Similarly, I heard a professor of American History argue that the Civil War was inevitable, there wasn’t any compromise that could have prevented the conflict. This, in my judgment is a plausible hypothesis, but when one student maintained that there is insufficient evidence to rely on this judgment, the instructor applied Marxist logic of class and culture conflict to suggest the case is closed.
So despite Professor Jacoby’s claim that conservatives shouldn’t be overwrought by the overrepresentation of leftists on campus, I would contend that leftist bias is often the overarching pedagogical thrust in the classroom. As a consequence, what I have observed is that subjects which are not ordinarily politically sensitive, can be manipulated by the preachers in the Academy into unadorned political propaganda.
To suggest, as Professor Jacoby does, that professors “inhabit a protected environment where they can neither harm each other nor reach outsiders,” is misguided in my judgment. The outsiders in this equation are students and, from what I’ve observed, can indeed be “harmed” by politically driven professors.
Herb London
Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University. He is the author of Decade of Denial (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001).
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