Ethical dilemmas with liberal bias in academia

I am a graduate student at an unnamed public university in the western US. I recently encountered yet another example of how liberals are corrupting the institutional space where we are supposedly producing 'knowledge' by promoting lies disguised as facts. Specifics: We watched a film (produced 2000) called 'Lumumba' about the Congalese Prime Minister who was killed in 1961. Afterwards, a student (and it is worth noting that she is from another French-speaking African nation) gave a presentation about Patrice Lumumba in which she stated that his death had been ordered by President Eisenhower through the CIA. Upon hearing this 'fact', I was immediately doubtful as to its underlying truth. The professor then chimed in that this was not the only case in which the US had ordered leaders of newly emerging democracies to be killed as similar things had occurred in Latin America.

I have a number of problems with what happened the other day. And I would also like to ask the Free Republic members for any information they have about the truth of Lumumba and his death. My first problem: I suspect these are lies. I spoke with someone who informed me that Lumumba was not only communist, but dictator-like and NOT popular at all with his people (as depicted in the film.) Second, if an African nation were on its way to being successful, this is exactly what a US President would WANT. The reason given in the class for the US killing Lumumba was that we were afraid of the threat the Congo would pose to our world dominance!!! Third, I looked around at the class (composed of undergrads as well as grads) and in particular at one young undergrad. She is not particularly academic and I suspect she will just accept what she heard in class without any further investigation. And she probably represents the average student.

On another level, I wanted to raise a topic for discussion: the liberal bias in academia and what to do about it. My first impulse upon leaving class was to drop everything and get as far away as possible from this institutionalized lying. I am fed up with it! But another side of me wants to root out this corruption from academia (if that's even possible) and I feel that the only way one can do this is to stay within the system and work that way. What do people think?

One final note: If I had been armed with facts and challenged what people were saying about Lumumba, I would have been ripped apart not only by the students, but by the professor. Further, I would come off as racist because people would have asked how I could know better than someone FROM a nearby African nation (i.e. the presenter). This is of course another issue -- playing the race card (or something similar) to prevent challenges to the espoused facts and to cast the challenger into a direly negative light.

My heart goes out to you, gradgirl. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. But you mustn't suffer in vain!

You may want to arm yourself with the following- just some gentle suggestions.

You might go to www.frontpagemag.org which is David Horowitz' site, and see his
Academic Bill of Rights and
Students for Academic Freedom (under the left-hand column entitled, "Campus Watch") and
Academic Freedom Abuse Center (where he asks people to help document the abuse).
Also, there is a clear, concise explantion of Leftists taking over American Academe in a terrifc new book by Jack Cashill, "Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture". Another great book is Horowitz', "Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left". These two books let us know what we're dealing with on campus and in the Old Media and parts of the Entertainment industry. And Horowitz is getting favorable results for "abused" students like yourself.

Some background information: The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi were all Belgian colonies. Both "countries" suffered through major genocides in the 1990s. Although the Rwandan genocide received far more press attention, the parties to the genocide helped instigate a genocidal civil war in the Congo that killed far more people (roughly 4 or 5 million according to most credible estimates, or approximately 10% of the Congolese population but mostly concentrated in the eastern third).

The history of the Belgian Congo comprises primarily a series of genocidal-scale Belgian-instigated tragedies. They began with the ruthless and most selfishly greedy King Léopold II of Belgium, who ruled the badly misnamed Congo Free State as his personal estate and exploited slave labor to extract rubber wealth so cruelly that the basin depopulated to half its former labor force. The Belgians intentionally spread cannibalism and the most brutally vile of indigenous African traditions throughout their domain, precipitating a cascading cycle of routine violence that persists today.

In their ruthless exploitation, the Belgians destroyed the power structures of the indigenous Congolese without creating any real replacement hierarchy among the African people. They also built very little national infrastructure to connect their far-flung Congolese domains except to the extent minimally necessary to exploit the agricultural and mineral wealth of the Congolese jungle.

After the Second World War, the Congolese people grew restless and obviously desired anything to save them from continued tyranny under the foot of Belgium. Bereft of education and native leadership to an extent unknown even in the worst of the non-Belgian colonies, the Congolese descended rapidly into an anarchic civil war when the Belgians suddenly departed in 1960. Among the several regional leaders who emerged from this anarchy was Patrice Lumumba, the prime minister in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) at the time of independence.

As I understand, whether Lumumba was indeed a communist or retaliatory Belgians simply leveled that accusation against him remains a matter of considerable debate. Because Patrice Lumumba died before establishing a clear economic policy and long-term alliances, his true sympathies (or possibly utter confusion) are known but to God. Lumumba obviously despised his Belgian slave masters, a nominal American ally in the Cold War against the Soviet bloc, and he did appeal for Soviet aid. The circumstances behind this aid appeal remain shrouded in the complex Belgian complicity, CIA incompetence, and UN intervention. And in any case, accepting Soviet aid at a time of crisis did not transpire necessarily into an endorsement of communistic philosophy.

The Congo ultimately descended into the totalitarian dictatorship of Mobutu Sese-Seko that exemplifies a perfect tyrannical corrupt kleptocracy. A nominal American ally against the Cuban interference in Angola, Mobutu enriched himself excessively at the expense of the Congolese people. Backed by Belgium in his quest for the leadership of the Congo, Mobutu generally emulated odious Belgian-style governance although he brought some level of stability to the country, primarily through general tyranny. Most infrastructure deteriorated from lack of maintenance, and the levels of political and economic freedom under Mobutu resembled those under his contemporary Nikita Kruschev. So we got at best a communist with nominal American sympathies. Might Lumumba have been better? We cannot answer that question definitively, but few dictators have been worse than Mobutu.

There is a *SHRED* of truth to the accusation that the Americans feared losing the Congo. The Katanga region contains a major uranium mine whose ore America used to construct nuclear warheads including those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Americans obviously did not want that mine to fall into the hands of the evil empire (by proxy of course) and generally tried to contain the Soviet bloc.

I don't know if this helps you, but I often find historical context necessary to understand events.

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