Unlearning What's Learned in College

Every now and then I discuss the state of the ideological skew at colleges and universities with one of the administrators at Kennesaw State University.   He too is aware of how dominant the liberal perspective has become, but is more sanguine than I about the long-term implications.

He points to the fact that as people grow older their opinions tend to migrate from the left toward the right.  In the end, he argues, it does not much matter that a biased view of the world is inculcated at school because this will eventually be corrected once graduates must deal with reality for themselves.

Recently the conservative economist Thomas Sowell made some useful suggestions about the sorts of books alumnae can be provided counteract the propaganda that flooded their minds in university classes.  Indeed, I just finished reading a biography of Calvin Coolidge that helped dispel myths I learned in high school.

But my question is: why should students need to do this unlearning.  Why are we so complacent about the misconceptions they are force-fed in the name of education?  If what they are being taught is so one-sided that it distorts the truth, what is the point of exposing them to this in the first place?

Colleges remain good places to obtain technical skills.  If the goal is to become a mechanical engineer or a registered nurse, there are few better venues to acquire the relevant skills.  Yet what of learning about life or how to be a social leader?  Shouldn’t a higher education be helpful here too?

For the last several decades, undergraduates have been voting with their feet regarding these issues.  Fewer and fewer decide to be English or history majors.  The liberal arts, which were once considered the core of what every educated person should know, have fallen on hard times.

So have social sciences such as sociology and political science.  As interesting as these subjects can be, they are avoided by first class minds because what they teach is already known by those familiar with the tenets of political correctness.

Long ago, upon graduating from college as a philosophy major, I faced the problem endemic to philosophy majors, namely what sort of employment could I obtain.  Consequently, as an accomplished test-taker I decided to sit for the City of New York’s welfare caseworker exam.

And indeed I did well.  Without ever taking a single course in social work, I came in third among the hundreds of applicants testing along side me.  The way I did this was by answering the questions how I thought social workers would want them answered.  In other words, I pretended to be a goody-two-shoes.

A parallel strategy applies to contemporary colleges.  Their bias is so predictable that an intelligent person can figure out what is expected without having to crack open a book.  What then is their purpose?  Why not skip the entire exercise and head straight for the job market?

It seems that I am not alone in this reasoning.  College enrollments have begun to decline.  Michael Barone has gone so far as to write that the college bubble has burst.  If he is correct, perhaps the public has begun to figure out there is little “there, there” on campus.

Liberal faculty members would thus be wise to note these trends.  For their own professional survival, they might consider moderating their biases.  At the very least, it is in their interest to hire, and promote, colleagues who present the other side of the ideological picture.

Nonetheless, I am not holding my breath.  In the hermetically sealed environment of the contemporary college campus, the atmosphere has become so stagnant that most of the oxygen has already been sucked out.  Thus, my guess is that there will be few meaningful reforms until people begin to expire of intellectual asphycsiation.

Still we must try.  There is too much as stake.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Return of the Viet Nam Syndrome

During the mid-60’s, just as the Viet Nam War was escalating to its fullest extent, I was attending graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  As a hot bed of liberalism, this turned out to be one of the first places the anti-war movement gained traction.

Americans, in general, were growing tired of a conflict where the casualties were rising and where victory seemed further away than ever.  College students, in particular, were disenchanted.  As a result, they began to clamor for an end to our military involvement.

One of the ways this was expressed was by organizing “teach-ins.”  These were intended to demonstrate that the war was both brutal and unwinnable.  The idea was to educate ordinary citizens why they too should join the effort to bring the troops home.

As a contemporary of the demonstrators, I understood that a primary concern of many of the agitators was that they not get drafted.  In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that I shared this sentiment.  This, indeed, is why I signed up for the National Guard.

In any event, while I too hated the idea of getting killed, I was willing to go if called.  Many of my peers were not.  As a result, they concocted a theory of how the U.S. could extricate itself from this mess.  The concept was simple: declare victory and come home.

Ultimately this is essentially what we did.  Under the tutelage of Henry Kissinger, we negotiated a peace we had every reason to believe would be violated.  Then we picked up and got out.  We, thanks to subsequent congressional decisions, did not even keep our word to supply the South Vietnamese with the weapons needed to defend themselves.

The upshot was that tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of our allies died.  And yet we were safe.  Moreover, the blood bath took place far from our shores and hence was out of sight.

This shameful episode continues to be celebrated by the liberals who won their political spurs by preaching duplicity.  Now one of their disciples is at it again.  Barack Obama has decided that the strategy wherein we betrayed our former friends can be recycled.  We too can declare victory and come home from the War on Terror.

Oh, excuse me—this is not a war, but a series of policing actions.  There are merely small pockets of criminals scattered around the world the periodically require our attention.  Mobilizing to meet this threat is accordingly unnecessary.  We can even afford to pull back on killing them with drones.

The trouble with this attitude is that the parallel between Viet Nam and today does not hold.  When we left southeast Asia the violence continued, but it took place over there.  The Viet Cong had no intention of following us home and murdering us in our beds.

The Islamist terrorists are different.  They do wish to slaughter us where we live.  Thus unilaterally declaring the war against them as over will in no way protect us from their wrath.  It would be a case of “the sound of one hand clapping” actually being that of bombs set off in our midst.

 Centuries ago the Chinese learned that the best defense against an implacable foe was a good offense.  Merely hiding behind the Great Wall and waiting for the Mongols to attack was an invitation for them to do exactly that.  Only a forward strategy that kept their enemies off-balance forestalled subsequent invasions.

The military situation is no different today.  When thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands, of religious militants believe they have a sacred duty to kill us, it makes no sense to give them a free pass.  Hoping that if we are nice to them, they will be nice to us, is fatuous.

Barack Obama  must remember that the first obligation of the president of the United States is to defend us from our enemies, not to placate his political cronies.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

ObamaSpeak Part II

Barack Obama is a talented wordsmith.  His use of language is so facile that he believes he can use it to persuade anyone of anything.  Thus, he is convinced he can persuade the American people that he is committed to a free press even as he shields his Attorney General from charges that he abused it.

But our president is more ambitious than this.  He believes that he can redefine the language so that it better suits his political needs.  Just as he assumes he can “define” the “War on Terror” out of existence, so he images he can characterize the political landscape anyway he desires.

Let us take the word “politicize.”  In Obamaspeak this now refers to statements and activities that make his administration look bad.  Accordingly, when Republicans highlighted e-mails that showed the White House and State Department altered talking points so as to misidentify the nature of the attack on our Benghazi consulate, they were engaged in politicizing this issue.

On the other hand, when Obama and his cronies sought to discredit these Republican assertions, they were not engaged in politicizing their response.  Because they were only telling the truth about misguided opponents, they were “educating” the public as opposed to manipulating the facts.

The president is also fond of excising uncomfortable words from his lexicon—and from ours.  Foremost among these are the words “terrorist” and “terrorism.”  Thus when Major Hassan brazenly shot dozens of American soldiers on a military base this was “workplace violence.”

It did not matter that in perpetrating these deaths and injuries this Army doctor shouted out his loyalty to Allah.  Nor did it count that he was in contact with avowed enemies of the United States in Yemen.  They too were not terrorists—even though they sponsored terror against us.

Obama also choked over the idea of calling the Boston marathon bombers terrorists.  Although they built their bombs and placed them with the objective of causing the most injuries and fear they could, they were protesting against American intransigence rather than terrorizing.

Another word absent from the president’s vocabulary is “Islamist.”  Around the world in Libya, Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Chechnya, Dagestan, Mali, and Nigeria activists have been inflicting damage in the name of defending Islam and yet our chief executive sees no connection.

Now granted that most Muslims are not actively engaged in attempting to harm us, but can any sane person doubt that the tenets of Islam have been used to justify doing so?  Nor should we avert our eyes when huge majorities in Muslim countries support the introduction of Sharia law that commands the stoning death of unfaithful wives.

These same Islamist fanatics espouse a “jihad” to wipe the Little Satan (Israel) and the Great Satan (the United States) off the face of the earth.  Yet we are not supposed to define a jihad as an avenging war, but as a personal quest for spiritual growth.

All of this might be amusing, except for the fact that people are going to die because of this head-in-the-sand mentality.  Playing word games when one is intent upon wooing voters in an election can be an estimable skill, but substituting language for policy thereafter can be disastrous in a chief executive.

The person who is in charge of setting our domestic and foreign policy agendas should be more concerned with consequences than with verbal gymnastics.  The idea is not to sound smart, but to be smart with respect to critical decisions.

Barack Obama needs to realize that in the long run people will judge him on the basis of what he does rather than what he says.  If our national foes see weakness, they will take advantage of this.  If those who wish us ill detect confusion, they will not be charmed by poetic cadences.

Words can be powerful, but they are no replacement for actual power.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Real Racism

Chris Matthews is at it again.  That thrill that ran up his leg when Barack Obama erupted upon the national scene has apparently intensified and resulted in brain fever.  Now that the president is beset by a trifecta of political scandals, Matthews is still among the few blaming these problems, in part, on racism.

This former Congressional aide may, however, soon find himself surrounded by congenial souls.  For the moment, the mainstream press is up in arms about having been targeted for federal investigation.  Its members feel betrayed that their favorite politician apparently approved a fishing expedition into their telephone contacts.

But wait.  Liberal reporters remain reluctant to identify the Benghazi affair as evidence of official mendacity.  Like the president, they seem to want the whole business to go away.  Why else would they not be in a lather when e-mails confirm that what the president’s press secretary told them was flat-out false?

The answer seems to be that they fundamentally agree with Matthews that criticism of Obama must be motivated by racism.  This charge has been made many times because it betrays the deep allegiance of liberal journalists to a liberal government.

There can be no doubt that the press wanted to see Obama elected president.  There can likewise be no doubt that reporters felt virtuous in helping to raise the first “black” to this office.  By the same token, they are invested in making sure he does not stumble and by association impugn the abilities of African-Americans.

In this, liberals congratulate themselves on their lack of racism.  They take pride in being Barack’s most reliable allies because they believe this unequivocally demonstrates their lack of bigotry.

I, on the other hand, contend that their behavior proves the exact opposite.  This is because they totally misunderstand the meaning of “racism.”  They believe the word applies only when on has a negative attitude toward blacks or other minorities.  They are wrong!

In fact, people are racist when they are either prejudiced or discriminate because of race.  Although this formulation may seem to confirm the judgment of the Matthews crowd, it does not.  Their mistake is in assuming that bias is only negative.

The truth is that bias can be either for or against a group of people.  Yes, one can be prejudiced against a particular category, but one can also be prejudiced in its favor.  One can also discriminate to assist a group and not just to hurt it.

Liberals understand this very well with respect to whites.  Thus, they regularly complain that Caucasians are “privileged.”  In other words, they interpret the alleged benefits light skin color confers as due to prejudice in its favor.

If this is true, then allowing Barack Obama or Eric Holder to get away with behaviors that would destroy the careers of whites or Asians is undoubtedly discriminatory.  To make excuses for conduct that would otherwise be considered reprehensible clearly betrays a bias on their behalf.

People who are genuinely open minded judge individuals according to the same standards irrespective of skin color.  Martin Luther King opined that some day he hoped his children would be judged by the content of their character—not their race.  This attitude should still apply today.

But I would add that we should also judge people by what they do.  When they lie about the death of an American ambassador, they should be called out on the carpet.  When they remain passive after the IRS intimidates their political foes, they must not plead ignorance.  At the very least, they should have made inquiries when the charges first arose.

Barak Obama is, at minimum, culpable of administrative negligence.  At maximum, he is guilty of treasonous manipulation.   I am not sure these are high crimes and misdemeanors, but they are surely worthy of condemnation.  To pretend otherwise, merely because of his race, is blatantly racist.

So is defaming those outraged by his conduct merely because of their race!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University