Yesterday, Dennis Prager published this:

All my adult life, I have warned people about the low moral and intellectual level of colleges and universities. This is the way I have put it: "If you send your child to college, you are playing Russian Roulette with his or her values."

I have always made it clear that for STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) and a few other specialized subjects, there may be no choice. You can't learn those subjects on your own.

But parents take serious risks when they send their child to college.

One reason is that the ages between 18 and 22, when the vast majority of young people attend college, are the years when people are easiest to influence. We tend to believe that the best time to influence children is when they are very young. That is sometimes true. It was certainly true in the past when people matured at a much younger age, few people attended college, and colleges had not been taken over by nihilists.

But today, many young people remain children until their 30s, and many attend college, the center of immoral ideas in America.

He continues, "What we are seeing now at American, British, and other Western universities, especially the most prestigious ones, is support for evil and disdain for good. Pro-Hamas, Israel-hating students take over campuses, stage walkouts during commencement exercises, and are supported by large numbers of faculty members on their campuses. In other words, many students and professors support Iranian and Palestinian calls to exterminate Israel and the Jews who live there."

"None of this is surprising. Universities have been morally and intellectually damaging for more than 50 years. How many young people return home after four years at college (let alone additional years in graduate school) to a finer, kinder, more moral, or intellectually more developed person? Let's just say it's rare. I have never met one," Prager says.

He shares this story:

Nineteen years ago, when the Los Angeles Times was still publishing conservatives, I wrote a column about antisemitism at American universities. I told the following story:

Not long ago, on my radio show, I invited a UCLA student who, on the occasion of Israel's birthday, had written a hate-filled article about the Jewish state in the Bruin, the school newspaper. I asked her if she had always been anti-Israel. She said that as a Jewish girl growing up in Britain, she was actually a Zionist who had visited Israel a number of times on Jewish student trips there.

"'What changed you?" I asked.

"'The university," she responded.

Takeaway

Noah Webster, a Founding Father of our country, is also considered the Father of public education.

He said a lot about education and its place in America: 

"The moral principles and precepts contained in Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws...All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible."

He also said this: "The brief exposition of the Constitution of the United States will unfold to young persons the principles of republican government; and it is the sincere desire of this writer that our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament or the Christian religion."

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.