Now, 50 years later, those same campuses are exclusively Left-wing — and implicitly anti-free speech.
As reported by Breitbart, Towson (Maryland) University Prof. Richard Vatz notes that despite academic institutions’ reputation for encouraging and supporting freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas and views, there has been “an increasing and unremitting effort to eliminate conservatives” in all areas of higher education.
And usually under the guise of ‘purging racism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia,’ etc.
What’s more, when Vatz said he brought up his concerns with the National Communication Association, officials there could not have cared less.
“There has been an increasing and unremitting effort to eliminate conservatives and conservative thought in the humanities and social sciences in the American academy,” he wrote in a recent op-ed for the Baltimore Sun newspaper.
“Higher education prides itself on two overarching values: supporting the marketplace of ideas and academic freedom,” Vatz noted. “Channeling the late civil rights advocate President John F. Kennedy, who said ‘Are we to say to the world — and much more importantly, to each other — that this is the land of the free, except for the Negro?’”
“Today, he would have said of colleges and universities, ‘Are we to say to the world — and much more importantly, to each other — higher education today is for diversity and equity except for conservatives?'” he added.
Of course, the Left doesn’t care about its own hypocrisy. In fact, it’s like a requirement in order to be a card-carrying member of the American political, social, and cultural Left: If you don’t live in a world of false virtue and posturing, then you can’t join.
Vatz has been teaching at Towson University for four-and-a-half decades. Having been invited to speak at many other universities around the country and having been part of the Legislative Assembly at the National Communication Association, he says he has seen similar persecution of conservatives all over U.S. academia. (Related: Public school is now transsexual child abuse indoctrination as the NEA colludes with LGBT groups to exploit schoolchildren.)
Stifling dissent and punishing dissenters is what China’s doing right now in Hong Kong
“The anti-conservatism is increasing at most national education venues,” he wrote.
“To be fair, there is an undercurrent of guilt or self-awareness among some, if not many, relating to the hypocrisy of ostensible support for supporting the free flow of differing ideas while perpetrating overt discrimination in hiring, promotion, tenure, college campus, and convention participation and publishing of those on the right.”
And he said that “despite the continuing and increasing bigotry” in the NCA against conservatives, he’s “long been a conspicuous advocate of fairness” to all.
“I have had lengthy exchanges with the current president, the immediately former president and the executive director of the NCA concerning their need to rectify the current situation which led to more than a score of their limited number of open conservatives leaving the organization,” he said. “The NCA couldn’t care less.”
And neither could most college and university administrators and board members. Their objective, it seems, is to stifle debate and indoctrinate students rather than educate them in part by introducing them to many schools of thought and opinion.
The American Left, which is embodied in the Democrat Party, doesn’t want educated souls or debate: They want mind-numbed, propagandized robots who will believe in their dogma like a religion.
There is no justification for stifling speech and ideas in a country founded on free speech, a free press, and freedom of expression. That is especially true for taxpayer-funded public institutions, nearly all of which rake in billions per year in federally-guaranteed school loans.
But then, these are not people of integrity running these institutions, because if they were, they would defend those with whom they disagree and promote open debate, not stifle it and punish the ‘offenders.’
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