Written by Dennis Prager
For over half a century, American universities, with few exceptions, have ceased teaching and begun indoctrinating. In the last few weeks, this downhill spiral has accelerated. The university is now a caricature of an educational institution. It is difficult to come up with an idea or policy that is more absurd than the ideas and policies that now dominate American campuses.
The University of California, once an elite public institution, now circulates a list of “microaggressions” that students and faculty must be careful to avoid lest they engage in racism and bigotry.
Some examples:
“There is only one race, the human race.”
You read that right. The denial of the significance of race in favor of the primacy of the individual and the affirmation of the equality of all human beings — one of the noblest achievements of liberal Western society — is now officially listed by the University of California as a racist statement. It is a pure expression of moral inversion.
“America is a melting pot.”
The University of California considers this, too, a racist statement. Throughout American history the melting pot idea has been an expression of America’s unique ability to transform people of every race, ethnicity, and nationality into Americans. It is now deemed racist.
“I don’t believe in race.”
Again, this statement — which is the opposite of racism — is deemed racist. In terms of the inherent importance of race, the American university is now closer to Fascism than to traditional liberalism.
“America is the land of opportunity.”
According to the University of California, this is a “myth” that is also racist. It implies that some of those who fail do so not because they haven’t had opportunities to succeed but because of their failure to take advantage of those opportunities.
Meanwhile university after university allows students to take over administration buildings and even president’s offices. University presidents and other moral weaklings who administer colleges — aka leftists — never demand that these students leave the buildings they have illegally occupied. Rather they give in to just about all of their “demands.”
Thus the president of the University of Missouri was forced to resign for allegedly not doing enough about a handful of isolated instances of alleged racism.
The president of Princeton University has agreed to demands of students who occupied his office to consider removing the name of Woodrow Wilson from buildings and institutes. Wilson, president of Princeton prior to becoming the president of the United States, held racist views common to many fellow progressives of his time.
Protesters at Dartmouth College invaded the school’s library and screamed at white students studying there. According to the New York Post, “About 150 Dartmouth students this week protested in the school’s Baker-Berry Library, chanting “Black Lives Matter” — and harassing kids who tried to keep studying. Oh, and assaulting them, too, according to The Dartmouth Review, which reported that protesters pinned one girl to a wall while calling her a “filthy white b?-?-?-?h.”
Other chants included “F*** your white privilege!” and “F*** you, you filthy white f****s!”
The response of Dartmouth? An apology to the racist attackers: “The school’s vice provost for student affairs, Inge-Lise Ameer, told the BLMers [Black Lives Matter] “I’m very, very sorry that you feel this way. We don’t want you to have this experience here. … We told them [the protesters] that … the protest was a wonderful, beautiful thing.”
As reported by Newsweek, more than 400 students at Occidental College took over the school’s administrative building “stating that they intend to stay until a list of 14 specific points relating to diversity and inclusion of students of color are met.” Occidental immediately agreed to 13 of the 14.
The universities, along with the rest of the American left, have repeatedly told students that America is a racist society, and many black students now believe it, even though they live in the least racist multiracial country on earth and attend the protective cocoon known as college. Likewise, the left has repeatedly told American women that the universities are rape cultures where they have a 1 in 4 chance of being raped.
So, the universities are imploding by their own doing. They produce aggrieved and angry young Americans whose primary identity is that of victim.
And there may be worse to come. There is little that produces violence as surely as does a victim mentality.
At this time, if you donate money to an American university, you are doing much worse than wasting your money. You are subsidizing the most anti-liberal, anti-American institution in America.
This article was originally posted at TheStream.com