Part of the motivation behind this year’s Conservative University, the annual event held by the academic watchdog group Accuracy in Academia, was the effort to highlight the intellectual freefall on college campuses all across America, to borrow a phrase from Jim Nelson Black, Ph.D., scholar, author and one of the speakers at the Capitol Hill event.
One theme that appeared constant is the perpetuation of the asinine assumption of social relativism, the supposition that no one is qualified to assert the supremacy or inferiority of a philosophy or cultural perspective. Yet what is at stake here is more than what would appear to be everyday common sense, but perhaps the beginning of the end of an appreciation for western civilization as we know it.
By refusing to recognize the hallmarks of greatness within our own culture, we cannot expect to carry on that greatness in any recognizable fashion. Instead of learning about the immense social/economic/political strides made throughout the history of the West, students are learning that their predecessors in Europe were a bunch of imperialist oppressing-machines and that the founding fathers of America were a reckless gaggle of Indian killers, slaveholders and religious fanatics. “The story of America,” I can remember one of my professors telling the class last semester, “is not a good one.” Thanks, Professor. And to think; all this time I actually liked my country.
At the same time, even this overtly hostile method of scholarship is being phased out. As Dr. Black points out, we have come to see, more and more, the proliferation of what he refers to as “junk courses.” On a growing number of campuses around the country, students will be hard pressed to try and major in western civilization or any of the other traditional areas of erudition, yet the same student could quite easily spend four years at college only to emerge with a degree in “gay, lesbian and transgender studies.” They might not have learned anything of value, but at least they will know how sexual minorities “feel.”
Townhall.com columnist Mike Adams (who also spoke at the event) points out that conservatives might actually be grateful for the intellectual erosion of the American university. Thanks to the outrageous comments by people like Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado and what has happened to Larry Summers of Harvard, the truth is coming to light, and people are not happy about what they are seeing.
Indeed, the extremism of the classroom can be said to be swelling the ranks of the right-leaning cause. Students, like myself, who may or may not have a burning interest in politics or scholarship are coming to the university, excited to learn, to be away from their parents, and are instead finding themselves immersed in one of the remaining holdouts of radical and reactionary liberalism. Listening to comments akin to those by Nicholas De Genova, a Columbia University assistant professor of anthropology and Latino studies, when he expressed his hope that America would experience “a million Mogadishu’s,” objective students cannot help but take offense and question the motives of those tasked with ushering them into the echelons of higher learning. Similarly, that student’s unconscious conviction in the inherent decency of America will perhaps find itself reaffirmed in his beliefs. Extremism does not win converts; it polarizes and distorts rational debate.
“If you want the cockroaches to scatter, all you need is a flashlight,” Mr. Adams pointed out. Groups like Accuracy in Academia are providing the flashlight, and as the overpriced truth of American academia becomes visible, the purveyors of anti-Americanism, social and cultural relativism and overt nonsense will find the walls of their ivory towers less and less insulated from the real world, and we will all, particularly we students, be better off.
John Leppard is an intern at Accuracy in Media, Accuracy in Academia’s parent group.
