BERKELEY, California - The latest elections show a country divided half and half between red and blue, but you would not know it to look at today's public universities. They have become a haven for 1960s-style radicals. So when University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill said the Americans killed on 9-11 deserved it, his words did not seem all that shocking on many campuses.
Churchhill is not the only radical Left professor who spews anti-American statements on campus these days. In fact, Dan Flynn says nearly every public university in the U.S. is dominated by the Left and an overwhelming number of liberals on the faculties. Flynn keeps an eye on such professors through the Conservative Leadership Institute and wrote about them in his book, "Intellectual Morons."
A new study Flynn is just releasing shows how lopsidedly they donated cash to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). He remarked, "At Harvard, for instance, for every 32 dollars that went to John Kerry, one went to George W. Bush. At MIT just down the road, it was 43 to one. At Princeton, it was about 300 dollars for Kerry for every one dollar to Bush."
Almost half of the students recently surveyed for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni at the nation's top 50 universities say their professors, most of them Left-leaning, comment often on politics in their classrooms, even if the course they are teaching has nothing to do with politics.
Bucknell University's Allison Kasic told us about a chemistry class held the day after the election.
Kasic said, "Basically, half the class of an hour-and-a-half class was just spent complaining about the election and saying how dumb the country is. And how does that help you learn anything about chemistry?"
In the same survey, nearly a third of students said they feel they have to agree with their professors' political or social views in order to get a good grade.
ACTA (Association of College Trustees and Alumni) President Anne Neal said, "We were really quite shocked that there was such a great degree of evidence of political pressure in the classroom."
Amaury Gallais, Vanessa Wiseman and Andrea Irvin all hold offices in Berkeley’s Club of the College Republicans, and all have seen the intimidation and prejudice against all things conservative at their famously radical university.
Irvin said, "If the professor has a Leftist opinion in class, students feel very fearful of making a comment to counter that."
At Foothill College, south of San Francisco, one conservative Kuwaiti student on a visa was ordered to get a mental checkup because of his pro-American views.
Denis Hiller had a friend who dared write a paper defending capitalism. "The professor gave him an F. On the paper, he wrote a long essay of his own saying explaining why socialism is better. My friend handed in a paper using basically the teacher's talking points, toeing the party line, and got an A."
Flynn said, "There's a college in Florida that has banned a student group from showing 'The Passion of the Christ' because ostensibly it's R-rated. Now the interesting thing about that is very recently before that, there was an X-rated play about Jesus Christ that was staged on the campus, but they had no problem with that."
....whole runs of a conservative campus newspaper have been stolen.
"Any flyer that promoted anything pro-American, pro-Israel, anything that challenged the dogma of this campus, it would be taken down."
...."In the 2000 election, I wanted to register, and they asked what my party affiliation was. I said, 'Republican.' They said, 'We don't register Republicans here.'"
Former Leftist-radical-turned-conservative firebrand David Horowitz is dedicated to trying to get states and their universities to end all these political shenanigans on-campus and return to offering an objective education.
Horowitz said, "A law professor opened his class by saying, 'You all know what the R in Republican stands for? It stands for Racist.' A student objected, and the professor slapped the student down, saying 'We have too many Nazis like you on the campus.'"
Stanford's Bob Sensenbrenner heads up his chapter of College Republicans.
Sensenbrenner remarked, "I'm always embattled here. We have the administrators approving class, the Stanford Democrats using classrooms to call voters for John Kerry, but if I'm trying to hold a meeting, I get hassled by Meeting Services and get told that I have to leave till they can go back and check their records."
Flynn said, "When it is almost unanimous for one candidate, it suggests there's something really, really wrong with higher education."
Yaron stated, "I know of a professor that assigned a paper for students to describe how President Bush is a war criminal."
Neal said, "If this had been a case of sexual harassment, I dare say that it would have prompted a great deal of attention. It should equally draw attention now, because clearly it's almost a political harassment in the classroom where they're not being allowed to hear both sides of the issue."
Diversity is all the rage on campus these days -- racial, sexual, cultural diversity -- but maybe in the area where it matters the most, diversity of thought, well, there seems to be less and less tolerance for that.
