Rating: 
Summary: Case Studies of Intolerance on Campus
Review: Illiberal Education by Dinesh D'Souza presents an interesting collection of case studies of the politics of Race and Sex on Campus. The main theme of the work is that the Western tradition of liberal education is being undermined by efforts to meet the demands for group representation in curriculum, student bodies and faculty appointments. He points out that, whereas the traditional notion of the university saw it as a forum for an open exchange of ideas, the current reality is a venue in which the ultimate goal is not truth arrived at through study and exchange, but dictated by faculty radicals in accord with their own political beliefs.To support his thesis, D'Souza provides a series of cases studies of incidents at leading universities across the U.S. He begins with an report of the admissions policy at Berkeley which, at the time of his writing, admitted students competitively within racial groups, each of which is entitled to a percentage of the student body. The result of this is different standards for admission by members of various ethnic groups. He then proceeds to review the demands for multiculturalism, which leads to the abandonment of traditional classics to make room for works of women and contributions from non-western traditions. In doing this works whose value have been tested over decades or centuries are supplanted by clearly inferior works only because they represent contributions by members of underrepresented groups.. In faculty selection, standards have been established to ensure that certain groups are represented in various numbers in the academic departments. This creates both intellectual and practical problems. Whereas liberal education teaches students to search for universal standards of judgment which transcend particularities of race, gender and culture, illiberal education teaches a provincialism in which every group is encouraged to have its own provincial world view, which restricts the ability find commonality among all mankind. The practical problem is that the quotas often call for numbers of minority professors exceeding the pool of qualified contenders. D'Souza concludes this book with three modest proposals. He proposes a program of Non-Racial Affirmative Action, which would permit the admission students who appear to possess academic potential not reflected in their academic records, rather than basing standards on group membership. The second suggestion is for Choice Without Separatism. Under this proposal, organizations open only to members of ethnic groups not would encouraged, but those promoting ideas, which may be predominately of interest to members of particular ethnic groups would be encourage, but on a non-exclusive basis. The third proposal is for a curriculum searching for Equality and Classics. Rather than dismissing classical works on the basis that they represent a limited world view, they should be studied for the principals of equality which many contain and which often played a role in their selection as classics. The weakness of Illiberal Education is that it often seems to be a merely collection of anecdotes which leave the reader wondering whether they really represent the reality of contemporary higher education or whether they merely reflect the most extreme aberrations. for many, including prospective college parents such as myself, this is an interesting study of disturbing trends in higher education.
Rating:
Summary: WE NEED MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS
Review: In Illiberal Education, D'Souza describes the American University campus around the period of the late 80's to the early 90's. The work is a bit out of date although most of it still holds true. The first third covers affirmative action in college admissions, and the problems it creates. A second section looks at what is taught, particularly in English and the humanities. The final portion tells about campus life and how the left has largely stiffled debate and learning in many areas. A few proposals are made at the end. So much of what D'Souza says is clearly true that it amazes me anyone could attack this book as so many have. I expected at first to read the musings of a right-wing fanatic, but found the book to be, if anything, too soft on the left. The author is best on two aspects of the problem. He points out that academic rejection of traditional standards as racist and sexist ultimately doom all standards. If a traditional piece is meaningful only in the mind of the reader, than what learning is to be had by reading it! D'Souza also explains why rigorous anti-racist policies have not improved race relations. They do not better campus life for minorities but only anger whites, who feel themselves unjustly accused. I felt the book's only weakness was in the first section, on affirmative action. As schools use a variety of factors in admission, high test scores cannot be a gaurentee for getting in. It then stands that, at the University at least, affirmative action cannot and should not be banned. The bans could always be evaded and might have a detrimental effect overall. Affirmative action programs based on class or income are also a bit trickier to implement than many realize. In closing, I should say that the book's lessons are best applied to society in general. Fads may come and go in academia and do relatively little harm. The damage done when these ideas filter out into society at large may well be permanent
Rating:
Summary: WE NEED MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS
Review: In Illiberal Education, D'Souza describes the American University campus around the period of the late 80's to the early 90's. The work is a bit out of date although most of it still holds true. The first third covers affirmative action in college admissions, and the problems it creates. A second section looks at what is taught, particularly in English and the humanities. The final portion tells about campus life and how the left has largely stiffled debate and learning in many areas. A few proposals are made at the end. So much of what D'Souza says is clearly true that it amazes me anyone could attack this book as so many have. I expected at first to read the musings of a right-wing fanatic, but found the book to be, if anything, too soft on the left. The author is best on two aspects of the problem. He points out that academic rejection of traditional standards as racist and sexist ultimately doom all standards. If a traditional piece is meaningful only in the mind of the reader, than what learning is to be had by reading it! D'Souza also explains why rigorous anti-racist policies have not improved race relations. They do not better campus life for minorities but only anger whites, who feel themselves unjustly accused. I felt the book's only weakness was in the first section, on affirmative action. As schools use a variety of factors in admission, high test scores cannot be a gaurentee for getting in. It then stands that, at the University at least, affirmative action cannot and should not be banned. The bans could always be evaded and might have a detrimental effect overall. Affirmative action programs based on class or income are also a bit trickier to implement than many realize. In closing, I should say that the book's lessons are best applied to society in general. Fads may come and go in academia and do relatively little harm. The damage done when these ideas filter out into society at large may well be permanent
Rating: 
Summary: Sober story of one man's pilgrimmage through academia.
Review: It is a shame that Dinesh D'Souza did not continue his investigations into political correctness in the University. Unfortunately, since this book was first published, nothing has changed. I read this while completing my Ph.D. It rang true then, and still does.
Rating:
Summary: I hate to say it...
Review: It pains me to agree with anything this conservative Reagan lackey has to say, but the fact is that when it comes to academics, something has gone well-intentioned but wrong on American campuses. As Harold Bloom has put it, people don't teach literature anymore, they teach ideologies. I don't like D'Souza's politics, but he does a good job here of skewering the opposite extreme which seems to have gotten the upper hand in turning colleges into travesties.
Rating:
Summary: Coersion, indoctrination and intolerance in the classroom...
Review: It's an embarrasing prospect to consider: Universities silencing discussion and dissention. But D'Souza mounts a compelling case: Example after example, case after case of faculty bullying students with opposing views, silencing discussion in class, using campus police to keep out students that ask questions. Where? At some of the top schools in the United States. The issue is not about using this or that term -- students pretty much absorb and abide by the vocabulary of Political Correctness. The issue is not about speaking in a polite and civilised manner. The issue is not about raising your hand and waiting for your turn to speak. The issue is about what you think and believe: Apparently, when students take positions that are opposed to the political views and agendas of some of the faculty, it's discipline time! Why are classrooms politicised? Why do professors bring their political agendas into the classroom? Of what value is an education system that holds that some views are above discussion, considertation, challange? The importance of Illiberal Education is in the collection of cases it presents: Victims of intolerance and indoctrination in the classroom can realise that what's happening to them is not an isolated instance but a part of a larger trend. It will also help them respond more effectively.
Rating: 
Summary: Typical Right-Wing Distortions
Review: Poor Dinesh D'Souza! What would he do for a living if he didn't have someone or something to hate. Funded by an array of rightwing "think tanks," D'Souza produces volume after volume of venemous hate literature designed to discredit those who do not fall into lockstep with rightist ideology. In this case he turns his vitriol against so-called "political correctness" on college campuses. What D'Souza and the rightwing fail to see through all their hatred, however, is that what they see as "PC" is really nothing more than simple respect. If a black man wishes to be refered to as African-American is it caving in to liberal PC dogma to do so or is it simply respecting the wishes of an individual human being? If a college establishes a Women's Studies Program is it caving in to liberal PC dogma or is it simply respecting the fact that women's achievements are worthy of serious academic investigation? D'Souza writes very well, but don't be fooled by his prevarications. His appeals to emotion simply don't hold up under intellectual scrutiny
Rating: 
Summary: good source of anecdotes and arguments
Review: So many years after this important book's initial publication, its arguments against affirmative action often sound crude and thin. The lasting value of it, though, is the abundance of anecdotal evidence that provides a look at some of the occasionally distasteful results of affirmative action. None of these taken individually, nor all of them collectively, are any compelling argument against affirmative action, but they do provide something that a.a.'s defenders must respond to. If, as D'Souza contends, our standards are slipping greatly as a result of multiculturalism, multiculturalists will have to tell us why their project offsets those losses. Some of the vignettes from modern academe are quite unsettling indeed, and no matter where we fall on the political spectrum, being unsettled will do us some good.
Rating:
Summary: Nonsense!
Review: Some say the arguments against Afrocentrism formally opened with the publication of Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education in 1991. Now a professor at Stanford, D'Souza was a young conservative journalist at the American Enterprise Institute, a D.C. located public-policy right-wing self-proclaimed "think-tank". No wonder D'Souza spends a chapter of the text ("In Search of Black Pharaohs: The Roots of Protest at Howard") having the gall to seethe at the intellectual activities of Howard University, the breeding ground for Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery among other brilliant publications. D'Souza complains that the modern American university, in the name of diversity and multiculturalism, has stifled debate and intimidated larger society into accepting new canons. These canons are essentially race and gender-based propositions that one must accept or risk being ostracized as sexist or racist.
Illiberal Education opens by describing the ideal university campus: a place that is "serene and opulent", with students "[moving] in small groups", Ivy Leagues "[giving] off a distinct aroma of old money and tradition." He then launches into a criticism of campus protest, trivializing the University of Michigan race-scandals of the early 1990's, whittling the whole episode down to [...] and blacks demanding the chance to make punching bags out of inoffensive white male students. He pours sympathy on poor Robert Gallagher, a Princeton University professor who opposed Women's Studies in the 1980's. D'Souza argues that Western thought has historically been self-criticising (i.e. Marxism is a criticism of Western bourgeois culture that sprung specifically from Western bourgeois culture) and that the teaching method of the typical liberal curricula pre-Afrocentrism and gender-focused studies was disputation, not indoctrination.
Forgetting that racism and sexism are still weighty social realities for many Americans and that all Americans are victims of both sexism and racism, Illiberal Education concludes that recent gender and ethnic studies programs are unfortunately based on unnecessary indoctrinationist principles. The book does not analyse anything written at the Howard University Press closely. D'Souza argues vehemently against affirmative action programs, multiculturalism, left-wing academia in all its packages, and `political correctness'. Excerpts from his book have appeared in stories in New Republic and Forbes Magazine. Also, more than two dozen major newspapers and magazines have reviewed Illiberal Education. In promoting his publication, Dinesh D'Souza spoke at numerous colleges and universities, followed by a 20-city media tour and appearances on such network talk and news shows as Good Morning America and Nightline. Instead of bemoaning separatist activities of Afrocentric groups, D'Souza asks, in the front flap of his book Letters To A Young Conservative, "Are you tired of the liberal agenda that dominates so many aspects of American life?" without recognising that America is largely a puritan state. His book What's So Great About America has a chapter called "Two Cheers for Colonialism" and another called "The Reparations Fallacy: What African-Americans Owe America." He idolises Ronald Reagan, the man who opposed both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1970 and called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 "humiliating to the South".
Nonsense!!!
Rating:
Summary: consequences of misguided attempts to help
Review: This book discusses a number of prevalent but questionable practices at most universities: (1) admissions policies (making the point that students admitted on the basis of preferential treatment are ill-equipped to compete in college courses and thus tend to confirm racial and ethnic stereotypes of inferiority rather than reverse them), (2) course content (American history, Western culture, etc. are now routinely condemned rather than praised as in the past), and (3) suspension of first and fourth amendment rights of freedom of speech and due process of law. To avoid predictable charges of misquoting, the author uses the perpetrator's own words, thus letting them hang themselves. For example, a pamphlet put out by the American Sociological Association says that "it is not open to debate whether a white student is racist..., he simply is." (p.8) And the law school faculty of SUNY Buffalo adopted a resolution that "our intellectual community shares values that go beyond a... commitment to open and unrestrained debate." (p. 9) As the book goes on to document case after case and quote source after source, it becomes clear that these examples are not mere isolated instances but are typical cases.
The bad news is that things have gotten worse since this book came out in 1991. Also, this book does not explain how such a counterproductive education system came to be. Other books provides pieces of the answer, but for a full account up to the present time, get The Rape of Alma Mater. And for a view of how all this affects women specifically, get Who Stole Feminism?
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