Campus Conservative Hits Academia(FR Mention)

Ben Shapiro isn't the only conservative railing against liberalism on America's college campuses. But right now -- thanks to a marketing campaign taking place mostly in cyberspace -- he's the one getting the most attention.

At 20, Shapiro graduates later this month from UCLA, where he has been best known for caustic columns in the campus paper.

But Shapiro also took careful notes in class, chronicling what he viewed as a pervasive liberal bias by professors who fed mostly unwitting students a steady diet of anti-Americanism.

Now, Shapiro has assembled those notes in "Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth" - a book that has won attention even amid the flood of political tracts from both left and right that is saturating the best-seller lists.

The publisher, WND Books, will not release sales figures, and the book has not cracked any overall best-seller lists. But despite little mainstream publicity, it has been among Top 25 hardcover non-fiction bestsellers on Amazaon.com lately, spiking after appearances by the author on conservative talk radio shows.

Shapiro said the big book chains have shown less interest, though several stores said Thursday they have been ordering copies for customers.

On Amazon, customer reviews have been polarized: Fans have called it witty and eye-opening, critics say it is exploitive and unfair.

In some ways, Shapiro is following in the footsteps of William F. Buckley's "God and Man at Yale" (1951) and John LeBoutillier's "Harvard Hates America" (1978). Both, like Shapiro, delighted conservative readers by sharply criticizing the faculties at the elite universities from which the authors had recently graduated.

But in other respects, Shapiro is emblematic of a new generation of sharp-tongued and increasingly confident campus conservatives, many of whom troll Web sites like World Net Daily, freerepublic.com and townhall.com, and write for conservative campus publications.

Intellectually precocious and extremely confident, Shapiro counts better-known columnist and author Ann Coulter as a friend, says he is himself far to the right of Ariel Sharon on Israeli politics, and -- in his book -- calls some of his professors "as red as overripe tomatoes."

"He's fearless," said David Horowitz, a conservative intellectual who has extensively criticized colleges and universities for bias against conservatives. "Usually, there's peer group pressure when you come into a university - you're just a student - that would intimidate most people. He's part of a new generation that you can't intimidate."

Some academic groups say criticism such as Shapiro's is nothing new, though it has perhaps intensified in the recent era of blogs and exceptionally divisive politics.

Still, they say it is troubling, and they worry that conservative students are mistaking professors' attempts to teach critical thinking for propaganda.

Some students "feel they should be essentially spoon-fed a line that is recognizable to them," said Ruth Flower, director of public policy and communications at the American Association of University Professors.

An Orthodox Jew, Shapiro grew up in the Los Angeles area, skipping grades three and nine and entering UCLA at 16. He jumped quickly into campus politics, earning a column in the Daily Bruin campus paper.

That ended in the spring of 2002, after a dispute over a column that criticized campus Muslim groups for supporting terrorism. When the paper wouldn't run it, Shapiro took his case to the air on a local talk-radio show and was suspended by the newspaper.

He later began writing a syndicated column that is now picked up by a handful of outlets and Web sites. His parents had to sign his first contract, since he was only 17 at the time.

Shapiro insists his pages of footnotes prove his book is serious research, not vitriol. Still, some readers are likely to question the objectivity of some sources. And after the book came out this spring, the Daily Bruin reported that there were a number of citation errors, and that several UCLA professors claim they were misquoted.

Shapiro acknowledged a "couple of punctuation errors as far as paraphrasing," which he said would be corrected in the next edition, but said he stands by the material.

Profits from the book will help pay Shapiro's tuition next year at Harvard Law School, several of whose faculty members he has already criticized in print.

"That should be fun," he laughed. But he insists he is genuinely looking forward to learning at an institution that -- despite a fairly large contingent of conservative students -- is viewed by some on the right as the belly of the beast.

"I think conservatives can get a lot from a liberal education," said Shapiro, who insists he also enjoyed his time at UCLA. "If you're being assaulted on all sides you come up with good responses. I want to hear the best that the left has to offer."

June 21, 2004

The Liberal Academia

This is something I wanted to blog on awhile ago, but just forgot about it. A few months ago Kevin Drum and Jesse Taylor noted that the donations by teachers, professors, and universities is not as lopsided as was previously thought. They noted that while 65% of the donations when to Democrats 34% went to Republicans. Thus academia is not all that liberally biased...or is it.

In typical Kevin Drum style he makes a leap that this this means about 1/3rd of academics lean toward Republicans. But can we conclude this? I don't think so. First, when you look at the top donors (for 2002) you see that the percentages are much more skewed than the total indicates:

Rank	Organization	Amount	Dems	Repubs
1	Harvard University	$504,760	96%	4%
2	University of California	$247,454	80%	20%
3	Apollo Group	$221,150	41%	59%
4	University of Texas	$188,211	52%	48%
5	Stanford University	$176,722	74%	25%
6	American Assn of University Women	$160,750	100%	0%
7	University of Iowa	$136,652	33%	65%
8	Career College Assn	$133,208	47%	53%
9	University of Minnesota	$121,405	90%	10%
10	University of Pennsylvania	$105,990	81%	19%
11	Georgetown University	$82,610	80%	20%
12	College of William & Mary	$75,000	100%	0%
13	Boston University	$74,968	84%	16%
14	Columbia University	$70,340	60%	40%
15	University of North Carolina	$69,979	91%	9%
16	George Washington University	$68,791	76%	23%
17	University of South Carolina	$67,776	85%	14%
18	Princeton University	$66,680	86%	13%
19	University of Washington	$66,595	87%	13%
20	Rutgers University	$66,013	91%	8%

Also, in looking at who they gave to in Congress they seemed to be practicing that age old strategy of covering all the bases. That is, they gave to both sides, but the amounts that were given to the Democrats were much larger.

Clearly the preference is generally for the Democrats party (i.e., there is a Liberal bias). To conclude there is not a liberal bias or it isn't that bad is premature. Isn't it amazing what one finds when you look a little deeper into the data. The initial conclusion turns out to be very much suspect.

http://www.steveverdon.com/archives/statistics/001538.html

June 21, 2004

The Liberal Academia

Rank	Organization	Amount	Dems	Repubs
1	Harvard University	$504,760	96%	4%
2	University of California	$247,454	80%	20%
3	Apollo Group	$221,150	41%	59%
4	University of Texas	$188,211	52%	48%
5	Stanford University	$176,722	74%	25%
6	American Assn of University Women	$160,750	100%	0%
7	University of Iowa	$136,652	33%	65%
8	Career College Assn	$133,208	47%	53%
9	University of Minnesota	$121,405	90%	10%
10	University of Pennsylvania	$105,990	81%	19%
11	Georgetown University	$82,610	80%	20%
12	College of William & Mary	$75,000	100%	0%
13	Boston University	$74,968	84%	16%
14	Columbia University	$70,340	60%	40%
15	University of North Carolina	$69,979	91%	9%
16	George Washington University	$68,791	76%	23%
17	University of South Carolina	$67,776	85%	14%
18	Princeton University	$66,680	86%	13%
19	University of Washington	$66,595	87%	13%
20	Rutgers University	$66,013	91%	8%

http://www.steveverdon.com/archives/statistics/001538.html

The leftist agenda that's running rampant today is rooted in the 1960's hippy generation. Many of these same people are in our high schools and colleges today and are in charge of shaping their minds today. Some college courses are:

Columbia: "Sorcery and Magic"

Dartmouth: "Queer Theory, Queer Texts"

Cornell: "Gay Fiction"

Swarthmore: "Lesbian Novels Since WW 2"

University of Wisconsin: "Goddesses and Feminine Powers"

University of Pennsylvania: "Feminist Critique of Christianity"

It will take a massive uprising of conservatives, parents and students to change the situation around. Ideological thoughts of post modernism and moral relativism have seeped into every course on campus. They are not teaching freshman English or American History instead benign courses such as "Vampires and the Undead" are taught instead.

70% of college students are sexually active today and of that 70% half of them have sexually transmitted diseases and many do not know they have contracted one. Hooking up is one of the new fads in schools that means one is having sex with anyone at anytime without knowing the name of the person with whom you are having the relationship.

20-Year Old Author Writes:"Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth"

Getting brainwashed at college this year?
Get twin exposes on corrupt state of U.S. universities – at a steep discount!

August 31, 2004

Two new blockbuster books on the unbelievably corrupt state of America's colleges – "Freefall of the American University" and "Brainwashed" – are available for a limited time at a very reduced rate from WND's online store.

"Freefall of the American University: How Our Colleges Are Corrupting the Minds and Morals of the Next Generation" is an alarming, thoroughly researched account of how today’s universities are indoctrinating students with flagrant liberal agendas.

Something very disturbing is happening in colleges all across the country, says author and educator Jim Nelson Black. Instead of being educational institutions designed to encourage the free discussion of ideas, universities have become prisons of propaganda, indoctrinating students with politically correct (and often morally repugnant) ideas about American life and culture.

This book exposes the liberal bias in today's universities, providing hard evidence, in clear and unimpeachable terms, that shows how today's colleges are covertly and overtly proselytizing with leftist slants on sexuality, politics and lifestyles.

Jim Nelson Black dares to name names and provide specific and credible insights from faculty members, administrators, professional observers and analysts who have witnessed and chronicled the intellectual and ethical collapse taking place within the academy.

This book offers a broad overview of the issues, from the history of the problems to several analyses from a broad range of academics and professionals. It also provides observations of the university students themselves, in their own words, from schools all across the nation.

Most importantly, it shows clearly what must be done to make America's colleges institutions of truth, honor and integrity once more.

'Brainwashed'

In "Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth," 20-year-old college student and syndicated columnist Benjamin Shapiro says while parents hope their university-bound children will return as well-rounded adults, there's only one view allowed on most college campuses: a rabid brand of liberalism that must be swallowed hook, line and sinker.

Examining this nationwide problem from firsthand experience, Shapiro shows how the leftists who dominate the universities – from the administration to the student government, from the professors to the student media – use their power to mold impressionable minds.

Fresh and bitterly funny, his book proves the universities, far from being places for open discussion, are really dungeons of the mind that indoctrinate students to become socialists, atheists, race-baiters and narcissists.

Popular columnist Ann Coulter calls Shapiro's columns, "smart, informative and incisive. He is wise beyond his years without losing the refreshing fearlessness of youth," she says.

In a review of the book, columnist Mike Adams, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, writes, "for years, I have wanted someone to write a book like 'Brainwashed.'" So many times, he says, "I have found myself walking down a hall accidentally overhearing some liberal professor telling the class something like the following: 'Transsexuals are just the same as you and me' or 'Marriage is a form of capitalist oppression, which is only beneficial to men. Studies prove it!' After overhearing such garbage, I just wanted to be a student again for a day so I could take notes and publish them later. That is what Ben Shapiro has done in his new book. It is simply classic reading."

ShopNetDaily.com

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