Posted on 06/10/2004 4:19:32 PM PDT by O.C. - Old Cracker
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 best-sellers 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 (news - web sites) 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."
Benjamin Shapiro was born in 1984 in Burbank, Calif. Brought up in the home of two Reagan Republicans, where intelligent conversation about politics and philosophy was encouraged, Shapiro quickly developed into a reasoned political thinker and a powerful writer.
He entered UCLA at the age of 16, graduating May, 2004, with a major in political science and plans to attend Harvard Law School in the Fall. Never afraid to antagonize his political opposition, he was the only counter-protester at an Affirmative Action Rally that drew over 1,500 people on UCLA's campus, and he has repeatedly challenged liberal professors and faculty.
As a staunch conservative on the modern politically correct campus, Shapiro faces the political liberals head-on. From exposing the leftist tilt of the professoriate on college campuses to addressing the conflict in the Middle East, Shapiro's confrontational approach always draws a hailstorm of response.
Shapiro was hired at age 17 to become the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the U.S. His columns are printed nationwide in major newspapers and websites, including Townhall.com, WorldNetDaily.com, FrontPageMag.com, the Riverside Press-Enterprise and the Conservative Chronicle. His columns have also appeared in the Orlando Sentinel, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, RealClearPolitics.com, Jewish World Review, and he has been quoted on the O'Reilly Factor, in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Press, and in The American Conservative magazine, among many others.
Shapiro is a regular guest on dozens of radio shows around the United States and Canada. He is also the author of Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (May 2004, Thomas Nelson Inc./WND Books).
An Orthodox Jew, virtuosic violinist, and hack golfer, Shapiro will be attending Harvard Law School in Fall 2004.
check out www.joesabia.com for some really good commentary about liberal bias on campus.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
Oh, Jeez, that's good!!
bump.
^^^^
bump
Interesting. I only skipped one grade and still made it to college at 16. I wonder what he did with all tha textra time? :-)
Why would anyone allow any University, any College, any Community College to be an institution where this can happen
....
..."Usually, there's peer group pressure when you come into a university — you're just a student — that would intimidate most people."...
Schools are "clubs" of learning---"CLUBS", where you try to belong to the club or to be outside of the club.
This is education? Social education, maybe.
didn't skip any and started U at 22. did my bit to protect this country. its called the military.
For which you are to be commended---and yet I doubt that accounts for Mr. Shapiro's extra time, given that he was, oh, 15 :-)
When a book is written by a conservative, punctuation errors are used to discredit all of your content. Now, if you are Michael Moore, you are allowed to distort in any fashion---including inventing events.
That's good.
No, this guy recognizes that the professors' reputed attempts to teach critical thinking are in fact 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."
This statement was so idiotic it made my head spin. A kid is paying how much a credit hour, and they "feel they should be essentially spoon-fed a line that is recognizable to them."(?!) Kids go to college to receive knowlege that is UNRECOGNIZABLE to them. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF BEING THERE!
Beam me up.....
Makes you wonder if any of these educators ever had to really work to earn their daily bread.
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