A series of near-riots on campuses aimed at silencing guest speakers has
exposed the fact that our universities are no longer devoted to the free
exchange of ideas in pursuit of truth. But this hostility to free speech
is only a symptom of a deeper problem, writes John Ellis.
Having watched the deterioration of academia up close for the past fifty
years, Ellis locates the core of the problem in a change in the
composition of the faculty during this time, from mildly left-leaning to
almost exclusively leftist. He explains how astonishing historical luck
led to the success of a plan first devised by a small group of activists
to use college campuses to promote radical politics, and why laws and
regulations designed to prevent the politicizing of higher education
proved insufficient.
Ellis shows that political motivation is always destructive of higher
learning. Even science and technology departments are not immune. The
corruption of universities by radical politics also does wider damage:
to primary and secondary education, to race relations, to preparation
for the workplace, and to the political and social fabric of the nation.
Commonly suggested remedies--new free-speech rules, or enforced
right-of-center appointments--will fail because they don't touch the
core problem, a controlling faculty majority of political activists with
no real interest in scholarship. This book proposes more drastic and
effective reform measures. The first step is for Americans to recognize
that vast sums of public money intended for education are being diverted
to a political agenda, and to demand that this fraud be stopped.
