Rating: 
Summary: A carefully documented study
Review: This book hit the presses in 1991 and having it read while employed as a professor in a university, its message really hit home. Everyone who has been in a university environment will no doubt have their own horror stories to report on their experiences confronting the move to incorporate "diversity" on campus. But all students, faculty, and administrators should not be too hasty in their conclusions, and regard their purely anecdotal experiences as proof that such experiences are the norm in all universities. The author of this book fortunately has not done this, but has given a careful, documented study of the diversity movement in American universities. This is not to say that everything the author concludes has been supported by statistical and scientific evidence, as there are a few places in the book where such evidence is lacking.The word "diversity" implies a wide variety of ideas and knowledge. In the author's view though this word has taken on a new meaning in the university, namely that it has lost its procedural meaning and has taken on substantive content. To advocate diversity does not mean that one advocates an elaborate range of ideas, but rather a particular set of ideological doctrines. If one does not agree with the political agenda and opinions of those who seek to "diversify" the university, then one is not an advocate of "diversity". Since this book was written, the diversity movement has expanded into corporate America. The irony of this is that many who left the university to escape from its coercive policies of "diversification" and received employment in these corporations must now face again the same policies. Fearing lawsuits, corporations have required mandatory classes in diversity and sensitivity training, resulting in a chilling atmosphere for many employees (and managers). Ordinary conversation between employees can be guarded and minimal, lest the wrong words be used that are at odds with diversity dogma. Some corporations have even asked some employees to act as "change agents" to monitor (sometimes anonymously) the language of the company workforce, and to report to corporate management or human resources any deviation from the doctrines of diversity. It is a shame that the university, which should be a refugee camp for the reasoning mind, is now to a large extent an idea filter with a very low bandwidth, especially in the humanities. Science and technology though, in the university and outside of it, are seeing unprecedented advance. This advance is not due to a movement for diversity but to the unrelenting use of the human mind. Thankfully the diversity movement has not yet discouraged or suppressed human curiosity. Not yet.
Rating: 
Summary: Dinesh D'Souza gets caught in lie after lie
Review: This is yet another right wing book which has been shown to be a pack of lies. Example: in this book he makes a statement that gives the impression that Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton have been driven out of the curriculum at Duke. He happened to once be at a debate with a professor from Duke, and lo and behold, we find that Duke still taught those authors, and with great enthusiasm. Dinesh D'Souza, why did you lie to us? My theory: With conservatives, the truth and facts are not on their side. Hence people like Dinesh D'Souza need to make up facts. Lack of veracity is the conservative method. What do conservatives have against the truth? The answer is not here. Dinesh D'Souza, shame on you for lying.
Rating:
Summary: Still relevant
Review: Though some of D'souza info is dated like some of his info on PennState (I go there now) he does mention problems about how now colleges and universities are not moving away from traditional academic material and heading towards more contemporary notions of education. It seems a large number of colleges in the country do not require things like Western literature or Western History even though we are a Western Nation and that Western ideas have influenced things like democrarcy and egalitarianism though I admit it took generations for their ideas to be implemented. A lot of things D'souza talks about are still going on today like a great deal of racial groups clustered toghether with full university support through like minority frats, social groups, dorms...Part of what college is about is about learning about people who are different from you and the best way to do that is through interacting with them. Probably the best thing in Ill-Liberal education is the last few pages of the book where he talks about his three modes proposals such as non-racial affirmative action taking into account economic background, family situation and educational back ground, equality and the classics emphasizing classics that deal with equality and human differance (incorporate non-western books when necessary) and choice without separatism for university groups.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for reaserch- or just knowing what to expect
Review: Was intresting to me as a psyc. major and as a first year student- not knowing what to expect. It also has a great deal of statistics that ARE NOT DULL! It is a good read if it is pertinate to you.
Rating:
Summary: A fine study of Political Correctness in Academia
Review: Written a decade ago, Dinesh D'Souza's essay remains...in my estimate... a thought-provoking exploration of Political Correctness as it continues to prevail in some of the bastions of American Higher Education. The curriculum agenda of renowned universities of the Northeast and California is examined in particular. These schools established trends in determining an academic "orthodoxy" radically redefining the essentials of Liberal Arts core subjects and criteria applied to hire (and fire) professors assigned to teach them. Though opponents denounce D'Souza's anecdotal style and conservative sensibility, the evidence of massive assault on so-called Western thought taught by "anti-Canon" ideologues is manifest. "Hey! Hey!...Ho, Ho! WESTERN CIV. now must go!" was the slogan of Stanford University students several years ago celebrating abolition of the requirement that undergraduates receive exposure to Great Books in THE SURVEY course. That TIME...over 2000 years...and eminence of distinguished scholars from Erasmus and Thomas More to Mortimer Adler had validated "greatness" was not only rejected with disdain but asserted to prove THE CANON is racist and misogynistic. Readers of any political-educational pursuasion would find much of Dinesh D'Souza's essay engaging. Its tone, for the most part, is understated. The irony of who it will offend ...and how... will speak for itself. The Academic PC police are alive and well in US academia today. Their influence is effective in secondary (and even elementary!) schools in battles on the efficacy of bilingual education, self-esteem grading policies and, of course, The Classics. (HUCKLEBERRY FINN, long-regarded as yet the most distinguished American novel written, has been often banned as racist). Granted, when D'Souza wrote ILLIBERAL EDUCATION ten years ago he was not...nor claimed to be...an eminent writer or scholar. However: " OUT of the MOUTH of BABES..." Re-reading 1 9 8 4 with its Orwellian concepts of "Double-Think", "Newspeak" and Thought-Police might give "cause for pause". As well as perhaps a reading of Noble prize winner, Czeslaw Milosz classic examination of the totalitarian mentality, THE CAPTIVE MIND. A serious reader might even ponder some of the writings of Martin Heiddeger where the roots of DECONSTRUCTIONIST philosophy (and even PC "reading theories" by Post-Modernists like Professor Stanley Fish) can be traced. ILLIBERAL EDUCATION: The Politics of Sex and Race on Campus, may not be a great book. It certainly does not deal with a "great" subject. But it is a well-written informative tract; a fine study in the undisputed reality and effects of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS in America's academia and education system...
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