Political Prof-iling? New Study Points to Massive Faculty Shift
It’s no secret that college campuses are liberal, but what *is* news is just how liberal they’ve become. According to a new study published by the National Association of Scholars, your teenager probably has a better chance of landing on the moon than having a conservative professor. And unless that changes, America needs to start rethinking this whole idea of “higher education.”
It’s no secret that college campuses are liberal, but what is news is just how liberal they’ve become. According to a new study published by the National Association of Scholars, your teenager probably has a better chance of landing on the moon than having a conservative professor. And unless that changes, America needs to start rethinking this whole idea of “higher education.”
Like most people, Brooklyn College’s Mitchell Langbert knows the ivy league schools are biased. So, he set out to study the others — the top two private and top two public universities in 31 states. “Traditionally,” he told listeners of “Washington Watch,” “it’s been known that the more elite schools are more Left.” But, he explains, that’s exactly what’s moving the entire system Left. “In order to advance in academia,” he explains, “you have to publish papers in academic journals. And the editors of the journals are at the most elite colleges, which were the first to become predominantly Left.”
That’s caused a massive shift in education as time has gone on. So massive, it turns out, that when Langbert and his team studied the donations of 12,300 professors, they favored Democrats by a 95:1 ratio. The absolute worst offenders in the Democrat-to-Republican donor pool, the research shows, were professors of English (244:1), Anthropology (214:1), and Psychology (184.1). And interestingly, gender does play a role. Female professors, he found, were much more likely to give to Democrats than males (216:1, compared to 67:1).
The bias was less in the hard sciences — like math. But even in subjects like economics, Langbert points out, “the people who get access to jobs, the Council of Economic Advisers and who get the most publicity and are quoted in The New York Times and places like that [where] they’ve been screened for Left-wing views. I’m not going to say there’s never an acceptance for a conservative viewpoint paper, but it’s much, much harder and much less likely to be accepted if you make claims that are consistent with more conservative or free market or Christian ideas.” And the long-term and dangerous effect of that is that — from the scholarly and hiring perspective — there’s an “ongoing winnowing of anyone who doesn’t conform.”
So what, if anything, can we do about it? Well, Langbert says, “First of all, we need to rethink whether college is the panacea it’s been assumed to be. And secondly, whether the funding should continue for schools that function as ideological advocacy organizations… The tax code section that provides tax exemption for colleges… prohibits ideological advocacy or political lobbying for organizations that receive tax exemptions. Yet I would argue that much of what goes on in colleges is precisely that. So in other words, they’re already breaking the law.”
That’s a good public policy question to revisit: university funding. President Trump has waded into that arena with executive orders on campus free speech, but there’s a broader conversation to be had. Meanwhile, as parents, the best weapon we have in this toxic environment is awareness. It’s important for every mom and dad to understand that they’re sending their tuition checks and children off to campuses actively working to undermine what they’ve taught their kids at home. That’s why parents have to be even more vigilant, raising and grounding their children in the truth.
In this culture, it’s a full-time job fending off the world’s negative influences. That’s why Deuteronomy 6:6-9 tells us: “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
Originally published here.
The Iowa Caucus: Havoc Forming
If there’s one good thing about the train wreck in Iowa, they can’t blame Donald Trump! Monday’s caucus meltdown was a disaster all right, but the failure was the Democrats’ and the Democrats alone. After months of pushing for a fancy new app to kick off the primary season, the party got one — along with a technical disaster big enough to throw off the entire nomination process. Welcome to 2020, America.
It was the official start to the election season — until it wasn’t. Deep into the night, Iowa officials finally had to admit: there were no verified results. Overwhelmed by technical issues, party officials had only tallied about 30 percent of the vote when they announced that “coding issues” and major flaws with the app had sent state officials back to the drawing board. Using back-up data, they started piecing together information from frustrated caucus chairs, who either couldn’t log in at all or were stuck on hotlines trying to get help. Des Moines County chair Tom Courtney said the whole process was “a mess,” and caucus organizers were “reduced to having to phone in their results to state party headquarters, which was, at times, too busy to pick up.”
Then, early Tuesday, Americans woke to the news that Iowa Democrats could have prevented this whole fiasco. “[We’d] offered to test the app,” acting Homeland Secretary Chad Wolf told Fox News. “They declined.”
A number of campaigns tried to salvage the night by declaring victory — a comical sight since not one of them had any numbers to back the claim up. By the wee hours of the morning, Politico decided that the biggest “winner” might have been Joe Biden, who — in the early tallies — was seriously underperforming. “According to the Iowa entrance poll, he was hovering close to the viability threshold of 15 percent statewide… [F]acing potentially ugly headlines going into New Hampshire and beyond, [the former vice president] couldn’t get out of Iowa fast enough.” For candidates like Biden, Brian Fallon tweeted, “this reporting delay is like waking up to snowstorm on the day of a test you forgot to study for.”
The only certain success of the night was Trump’s, who won over 30,000 Iowans — breaking Barack Obama’s record for an incumbent president. For everyone else, the president tweeted, the night was an “unmitigated disaster.” “Nothing works, just like they ran the country.” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) put an even finer point on it when he told reporters, “[Democrats] can’t stand in a gymnasium and count who stands under which sign, and [they] want to be in charge of our healthcare…? These are the socialist candidates who say, ‘We know best, trust us to run your life.’ Well, guys, figure out how to count your votes first.”
For analysts like Scott Rasmussen, the delay is especially frustrating. Apart from being the first test for Democrats, Iowa happens to be one of the states with the most “pivot counties” — areas that broke for Obama in 2008 and 2012 but then flipped for Trump in 2016. There are 206 of them in America, Rasmussen explained, and 31 of them are in Iowa. While he waits for that crucial intel, there are other ways to determine if the president is on track. “What we know right now is that… early data indicates turnout is on pace for 2016,” the state party’s communications director said. If that trend holds, it’s a hopeful sign for Republicans that the Left doesn’t have quite the same enthusiasm as it did in 2008, when Barack Obama was running.
Meanwhile, the Atlantic's warning early Monday morning is still ringing in everyone’s ears. “The Iowa caucus could go very wrong,” they predicted. Exactly how wrong, no one knew. But as the hours drag on, the bigger question for Democrats may not be who won Iowa, but how much did the party lose in the process?
Originally published here.
Parents of Trans Try to Drive Their Point Noem
“It’s an absolute nightmare for a mother to live through.” Elaine Davidson’s voice shook as she talked. “I found out about the surgeries after the fact,” she says haltingly. It was social media, she explained, where she first saw the photo of her daughter’s chest — bloody bandages covering the places where her breasts had been cut off. Elaine’s daughter was 17. She had a double mastectomy and hysterectomy without her parents ever knowing — and without a single psychologist signing off.
In Oregon, Elaine says, kids as young as 14 can make this same decision without ever calling home. “These surgeries are done on an outpatient basis, which only required a few visits to a therapist with a master’s in social work. No psychologist, no psychiatrist, no years of therapy like many people think.” And these young, innocent bodies, she struggles to explain, are “permanently marred.” “This is a very, very mutilating surgery.”
“I had previously raised concern to a therapist that I believe she’s on the autism spectrum. And I still do. But they dismissed it and instead just really pushed her toward medical transition. And I found out about the surgeries after the fact.” When her daughter decided to have a phalloplasty, Elaine started to cry. “I flew to Portland twice. I begged everyone I could. I begged her. I couldn’t stop it. All I could do was be there for her.”
She watched, helplessly, as her daughter changed the course of her life forever. And she is determined that no parent should ever have to suffer that agony without a say again. She joined the Kelsey Coalition, a movement of parents from all across the political spectrum, who are pleading with schools, lawmakers, and doctors to stop pushing children into a lifestyle they can never escape. “I’m speaking out because I love my daughter… She has been a victim of ‘gender affirming’ medical procedures, and I was powerless to stop doctors from harming her.”
“Why we are letting children make life-altering, permanent, irreversible decisions about their bodies and about their health when we have enough sense not to let them get tattoos until they’re 18 or drink until they’re 21?” Elaine wants to know. She, like the rest of the Kelsey Coalition, has been asking this question in South Dakota, where the first-ever bill to put an age restriction on gender transition surgery and treatments is moving through the legislature. “I think this law in South Dakota is a good start,” she agrees. “Sixteen, though, is still extremely young…”
At this point, though, states need to start somewhere. And South Dakota’s Vulnerable Child Protection Act is a commonsense law that would make it illegal to mutilate gender-confused children. It’s time, Elaine insists, to help children “learn to love the bodies in which they were born. Isn’t that what the body-positivity movement is all about? Transgender-identifying children need our compassion, and they need our help. They need responsible adults to gently question their beliefs, not blindly affirm them. They need proper therapy and guidance, not drugs and surgeries.”
Let’s hope South Dakota’s leaders agree. Although the bill passed the state house and is headed to the senate, the measure could be in jeopardy because of Governor Kristi Noem (R). Although she hasn’t publicly opposed the bill, the governor has said that she has concerned about the proposal — which could be a signal to senate leaders to stop the bill from progressing. Since South Dakota’s efforts have implications nationwide, I encourage you to contact Governor Noem’s office at 605-773-3212 and urge her to stop this medical experimentation on children! For more talking points or to email the governor, click here.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
