Brainwashed : How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth

Rating:
Summary: True, and I know it
Review: Well I was a Liberal for 30 years. What I remember is the pure contempt for ordinary people (common scum) I and my Leftie friends had, and the conviction that we were Right and Moral.

However, whenever I wanted a good argument/discussion, I found Liberals had little to offer. I now find myself abused, insulted and shouted down when confronting Liberals.

This book is right on. Thus the colleciton of bitter, nasty insults thrown at it by negative reviewers.

In my experience, you know when you've won an argument with a Liberal when they insult you or call you a racist.

In Britain the rot has trully set in, the BBC is Liberal to its core.

I respect Liberal views, and enjoy good debate, but Liberals seem to become enraged and agressive when confronted with opposing ideas, thus the termination of my membership of that very strange club.

Rating:
Summary: Restates the obvious well, but misses the real point
Review: That class of liberal thinker who gladly embraces the reality that our universities are swollen with leftists as being part and parcel of the territory (as though learning plus leftism equals advanced intellectual possibilities) are most naive if they would imagine that colleges could continue to fill classes if parents in America all understood this bias. Just as with the old media (the alphabet soup channels), how they are going the way of the buffalo because their liberal bias runs counter to intelligent discourse and the folks are turning away en mass, so it would be in colleges all across the land if the truth ever becomes popular. Parents won't pay for indoctrination unless it confirms their own world view. And minus that large segment of society, the university system would undergo a massive overhaul --namely, the incorporation of two (or more ) sides of every issue-- in order to exist. As it stands, the leftist establishment can only exist where tax subsidy, political correctness, intolerance, and ignorance flourish. Only an insignificant handful of private schools would be left pining for "progressive" notions if indoctrination were finally eradicated from state schools.
How ironic it would seem, indeed, if the old-left, finally ceding the shallowness of its intolerance of all other informed ideas, were forced to buckle under the pressure of their own ideology to allow a 'minority' perspective into their customers' classrooms!

Rating:
Summary: Lazy and Dishonest
Review: I haven't read this entire book, but I have read pages 87-88, where Mr. Shapiro characterizes an exhibition based on a research project for which I am responsible. Mr. Shapiro uses our exhibit as evidence of an "anti-God" bias among university professors.

The only problem with his comments and conclusions are that they are completely wrong, and are based on two pieces of "evidence": an inaccurate Los Angeles Times report and Mr. Shapiro's own overheated imagination. What should be particularly bothersome to Mr. Shapiro's fans is what his reporting suggests about his character, and by extension--owing to all the praise that is being heaped on his book by his fellow conservative pundits such as Ann Coulter, Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, Larry Elder, etc.--the character of what passes for the conservative intelligentsia in the United States. In short, Mr. Shapiro was lazy and dishonest in his reporting on our exhibit, and on our intentions in our work. He relied on a source that he would never otherwise believe--in his words, "the far left Los Angeles Times"--to make conclusions about an exhibit that he never saw, never talked to me or my colleagues about, and never did any simple internet research to see what other things might be out there that referred to the show.

This is inexcusable. According to his biography on his blog, Mr. Shapiro graduated from UCLA in May 2004, which presented him with a 1 1/2 year window of opportunity to see our exhibit, contact any one of us, or do some internet research before he graduated. Our exhibit was up for the entire month of February, 2003 at the University Art Gallery at Biola University, again in the Darling Library Gallery at Azusa Pacific University from September 29-Ocober 17, 2003, and again at Labrys Gallery in Long Beach, CA, from November 21, 2003-January 24, 2004. The Los Angeles Times article was published on February 15, 2003. I responded to the inaccuracies in the Times article, but the paper did not publish my corrections. On February 17, 2003, the Times article was used as the basis for an online article in Christianity Today. To the Christianity Today editor's credit, he published my response to the their article. Further, I have a description of the exhibition and the larger research project on my website. And finally, in addition to all of that, we gave several public talks about our work.

Although all of these events took place within a 30-mile radius of the UCLA campus, and within Mr. Shapiro's remaining 1 1/2 years before graduating, he chose to stay in Westwood while our work was exhibited, written about, talked about and discussed, never venturing out to see the exhibit or hear us talk about our work. He apparently didn't even take the effort to type my name into Google, which would have netted him at least some of the information I have listed above. Despite his complete lack of accurate information about our exhibition, he was not deterred from making a judgment about our work and our intentions, claiming that we had concluded that "focusing on biblical truths would lead Christianity down the path to doom," and further that "if the L.A. Times calls an anti-Biblical exhibit `judgmental,' you can bet your life the exhibit is a wildly anti-Christian screed" (p. 88).

There is no need to bet anything here, let alone your life. Mr. Shapiro is getting himself worked up over something that isn't even remotely true; in fact, he concocted his conclusions out of his own overactive imagination in his effort to promote his ideology. We have never made, nor would we ever make, any claims remotely like those he says we have. Let me make it as plain as I can for those who aren't following me here: We are not anti-God, nor are we anti-Christian or anti-biblical teaching, and we've never even intimated that we are anything of the sort. Our sole task in our project has been to investigate, describe and explain what we see as responses to the changing culture from within Christianity. Some people who have seen or read our work disagree with our conclusions. That's fine, at least they've seen our work, which is something that Mr. Shapiro cannot claim for himself.

In the end, this may seem to be a trivial complaint, but I think it is indicative of a much larger problem. The problem is that if Mr. Shapiro cannot even get an event as easily researchable as our exhibit correct, why should we believe that anything else he tells us in his book is correct? Should we believe that this is just one mistake by a young author, or rather, that this kind of misrepresentation of the truth is business as usual for the type of media punditry that this book represents--no commitment to or regard for the truth, just to making snappy comments and rallying the forces of "good" against "evil", and of course, selling lots of books, having people tell you how smart you are, telling people how smart you are, and making lots of talking-head television appearances. Pretty much describes Mr. Shapiro and everyone who is lauding his book.

From my perspective, that isn't conservatism, and it isn't for the good of the country; it is a cancerous, self-centered demagoguery, which if left unchecked, is likely to destroy our country.

Richard Flory, PhD
Associate Professor of Sociology
Biola University
and
Research Associate
Center for Religion and Civic Culture
University of Southern California

Rating:
Summary: Full of fascinating quotes and statistics
Review: I think this is a great book. My biggest concern when I started "Brainwashed" was that it was going to be filled with too much opinion without quotes or statistics. I was pleasantly surprised as I read, as there were probably three to five quotes on each page, and a statistic about every two or three. Gathering all the information cited for this book must have been tedious, but it makes for an impressive read. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book
Review: Attention PhD student: When professors keep you from expressing your point of view (which happens constantly to me...I have gotten into shouting matches to be heard) it becomes a First Ammendment Issue. I have been quieted, questioned, graded on my beliefs and suffered a bit of harrassment because of my opinions. If I had written this book, I would have been much harsher than Shapiro. I agree, though, that it is also an issue of professionalism which many professors have none of. They need to be taught that they are not god figures and that it is quite possible that someone else has another viewpoint which could possibly be better than theirs. Of course, that would require the egos of the Ivory Tower to deflate and that is not going to happen.

Shapiro's analysis of higher education is right on the money. He has lived it and is now at Havard Law School. Any student who is not liberal is going to read this book and nod their head in agreement (at least if you are doing this thing called education right). He speaks with a passion just short of Ann Coulter.

If you are a Christian, Jew, Conservative you need to read this book. If anything it will give you hope that their is survival.

Rating:
Summary: Reality is scarier than fiction.
Review: I knew this was a problem in universities, but I was surprised at how extreme some of the examples in the book are. I work at a university and must function as a "closet conservative" to avoid any conflicts with my co-workers since everyone I work with is a liberal. I recently sat through a lunch with professors who believe that anyone who would support the war on terror must be a "racist". I think it is very sad that an institution that has always billed itself as open to all opinions is so close-minded. After reading this book, I also searched our university web site to find that among many other questionable departments, our university supports a Marxist educational press. College freshman may seem like mature adults, but they are very impressionable. I think it is very sad that they are being taken advantage of.
I have always been against the tenure system and this books adds a great deal of weight to the argument against it. The book mentions outrageous behavior from many faculty members, none of whom were ever fired or probably even disciplined. This does not surprise me in the least. The tenure system assures that the faculty "protect their own".

Rating:
Summary: Good Book......however.........
Review: Ben Shapiro is a sharp young man, articulate, who argues his points passionately. Having seen him on C-Span 2, he is quite glib as well. That having been said, Shapiro and his cohorts, Mike Adams at UNC-Wilmington etc. seem to miss the whole point of their rants. They rail about professors who come to class and push their liberal political beliefs while shutting down or badgering those who don't agree with them (read: conservative). They treat this as a violation of their First Amendment rights. This is not a free-speech issue, but a PROFESSIONALISM issue. If you are paying for a class on psychology, geology, biology etc. politics should not enter into any discussion unless it involves ethics and any professor who does not discuss both sides of the argument should be held accountable in their student evalutions. It should be pointed out that political science and history intimately involve politics and these subjects are intergal to understanding human political life. Pointing out that workers were exploited in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution does not mean that a Professor/Teaching Assistant is liberal (as I was accused of once). I have also been accused of pushing a liberal agenda after being asked my PERSONAL opinion on a particular subject, despite the fact that I prefaced my remarks by stating, "this is my personal opinion...." While I do agree that college professors are more liberal than society at large, conservatives should hold them accountable for doing their job, not necessarily demanding that they present both sides of an issue. I should like to point out that I am a graduate student in a fairly conservative history department that defies the blanket stereotype put forward by Mr. Shapiro et.al.

Rating:
Summary: A disturbing look at values promoted with your taxes
Review: This book is a stunner. Written by an insider, a University student with first hand experience at UCLA, the book is extremely detailed, well researched and documented. The facts themselves are not in dispute, as they are simply too well supported.

Whether it is espousing their own personal belief system based on moral relativism while categorically denying any other beliefs to be shared, or advocating the deliberate death of infant babies who are claimed to have less right to life than pigs, cows or dogs (Professor at Princeton, Page 2), or by supporting a "performance art" piece that involved oral sex and defecating in front of young students (Professor at the San Francisco Art Institute, Page 58), the fact that these Universities fund this with your tax dollars, while intolerantly and deliberately censoring any attempts at presenting a balanced view is beyond intolerant.

It gets much worse. So, how many of you are strong supporters of pedophilia? Your tax dollars and tenured professors in Universities near you are in fact speaking out in support of such behavior. A Professor at San Francisco State University states: "The category `child' is a rhetorical device for inflaming what is really an irrational set of values about pedophilia". (Page, 63) A Temple University Professor agrees: "Negative effects on child-victims of pedophilia are neither pervasive nor typically intense". A Professor at Johns Hopkins University takes it even further by stating: "Those who oppose pedophilia are motivated by self-imposed moralistic ignorance" (Page, 64). The book lists all the names and departments of the professors making these comments. These people should be behind bars, not teaching our youth.

The issue of the far left view of "tolerance" is one sided at best. In an amazing story, one man is denied employment because he is a Christian. A football coach for years at Nebraska, very highly regarded, applied for the head coach position at Stanford University. He describes the discrimination against him; "If I had been discriminated against for being black they never would have told me that, they had no problem telling me it was because of my Christian beliefs" (Page 91).

When it comes to supporting terrorism and inciting "hate-speech", the list of supporters among University faculty is too long to list. On September 11, 2001 a Professor of the University of New Mexico stepped up to the microphone to speak to his class about the horrific events that had just occurred: "Anyone who bombs the Pentagon has my vote" (Page 101). The well documented examples of this type of reaction fill dozens of pages. Santa Rosa Junior College defended one of its Professors, who warranted FBI attention by urging his students to write about assassination of the President by stating: "He has the right to say what he wants in the classroom." Apparently even if it violates federal law in doing so and encourages students to do the same? The University of South Florida openly sponsors known terrorists (Page 143).

The examples of anti-Semitism, and University sponsored groups who promote violence go on and on. At UCLA, the campus student group was led by a supporter of terrorism, who granted $12,322 to the Muslim Student Associated while the Jewish Student Union received $0.00. (Page 163). The University of California sponsors a group called MEChA who state openly: "federal immigration officials are pigs and should be killed, every one of them" (Page 171).

What I have just described is but a glimpse. The index of supporting documents, footnotes and sources is over 18 pages long. The book itself is a quick read, well written and organized. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about what is being promoted to our youth. Far beyond the media-friendly liberal propaganda and sound bites sanitized to be palatable to the masses, the true foundation for this worldview is opened up with shocking clarity.