Posted on 08/14/2025 8:12:52 AM PDT by DeweyCA
This trend may be individually smart, but it makes our society dumber and ultimately undermines the potential educational value of a college education.
College students admit to lying about or hiding their views on family, faith, politics, and other socially contentious issues, such as gender ideology, in order to "fit in" at their colleges. At least, in this case, at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University.
Almost everybody is living a lie, to avoid bullying by the other 10% of students and, of course, the college professors who act like the old Soviet Political Officers in the Soviet Union's armed forces.
Don't cross the commissars!
A new study finds that nearly nine in ten students fake more progressive views than they really hold, often to appease professors or stay in their peers’ good graces. The habit doesn’t stop at the classroom door; even close friends and romantic partners are kept in the dark. From lecture halls to late-night conversations, students are learning that conformity pays and candor costs. If universities still see themselves as incubators of independent thought, these numbers should be a wake-up call. Can students truly develop as thinkers when honesty feels unsafe?
Below is an excerpt from an article in The Hill by the study’s authors, Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman. You can read the full piece here.
Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We were not studying politics — we were studying development. Our question was clinical, not political: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?”
We asked: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically? An astounding 88 percent said yes…
Seventy-eight percent of students told us they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity; 72 percent on politics; 68 percent on family values. More than 80 percent said they had submitted classwork that misrepresented their views in order to align with professors…
It's obvious why the students do it: just look at what happens on college campuses these days, and you will see an American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Dissent is harshly punished through public shaming, poor grades, and even physical intimidation.
All the power is on the side of the woke warriors, even though the average college student apparently isn't. Harvard and the establishment will give awards and honors to a law student who literally committed a crime, assaulting a Jewish student, and will go to great lengths to shut down the speech of anybody who objects.
It's just safer to keep your head down, get your credential, and pretend to go along.
You may recall that in China, Deng Xiaoping, who eventually rose to the leadership of the Communist Party of China, couldn't escape punishment for minor deviations from Mao's views during the Cultural Revolution. While the totalitarianism of our culture is a bit less harsh in tactics, it is a matter of degree and not kind. Even minor dissent is harshly punished.
This turns colleges into places that don't educate, but indoctrinate. The indoctrination may not completely succeed in changing the minds of all the students--after all, if they are lying to cover up their real views, they have not succumbed completely to the brainwashing--but it wipes away any will to explore ideas and learn.
College is nothing more than a place to party, get high, and climb the social ladder. They also teach that the worse you are, the more likely you are to succeed.
The credentialed class is livid that Trump is cleaning up this mess, at least as much as he can, given his powers, because academia is the place where they hold the most sway. They control trillions of dollars in spending and the words of millions of students. They can spread what propaganda they like and intimidate whomever they please.
I am a fan of liberal education, as an idea. I believe we actually need an elite class of people dedicated to the pursuit of truth, and I even believe that there is ample room for the leftists to explore their ideas and challenge the prevailing norms.
But that isn't modern academia, and in many ways it is the opposite of what students face today.
Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, the exploration of ideas--they are all alien to modern academia. Not even the sciences are immune to the moral rot.
I honestly don't believe that most institutions of higher education can be redeemed. They have been rotted from within. The intellectual termites have so weakened the structures that the smartest thing to do is build parallel institutions and replace the lot of them.
There are still good professors and scientists, and the idea of the university is a good one. But it is time to abandon the old and rebuild.
It would have been interesting to see how many Freshmen lie versus how many Senior lie. Does the constant immersion in the sewer of college change ones’ beliefs? Does living the lie make you believe the lie after four years?
I like what this indicates about their positions and how they vote. It’s OK to avoid arguing with leftist nutcases.
Conform or be cast out.
The good professors are all STEM professors. I fondly remember mine.
Even in the early 70s, I don’t recall having one conservative humanities professor. Except for James Dickey, who was a professor on campus but I never was in one of his classes.
I would bet that on 80%+ of essay type assignments having a view counter to the proffessor you will fail or get a severely lower score.
it’s self preservation.
Sounds like islam ,LOL
Agreed. In the late 90’s and early 90’s exactly zero of my math and computer science instructors taught the leftist crap or even natural selection / anti-God stuff. I heard all of that in my liberal arts “core” courses.
It sounds like, you have to be liberal, to survive in college. Or that you have to appear to be liberal.
It’s a sad commentary, but it appears this is how it is.
“It would have been interesting to see how many Freshmen lie versus how many Senior lie. Does the constant immersion in the sewer of college change ones’ beliefs? Does living the lie make you believe the lie after four years?”
My daughter went to college conservative and all the heavy-handed brainwashing made her more conservative. She found a small handful of like-minded individuals.
Mind you, she served in the IDF (and is back now) and all the anti-Jewish stuff in colleges and the media really pushed her FAR right.
But, yes, she knows to keep her head down and not express her opinions.
Good for your daughter and good for you for raising her right.
I went through that issue in college many decades ago.
Ideological professors was one issue.
Another comical example was my professor who taught a course on the Supreme Court.
He had written a dozen books on the subject.
If you read all his books and memorized his analysis you would get an A in the course.
Easy peasy.
I wrote a term paper in the late ‘70s at a college and leaned it towards abolishing the death penalty although I don’t believe that. My professor was a feminist. I got the A, and almost got laid.
Things have changed a little bit since the 1970s. STEM faculty are not the way you are remembering them.
And the only thing that is truly yours is your soul.
Up to you I suppose.
BTTT
I had one English teacher who actually cared about teaching English, in college. All the rest outside my engineering curriculum were blatant propagandists for specific ideologies (the anthropology teacher was a Marxist, the history prof a socialist, the astronomy prof a raging atheist, another English teacher a post-modernist, etc.)
I put up Nixon’s The One stickers, so no...
“Or that you have to appear to be liberal.”
If 90% of students lie about their views, that probably means that about 90% are secretly conservative. Would that mean that a mostly conservative student body presents themselves to the rest of as a group as liberal?
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