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Where the Arts Were Too Liberal [Antioch College Closes]
New York Times ^ | June 17, 2007 | MICHAEL GOLDFARB

Posted on 06/17/2007 2:43:15 PM PDT by madprof98

THIS is an obituary for a great American institution whose death was announced this week. After 155 years, Antioch College is closing.

[snip]

The college’s motto, not in Latin or Greek but plain English, was coined by Horace Mann, its first president: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

For most of its history the institution lived up to that calling.

[snip]

Yet it was in the high tide of liberal activism that the college lost its way. . . . The 2,000 students at Antioch, living in a picture-pretty American village, provided a laboratory for various social experiments of the time.

[snip]

I moved into this sociological petri dish from a well-to-do suburb. Within my first week I twice had guns drawn on me, once in fun and once in a state of drunken for real by a couple of ex-cons whom one of my classmates, in the interest of breaking down class barriers, had invited to live with her.

My roommate began the tortured process of coming out of the closet, first by pursuing women relentlessly and then accepting the truth and allowing himself to be pursued by men.

[snip]

Antioch College became a rump where the most illiberal trends in education became entrenched. Since it is always easier to impose a conformist ethos on a small group than a large one, as the student body dwindled, free expression and freedom of thought were crushed under the weight of ultraliberal orthodoxy. By the 1990s the breadth of challenging ideas a student might encounter at Antioch had narrowed, and the college became a place not for education, but for indoctrination. Everyone was on the same page, a little to the left of The Nation in worldview.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: academia; antioch; antiochcollege; indoctrination; politicalcorrectness; victory; waronerror
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One of my favorite community-college students graduated from Antioch in the '90s. He stayed with us for a while during his mandatory "work in the community" semesters and shared the horrors of immersion in PC-think 24/7. But I don't think it was the extremism of its ideology or of its students' conduct that drove Antioch out of business. Rather, I think Antioch went belly up because the Antioch Experience is now available at most American colleges, particulary the more expensive ones, where indoctrination by day and orgies by night have become commonplace. Antioch was just a little ahead of its time--and too far out of the way for the children of the truly trendy.
1 posted on 06/17/2007 2:43:17 PM PDT by madprof98
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To: madprof98

>> Antioch College became a rump where the most illiberal trends in education became entrenched.

And this, boys & girls, is how liberal Antioch College ended up entrenched in the rump with the pointy end of a trend.


2 posted on 06/17/2007 2:46:10 PM PDT by Nervous Tick
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To: madprof98

I had a cousin who graduated from there in the late ‘60s. He died a couple years ago. He fit right in at that place.

“:^/


3 posted on 06/17/2007 2:47:34 PM PDT by Past Your Eyes (Some people are too stupid to be ashamed.)
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To: madprof98

“Beware the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!”


4 posted on 06/17/2007 2:53:03 PM PDT by Wil H (So just who decided that the current global climate was optimum?)
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To: madprof98
Rather, I think Antioch went belly up because the Antioch Experience is now available at most American colleges, particulary the more expensive ones, where indoctrination by day and orgies by night have become commonplace.

LOL! I remember reading somebody's account of Black Mountain (wish I could remember whose!), where the author described the dorms as having the nighttime sound of "somebody sucking grapefruits." All of these ultra liberal schools seemed to be focused mainly on the precept of free sex for all. That, of course, was a big part of the 1930s leftist milieu that produced many of their professors.

As for the children of the truly trendy, I think many of the trendy considered it just plain too expensive for the free sex their kids could have gotten anywhere else and still emerged with a respectable (although equally meaningless) degree.

5 posted on 06/17/2007 2:53:28 PM PDT by livius
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To: madprof98
In a way, I'm sorry to see it go. It served as a horrible example; as an out-of-bounds marker. Unfortunately, most other universities are also out-of-bounds now.
6 posted on 06/17/2007 2:55:29 PM PDT by JoeFromSidney (My book is out. Read excerpts at http://www.thejusticecooperative.com)
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To: madprof98

Antioch College = “The Little Red Schoolhouse”.


7 posted on 06/17/2007 2:55:35 PM PDT by 19th LA Inf
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To: madprof98

a pure bastion of liberalism biting the dusts of history. good riddance


8 posted on 06/17/2007 2:56:25 PM PDT by Cinnamon
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To: Cinnamon

How many more will fall?


9 posted on 06/17/2007 2:57:26 PM PDT by bmwcyle (Satan is working both sides of the street in World Socialism and World Courts.)
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To: madprof98
THIS is an obituary for a great American institution whose death was announced this week. After 155 years, Antioch College is closing.

The New York Times is deeply saddened.

I, on the other hand, am delighted.

10 posted on 06/17/2007 3:03:18 PM PDT by okie01 (The Mainstream Media: IGNORANCE ON PARADE)
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To: okie01

Whatever will Young’s Dairy do without their business? Cedarville University will have to pick up the slack.


11 posted on 06/17/2007 3:19:15 PM PDT by Pure Country
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To: madprof98

Let us not forget that this dump had Mumia Abu-Jamal as commencement speaker (via audio tape) a few years back. When Maureen Faulkner (widow of Officer Daniel Faulkner, murdered by Mumia), traveled to Antioch to protest, she was met with throngs of students and faculty threatening her with physical harm and telling her to “leave, and take your hate with you.”

May Antioch stay dead. Forever.


12 posted on 06/17/2007 3:30:09 PM PDT by buccaneer81 (Bob Taft has soiled the family name for the next century.)
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To: madprof98

This is just Antioch College that is closing. Antioch University, with branches in various cities, remains open.


13 posted on 06/17/2007 3:42:50 PM PDT by BusterBear
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To: buccaneer81

“Let us not forget that this dump had Mumia Abu-Jamal as commencement speaker (via audio tape) a few years back. When Maureen Faulkner (widow of Officer Daniel Faulkner, murdered by Mumia), traveled to Antioch to protest, she was met with throngs of students and faculty threatening her with physical harm and telling her to “leave, and take your hate with you.””

That’s truly revolting. Good riddance to this example of the ‘closing of the American mind’.


14 posted on 06/17/2007 4:02:31 PM PDT by WOSG (Stop Z-visa amnesty!! 202-224-3121.)
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To: buccaneer81

We took a Sunday drive once to Yellow Springs, OH, back while I was stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB (1977-1981). The first thing we saw when got to the tiny little burg was the Gay and Lesbian Club. That was back when that sort of thing was still considered out of the mainstream at colleges and universities. We opted not to spend any time in Yellow Springs.


15 posted on 06/17/2007 4:15:33 PM PDT by RightWingConspirator (Glad that Ted the Boorish Drunk, Hitlery the Witch and John Fonda/Fraud Kerry are not my senators.)
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To: madprof98

Other colleges take note. This is the future when you succomb to PC. Are you listening Duke University?


16 posted on 06/17/2007 4:18:23 PM PDT by WashingtonSource
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To: madprof98
I grieve for the place with all the sadness, anger and self-reproach you feel when a loved one dies unnecessarily. I grieve for Antioch the way I grieve for the hope of 1968 washed away in a tide of self-inflated rhetoric, self-righteousness and self-indulgence.

Ha ha ha hee hee, ha ha haaa!

The ideals of social justice and economic fairness we embraced then are still right and deeply American. The discipline to turn those ideals into realities was what Antioch, its community and the generation it led was lacking. I fear it still is.

Bwa-ha-haaaaa!

17 posted on 06/17/2007 4:26:26 PM PDT by Dont Mention the War (My voting record: Rudy '89, Rudy '93, Rudy '97, Rudy '08. (Why not piss off BOTH sides?))
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Return of the Conservatives

18 posted on 06/17/2007 4:37:48 PM PDT by DarthDilbert
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To: madprof98

“By the 1990s the breadth of challenging ideas a student might encounter at Antioch had narrowed, and the college became a place not for education, but for indoctrination. Everyone was on the same page, a little to the left of The Nation in worldview.”

This sounds like what happens under every Leftist government.


19 posted on 06/17/2007 4:52:00 PM PDT by popdonnelly (Our first responsibility is to keep the power of the Presidency out of the hands of the Clintons.)
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To: madprof98
Antioch College became a rump where the most illiberal trends in education became entrenched. Since it is always easier to impose a conformist ethos on a small group than a large one, as the student body dwindled, free expression and freedom of thought were crushed under the weight of ultraliberal orthodoxy. By the 1990s the breadth of challenging ideas a student might encounter at Antioch had narrowed, and the college became a place not for education, but for indoctrination. Everyone was on the same page, a little to the left of The Nation in worldview.

This from the New York Times? Physician, heal thyself...

20 posted on 06/17/2007 5:09:43 PM PDT by GOPJ (Open border Lobbies push for amnesty when borders leak like sieves? Why?(hint:12 million new dems))
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