Opinion: Factories of Leftist Ideology?

The following column appeared originally in the Amherst Bulletin.

Among the most unscrupulous lies repeated by the right wing is that universities and colleges are “factories of leftist ideology.” The distortions began decades ago and gained force during the 1960s as American students joined in protests against the Vietnam War and participated in the civil rights movements. In recent years conservatives have focused their attacks on diversity programs, affirmative action and “WOKE” culture to support their assault on institutions of higher education. They have pretended to be outraged by protests against the war in Gaza, claiming that universities have allowed antisemitism to run rampant. The Trump administration’s threats to cut federal research funding in an attempt to extort compliance to its demands for a governmental takeover of universities’ curricula, hiring and admissions policies is the most egregious assault on the independence of universities.

The picture painted by extremists on the right bears no resemblance to the reality I knew over a long career in higher education. The college I attended as an undergraduate in the 1970s was certainly engaged in peaceful resistance, not surprising given the school’s long history of social activism and its proximity to Kent State, where Ohio’s national guard shot and killed four unarmed protesters in 1970. But there was so much more to my educational opportunities that had nothing to do with politics. I studied world religions, great literature from America, Europe, Russia and China, music and art history, and philosophy. Many of my friends studied sciences, from physics to biochemistry, and pursued careers in medicine and research. We debated current events openly and with passion but our intellectual efforts were far broader than any political agenda.

My horizons were further expanded when I started a graduate program at the sprawling campus of UCLA. The school has over 40,000 students, approximately 5,400 faculty from around the world and over 337 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. It would be pure nonsense to suggest that there is some overarching liberal orientation shaping the curriculum or that students are being indoctrinated into any particular world view. My own experience there was exceptionally diverse and opened the world to a young man who had never traveled outside the U.S.

After graduate school I began a long career teaching at an exceptional liberal arts college dedicated to the education of women. It would be profoundly insulting to suggest that my thoughtful and challenging students were susceptible to any kind of thought control at the hands of their teachers. They learned the value of reasoned arguments for spirited classroom discussions and seldom took anything for granted. There were no snowflakes in my courses! Our graduates were hardly uniform in their opinions, no surprise in that we counted among our alumnae distinguished leaders ranging from Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan to Gloria Steinem. It was my honor to represent the faculty on numerous alumnae travel programs and was always impressed by the continuing curiosity and intelligence of our former students of all ages. They had pursued every imaginable career path, unconstrained by prevailing limits on opportunities for women in the work force.

One need only look to the educational backgrounds of conservatives who ridicule institutions of higher learning to understand how empty their criticisms are. The vice-president, who joins in the right-wing critique, got his law degree at Harvard, as did Justices Roberts and Gorsuch. Justices Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh earned their degrees at Yale. If their alma maters were leftist factories, they apparently failed to turn out a consistent product.

It also is important to note that there is a great diversity of colleges and universities in America, including some that actually do promote ideological consistency but on the right. Liberty University, a self-described Christian institution in Virginia, defines its evangelical foundation as central to its mission. Pepperdine University in California is another religiously conservative institution. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has sought to take over Sarasota’s New College and the University of West Florida by stacking the boards of trustees with arch conservatives. As is so often the case, what the right wing says about the left is actually true of its own agenda. If conservative high school graduates are so fearful of a campus open to all ideas and for people of all colors and creeds, then they have plenty of choices where they can bask in their own ideological purity. Leave freedom of speech in independent educational institutions for the rest of us.

Donald Joralemon, Emeritus Professor at Smith College, lives in Conway.