Figure 1.--The central way of indocrinating young people is to only present one side of an argument or only present one side fairly. That is standard operation procedure for totalitarian countries like NAZI GErmany and Communist countries. This is why the liberal bias on on American college campuses today and the active efforts to exclude conservative idea is such an important question for a democratic country. One question we do not fully understand is how did liberals come to so completely dominate American univesity campuses?

The university is largely a Western creation. And academicians from an early point have pushed the idea of academic freedom. And over time achieved it. We note, however, that in recent years that this aspect of feedom has been significantly been redoded as our great universities have become left-wing enclaves. University professors are overwealingly liberal and many are outright anti-American socialists. They not only exclude conservative ideas and shame and downgrade students who express conservative ideas, but encourage their student to shame and confront other students with conservative ideas. There have even been physical attacks and iots to attack and shit down conservative speakers. We are not entirely sure how universities have become so dominated by liberal professors. And whis has happened at institutions suposedly dedicated to promote exposure to and discussion of ideas.

False Narrative

We did a web search in an effort to understand why American are so strongly liberal. The major idea we see offered in the strongly liberal postings on this question was "Facts have a liberal bias. Smart successful people tend to see the truth better than people who are uneducated, or who lack critical thinking.” Many liberals including liberal professoers are so ideologally centered that they have concluded that conservatives are either not very smart or well educated or they are uncaring and focused on money to the exclusion of all else. Actually when there is an open and fair debate, the facts actually lead to a conservative positions on many important issues. This is especially the case on core liberal issues including economics and race. Here we want to mention some facts that liberals, especially liberal professors either do not understand or do not want to acknowledge because they fly against core values they hold so dear.

Possible Reasons

Just why unoversities have become so liberal is a question we have wondered about, have not serious considered. Here are some reasons readers and we think may be involved, but are not sure about. We are barn storming at this point. There are probably factors involved that have not yet occurred to us. We welcome reader input here.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression rocked the belief in American values and the foundation of American society. Perhaps President Roosevelt's greatest achievenment in dealing with the Depression was preventing a more radical response promoted by people like Huey Long and Father Couoglin. It should be noted that the Depression was the cause of the Hitler and the NAZI rise to power in Germany. President Roosevelt sought advice and brought university professors into government to a greter extent than ever before in American history. (President Wison did this to some extent.) It was part of he progressive ethic that huge changes were needed.) Part of President Roosevelt's New Deal was his Brain Trust--meaning university profesors. The Depression was an era of soul searching, what was wrong with America and how the Depression could be ended. As capitalism seemed to be failing, the inevitable sollutions laid to the left. Some young people dalied with Communism. Americans were willing to listen to anyone who had answers, including college professors who many had previously dismissed as living in ivy covered towers. This explains how college professors became more involved in politics. The fact that the Depression deligitimized capitalism turning many profesors who generally held progressiv e views toward the left, believing that the Goverment could better manage the ecomomy than the free market. The NKVD did such a good job of managing information flow that rather than a starving peasantry, many young university students (future professoes) were impressed with happy, dancing peasannts. Other New Dealers, before World War II, especially those drawn from academis were impressed with Mussolini's Corporate State, meaning Goverment management of the economy. Despite popular perceptions, Fascsm was another version of socialism. This mix laid the foundation for an increainly liberal university facualty after the War.

World War II

Cold War

McCarthyism

A reader believes that the McCarthy era of the 1950s may be involved. He writes, "I have done little actual study but I have thought about the situation. I suspect that an unintended result of the McCarthyism was the left leaning university environment. If you remember, prior to McCarthyism, many universities had a liberal and Conservative focus both vying for academic acceptance. Corporations had both liberal and conservative leaning scientists, engineers, researchers and free thinkers. Ideology had no place in the workplace. Then the Blacklists hit and the unfairness of it penetrated businesses who quickly sought to purge leftist ideology from the workplace as so many companies depended upon the military industrial complex. Universities became the lone safe haven for both liberal and conservative thinking. Then with the Vietnam War, the protests came and many universities ceased taking funds publicly from the military (Harvard being one). ROTC programs were abandoned and the universities became more and more influenced by the left as conservative thinking professionals could choose employment in Government, business or non profit world. Liberal thinking professionals could only find refuge and growth in the academic and non profit world. To me the rest is history. I would have to do a lot more research to say it is definitely true. I just know that most companies purged themselves of anyone who would cause so many problems. When I was at Cornell back in the 1970s. It was a conservative bastion in the Government department and I remember a professor (I can't remember his name anymore) discussing how Harvard went from being very conservative to liberal but he never gave the reason. I am guessing. Now Cornell is a liberal bastion in the Government department and every other department. But I saw the changes and lots of the professors who were conservative wound up in industry."

Anti-religious atmoshere

Religious people who tend to be conservative are offended by the anti-religious, secular atmosphere of modern universities. A reader writes, "Disagree with the premise. This conjecture would require a discussion far beyond what is possible here, but… While I believe it has occurred, I don’t believe we could find any study that indicates that this a statistically significant factor."

Personal advancement

Many talented people are more interested in making money and pursuing careers in business offered by American capitalism. The left would lavel this the 'greed' inherent in capitalism. This means that more people with more humanitarian interests go into teaching, both K-12 and university level teaching. A reader writes, "Disagree. 44% of business owners have at least a bachelors degree as opposed to just 33% of the general population." We were not saying business people do not go to college. We are saying a lot of talented people choose to go into business which offers lucrative salaries rather than yteaching, both K-12 and university teaching. Remenber the question is here is whu liberals dominate university teaching and the same is true if K-12 teachin, not who attends university.

Civil rights movement

Vietnam War

The impact of the Vietnam War has a lingering impact on American society. The War and the Anti-War Movement in America tended to undermine or at least weaken many long held American beliefs and values. It signiicantly strnghened the American Left. And thus along with anti-War protests, what was called 'The Establishment' canme unfer foire, the result was the advancemnt of left-wing thought as the Left at first was the major opposition to the War. And the young radicals of the 1960s-70s became the orofessors and university administartors of the 1980s-2000s

Societal imperfections

There are imperfections in any society, including our society. This was in fact how Marxist came into existence. Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital as a critique of the capitalist-generated Industrial Revolution. Modern leftist ideologues have aready-made critique of capitalism and have been very successful in using those imperfections to attack the essential elements of our country (capitalism, the rule of law, the Judeo-Christian ethic, etc. ) rather than promoting needed reforms. People withese these ideas are more likely to go into teaching as wella s Hollywood, press, and politics. All are ways of changing society. Actually business is also a way of changing society.

Touchy-feely atmosphere

Universities offer an environment more conducive for touchy-feely people than real life. his attracts people with left-wing views as it offers a way of legimaizing the suppression of conservative ideas. We now have universities creating 'safe spaces' and accepting the idea of 'micro aggressions'. Both are essentially ways of protecting students from exposure to conservative ideas which might upset them.

University hirings

University selection committees are now dominated by people with left-wing views which view conservative idea as essentially heretical and thus do not hire them. A reader writes "We need something a little more fact based. This is gut 'feeling'." This is something that is diificult to ger solid data on as the selection process is so subjetive. The selection committees are unliley to use 'cobserbatibe views' as a reason for non-selection. College professors are smart enough to come up with all kinds of more socially acceptable reasons to justify their selections. It is notable, that liberal are more than willing to use simple numerical disparity to find proof of racial prejudice in academics, income, criminal justice, employment, including university selection. But when it comes to liberal bias such as university appointments and the admission of Asian Americans in prestige universities, numerical disparity is not enough, they want actual proven evidence of bias.

Isolation

The fact that universities are isolated from real life. They simply raise tuition costs despite the impact on students—forcing them to borrow huge sums. And these are the people who lecture us on morals. Not to mntion the university admission scandal. A reader replies, "Again, we agree the liberal outlook is there, the question is 'WHY?'." The point with isolation we are trying to make is that there is no accountability. This is a larger problem with education. Either the Government pays or the universities hike up tuition fees. The professors have no needed to show positive results. Meaning they can teach a lot of subjects with a liberal bias and there is no accountability.

Created: 6:45 PM 4/1/2019
Last updated: 6:45 PM 4/1/2019