Dismantling the Marxist Madrassas
Changing academia has been much more difficult than changing the media. However, there is hope: President Donald Trump has asked Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. to head a White House task force on reforming the U.S. higher education system.
While the appointment has been known about since January, the selection took on more significance in view of Falwell’s remarks when presenting Trump with an honorary Doctorate of Laws at the school’s commencement ceremony on Saturday. Falwell said, “He deserves our respect and admiration for enduring relentless and often dishonest attacks from the media, the establishment on the left and the right, and from academia.”
Academia is not only a bastion of anti-Trump sentiment, but it has become the most important base of operations, next to the media, for attacks on conservative Americans devoted to saving their country and its traditional religious values.
It is anticipated that Falwell’s task force will recommend the increasing use of online courses in order to drive down the costs of higher education for students nationwide. This is a proven method to accomplish what we call “Defunding the Marxist Madrassas.” In this way, the academic bastions of Marxist thought that inhibit real diversity in thinking, and even prevent conservatives from coming on campus, can be reduced in their influence and even dismantled.
Dr. Tina Trent, who writes about problems in academia, says that non-ideological and technologically-oriented students are increasingly being drawn to online learning opportunities that prepare them for the real world.
Most students would rather not end up like Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia economics major, who was so uneducated and misguided that he went on a “Young Pioneers” tour of North Korea and is now a captive of the regime. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for stealing a communist banner to bring home.
As the largest Christian university in the world, Liberty has been offering “distance” or online education since 1985. Online education is a proven way to avoid the effects (and costs) of brick and mortar universities which operate as Marxist Madrassas for America’s young people and brainwash them in totalitarian and bizarre sexual ideologies. So-called distance learning promises marketable skills and jobs in the real economy without supervision from expensive “diversity” officers and exposure to the latest fad in sexual politics.
According to its website, Liberty offers more than 250 programs of study and the lowest tuition rates among top online universities.
The university has a “Helms School of Government,” named after the former conservative Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), which offers a conservative Christian approach to world problems and international affairs. One course examines communist disinformation operations.
With a residential campus in Lynchburg, Virginia, Liberty University also has 65,000 students online. That gives it the second largest enrollment in online education courses of any non-profit university in the world.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, a leading source of news for academia, was forced to admit in a story that Liberty could be the model for the future of higher education.
Trump’s commencement address at Liberty was greeted with strong applause, as some students wore “Make America Great Again” caps. “Demand the best from yourself and be totally unafraid to challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures,” Trump told the graduates. He then asked, “Does that sound familiar by the way?”
Liberty has successfully challenged the “failed power structures” known as politically correct colleges and universities.
Since Jerry Falwell, Jr. became president of the university, “enrollment has increased from 9,600 to more than 15,000 residential students, and from 27,000 to over 94,000 online students,” his bio notes. It adds that Liberty’s net assets have “increased from approximately $100 million in 2007 to over $1.8 billion in 2016 as a result of increasing support from donors, responsible fiscal management, and unprecedented enrollment growth.”
By contrast, Burlington College, once headed by the wife of Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has gone bankrupt. And the national news media are finally covering the role played by Jane Sanders in the college’s demise.
Accuracy in Media covered the financial questions about her involvement in the college in several stories last year, during the presidential campaign, when Senator Sanders was posturing as a friend of college students with big debts, no jobs and useless degrees. Eventually, Burlington College went out of business, thanks to debt incurred under Jane Sanders’ leadership.
Nevertheless, Senator Sanders and his wife recently received the “Rage for Justice” awards at a special ceremony. He and his wife Jane were honored as “Public Servants of the Year.”
You may recall that after putting the college in a precarious financial situation, Jane Sanders was given a “golden parachute” worth $200,000. The college eventually went bankrupt and she is reportedly being investigated for possible bank fraud in connection with falsified loan documents that outlined a college expansion plan that was never fulfilled.
One of the useless degrees offered by Burlington College was a degree in “media activism,” symbolized by a clenched fist. The college said, “The degree is conceived explicitly for those who want to become media activists. Through technical training rooted in history and theory, students are encouraged to apply media making technique, craft, and art to issues of advocacy, activism and social change.”
It would appear the country has an overabundance of such media activists.
Now, it seems, the “social change” may involve Sanders’ wife, depending on whether federal charges are lodged against her.
Yet, Senator Sanders continues as if nothing is happening. Calling the controversy a Republican plot, he was the honored keynote speaker at the recent David W. Curtis Leadership Awards ceremony sponsored by the Vermont Democratic Party. The “Special Guest” was New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, known as “Red Bill” for his pro-communist views.
De Blasio and his wife, a former lesbian, went to Cuba on their honeymoon; Sanders and his wife went to the old Soviet Union.
“Sen. Sanders and Jane Sanders ignored a reporter’s questions about Burlington College at last week’s Curtis Leadership Awards ceremony hosted by the Vermont Democratic Party,” reported the Vermont-based VTDigger publication. It added, “Repeated requests to Jane Sanders for an interview regarding Burlington College have been ignored for more than a year and a half…”
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org