Double Standards in Action

Observers trying to make sense of what is going on in education today will find it easier to do so when they can see one salient trend: Double standards predominate and they usually benefit the political left.

“Having taught history on a college level for nearly three decades, I can attest to the dumbing-down of higher education in America,” history professor Jay Bergman writes. “Among the factors responsible for this, in my view, is the obsession with ‘multiculturalism’ shared by many university professors and administrators.”

“By stressing the virtues while minimizing the failings, indeed the crimes, of countries and cultures different from our won, the mantra of multiculturalism parroted mindlessly by members of the professoriate has produced students who think that America’s history ‘to the extent that they are aware of it,’ is a horrifying tale of unending racism, imperialism, and exploitation.” The president of the Connecticut State Association of Scholars, Dr. Bergman teaches at Central Connecticut State University.

In the interest of ‘multiculturalism,’ public colleges are even moved to alter their usually rigid interpretation of the separation of church and state that normally leads them to deny access to religious groups. “The instructor, an imam, dismisses the class, then he spreads paper towels from the restroom on the floor and prays facing East in the classroom for fifteen minutes during school hours,” a student at Diablo Valley College told FrontPageMagazine.com writer Lee Kaplan.

Freedom of speech, like freedom to worship, is usually treated in the same duplicitous manner by college administrators. “Black student playwright Chris Lee staged his intentionally provocative production of ‘Passion of the Musical’ at WSU April 21,” the Heritage Foundation’s Mark Tapscott writes of a recent incident at Washington State University. “He warned potential ticket buyers beforehand the play was likely to offend everybody because, as he later said, ‘the whole point of the play was to show people that we’re not that different, that we all have issues that can be made fun of.’”

But, as Tapscott relates, while a group of Mormon students protested peacefully outside, a more disruptive gang of dissidents broke up the proceedings on stage. “Inside, the First Amendment took a beating as 40 mostly black protestors shouted ‘I am offended’ and threatened audience members and the cast.”

“Guess who paid for the protestors’ tickets? WSU’s Office of Campus Involvement.”

Would campus security guards help restore order when asked to do so? Nah.

Ironically, many colleges and universities trumpet their policies on harassment that are, they claim, designed to guard against the practice. These rules, as well, turn out to be one-sided affairs, as Mike Adams shows in his description of events at his own officially-harassment-free school, the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Wilmington.

“A feminist in my department filed a false claim of harassment against her boss,” the criminology professor remembers. “Then she falsely accused him of a felony.”

“The university did not declare those acts to be examples of harassment,” according to Adams. “When I pointed out the injustice of not punishing a false harassment claim, the fibbing feminist said I was then sexually harassing her (by talking about her false claims outside of the workplace.”

“I swear I’m not making this up.”

And I’m not making this up. The same group that is fighting to keep books on witchcraft in Arkansas public school libraries is fighting to keep abstinence out of government schools nationally. That group would be the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.