All that is Wrong with Higher Education

Around mid-April, I had a unique encounter with a Wake Forest University political science professor that demonstrates to me everything that is wrong with this political science department in particular, and most university educations in general.

I am currently enrolled in a discussion-based class required of all senior political science majors. The topics for these discussion-based seminar classes vary by the whim of the professor teaching the class. My particular professor happens to be a young, energetic, self-professed crazy leftie. The topic of the class is "Power and Powerlessness." (I'll give you a hint - a small band of white, male, conservative, profit-munching American capitalists are the powerful, and women, minorities, the poor, and non-Christians are the powerless. And it's stuck that way).

This class meets once a week for three hours, and this particular professor makes it a point to assign readings and stimulate discussion that promotes his particular radical left-wing agenda. He wants to be fair. He wants to present an honest depiction of what an intellectual capitalist Republican might argue in response to his Noam Chomsky, Malcolm X, Chinua Achebe, and Barbara Ehrenreich readings. But he can't. He does not understand the rationale of the conservative mind.

Luckily for him (and the rest of the class) he has me. In typical fashion, I let him get away with nothing. The problem is this: next semester he is teaching this same seminar again. Next semester I will not be there to defend traditional American values, a market-based system of economic performance, the merits of globalization, or the danger of radical Islamic extremists.

I am lucky to have a professor who realizes the innate bias in his classroom (it also helps that I remind him whenever I see him). He and I were discussing potential changes in his syllabus for next year and discussing the shortcomings of having only left-leaning readings.

This is when I discovered the complete dominance of liberalism in the academic elite. My professor said that he respected the conservative perspective I brought to class, and he wanted to include that in his class again in the fall. Could I recommend some foundational conservative texts that might highlight the arguments I had made all year? After all, he didn't know any conservative professors he might ask for additions to his reading list.

I was utterly flattered - and completely let down. It was amazingly empowering to be asked to present conservative thought. It was also incredibly disappointing that an intelligent, young, energetic professor from Princeton teaching at a top 30 university knew not one single conservative in academia that he might ask for suggestions. Instead, my professor had to resort to asking a student - a student! - to defend some of the major underpinnings of Western civilization.

I am currently composing a conservative summer reading list for my professor, and doing it gladly - after all, I am actively correcting a liberal bias in at least one classroom. However, it can't but hurt to know that intellectual conservatives at Wake Forest and elsewhere in higher education have not one single professor that serves to defend the bedrock principles on which this great nation is built.

It's no wonder that intellectually dead and morally abhorrent ideas (like Marxism), continue to thrive no where else but the hallowed halls of academia - institutions dedicated to challenging thought and growing minds can't even cough up a single professional conservative.