"In vain are schools, academies, and universities instituted, if loose principles and licentious habits are impressed upon children in their earliest years." —John Adams (1778)
Recently, I published good news about higher education — some colleges and universities are endeavoring to restore campus civility. As the fall academic semester gets underway, some schools are attempting to contain the small cadres of adolescents who are responsible for most campus incivility. How? By endeavoring to instill values in students that, in most cases, parents failed to imbue. And that is a heavy lift.
Too many young people arrive for their freshman year without a solid mooring of values, and consequently are malleable. They can be shaped into whatever form that comports with the dominant campus cultural influence. It is difficult enough for students with solid faith and values roots to withstand the campus peer culture, but those without strong roots are at high risk.
A longtime friend, Brian Beckley, has devoted his career to mentoring high school students so they can pursue their purpose with wisdom, character, and courage once in college. He focuses on fortifying their values so they can join others who stand for what is good and right on college campuses, rather than falling into the leftist abyss.
I asked Brian for his perspective on why students are susceptible.
He responded:
Formation is not optional. Every campus forms students whether it says so out loud or not. The only question is by whom, and toward what. Most eighteen-year-olds arrive with strong feelings and thin convictions. They have been told what to think about a hundred subjects and rarely taught how to think about any of them. They want to be successful and they want to belong, and on a residential campus those two hungers are often fed by the same act: agreeing. A student who has never once articulated why he believes what he believes will borrow a framework from whoever offers one with confidence and community attached. That is not weakness. That is what an unformed soul does.
And that is particularly true of students from broken or dysfunctional families. Effective fathering is a key factor in preparing young people for the challenges they will face outside the home.
Incivility has surged since 2020, mostly in the streets of urban centers, but it has also spilled over onto campuses nationwide.
Fear, hate, and division were amplified over the four years of the Biden/Harris regime, when Joe Biden promised "unity" but called for battle, fomenting factions of hate and division, and baiting violence.
The dominant leftist campus trend this semester is the perennial leftist faculty favorite — the resurrection of failed Marxist ideologies. The latest cycle is being driven by the young Democratic Socialists of America.
Predictably, their agenda is being championed by Leftmedia platforms and showing up in Democrat polls as favorable on socialism. This is particularly the case among students, who have increasingly become the educated ignorant.
Ronald Reagan famously declared of those on the Left, "The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." That may be true of some Demos today, but a lot of undergrad and graduate students have embraced ignorance as a virtue.
Cadres of "useful idiots" are emerging from the Gen Y and Gen Z age groups. I labeled these cadres "Gen N: The Narcissist Generation," a malignancy of young narcissists. They will form the core of the Left's "Woke 2.0" ranks.
It is no mystery why college students are persuaded down dark paths. One reason is that an overwhelming number of faculty embrace leftist views. The American Enterprise Institute’s Roger Pielke has thoroughly documented the political sentiments of partisan professors, noting:
Faculty in U.S. universities overwhelmingly hold views on the political left. ... The lack of diversity among professors is problematic for both education and research, ostensibly the overriding purposes of universities. A more insidious and fundamental issue is that some extremely partisan faculty (and administrators) have commandeered university departments, centers, institutes — even entire campuses —and repurposed them for political advocacy.
The journal Inside Higher Ed found that almost 80% of faculty nationwide supported Kamala Harris in 2024, with only 7% supporting Donald Trump — but it also noted that "almost no respondents said they plan to tell students which party or candidate to vote for." Newsflash: They didn't have to!
And this bias is even more pronounced in the Ivy League. A study of 1,099 Yale faculty donations in 2025 found that not a single recipient was a Republican.
This month, the American Association of University Professors, which claims a membership of 57,000 of the 190,000 university professors nationwide, broke its century-old practice of not endorsing candidates. It did not even endorse Barack Obama, but it has decided to make its first-ever national political endorsement by backing Michigan's Islamist Democratic Socialist Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed.
El-Sayed is the most anti-American individual to ever seek the Senate. But I am sure those AAUP profs will not tell their students how to vote...
Educational institutions are full of "scholars" who promote socialism. Fox News analyst Brian Brenberg notes: "College is one of the only places where bad ideas can keep living because they never get tested against reality. So, professors, they study these things, they love the ideas of what socialism promises. They never have to do them in real life. They spend their academic career filling kids' heads with these ideas. Kids who gotta go out in the real world."
But it's more than just indoctrination by faculty.
In a Wall Street Journal column, "How Colleges Produce Socialists," business professor Kimberlee Josephson notes: "The usual assumption is that professors are indoctrinating students, but that’s too simple. The campus itself is a powerful factor."
She adds:
Over the past several decades, the college campus has morphed into a comprehensive residential and lifestyle provider. ... This transformation has been especially pronounced at America’s wealthiest and most selective colleges and universities. At elite institutions, students enter a nearly self-contained community. They ride campus buses without paying a fare. They enter expansive recreation centers without a membership card. They attend concerts, meet career coaches, reserve study rooms, download software, join student organizations, and participate in countless campus activities without ever reaching for a wallet. None of these services are free. Their costs are embedded in tuition and fees, endowment income, donor support and government funding. Yet, because students rarely confront a price at the point of use, they experience consumption without consequence or even comparison.
She concludes: "The irony is striking. America’s leading universities devote enormous effort to preparing graduates for participation in a dynamic market economy, yet daily campus life is one of the least market-oriented environments in the world. ... The most influential economics lesson many students receive may come from the institutional design of the university."
As Brian Beckley sums it up, "A young person whose first taste of adult life is abundant consumption with invisible production has been taught an economics lesson no syllabus assigned."
As a result of the campus indoctrination issues, an interesting trend has emerged since 2020.
Universities in the Southeast with more conservative cultures have experienced a massive surge in freshman applications from Northeastern states and other parts of the country — what is being called "self-sorting" by political views. The New York Times laments that "because of polarization and self-sorting, the college experience has become more political than ever," and not in the political direction Democrats and the media would like.
To be clear, the current tenor of campus protests is a mere shadow of the violent protests during the 1960s and '70s, and efforts to restore civility now are critical to avoid a resurgence of the violence from that era.
Bottom line: Solid faith and values instilled in young people are the antidote to leftist indoctrination on campus.
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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