Talk is cheap. Now that pressure is starting to build against the leftist stances that so many of our colleges and universities take, some officials have declared that they’ve seen the light and will embrace institutional neutrality. Should you believe them?
No, argues Professor Lyell Asher in today’s Martin Center article. He focuses on Vanderbilt, whose chancellor recently wrote an essay stating that the university would no longer take political sides. Asher writes, “American higher education is now honeycombed with sacrosanct warrens of administrative offices whose political activism makes a mockery of any claim to ‘principled neutrality.’ As long as these offices remain on campus, the political indoctrination of students at the hands of the institution will continue unabated.”
To make his case, Asher looks at just a few of the many offices on the Vandy campus that continue to push the leftist notions of the people who work in them. For example, the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Office has “training” sessions that amount to sheer propaganda.
Asher continues:
Students assume they’re getting objective information from the EDI office and the other offices in its orbit, just as they assume they’re getting it from the registrar or the career-planning office. But, in fact, they’re getting tenets of woke orthodoxy, indistinguishable from those of the doctrinaire and often extremist essays, books, and interest groups EDI endorses on its “anti-racism resources” page. It’s a deceptive abuse of Vanderbilt’s advertised commitment to “the highest academic standards, a spirit of intellectual freedom and a pursuit of excellence in all endeavors.”
Real neutrality would entail cleaning out the many offices filled with leftist zealots who don’t teach, but indoctrinate. Will any college president actually do that? Don’t hold your breath.