Boston Globe column denies that American colleges are ‘left-wing hotbeds’: ‘Not indoctrinating students’
A new column in the Boston Globe argued that despite a "tradition of conservatives complaining of liberal tendencies on campuses," "no elite university is driven by left-wing politics."
New York University associate German professor Leif Weatherby insisted in his piece that though American universities seem to give lip service to leftwing ideas, they are merely corporations tasked with "expanding" their "massive amounts of wealth" and act in "conformity with the rightward swing of our society over the last half century."
He opened the column declaring, "But here’s the simple truth: No elite university is driven by left-wing politics. It can seem otherwise, because over the course of our young century universities have committed themselves to social justice rhetoric. But they have not committed themselves to social justice."
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Weatherby’s first argument was that although there is a "good deal" of leftwing activism and that prominent leftwing figures are being produced by these schools, there are also "influential moderates and conservatives" being pumped out by them, like "Brett Kavanaugh (Yale) and Representative Elise Stefanik (Harvard)," he noted.
He then argued that saying universities suffer from a lack of "viewpoint diversity" doesn’t work, considering schools like Harvard are not "pumping out community organizers and beret-wearing literary critics."
"A whopping 57 percent of Harvard grads go into finance, consulting, or technology; the top landing spots are Google, McKinsey, and Goldman Sachs," he added.
Weatherby’s next counterargument was that American universities "act in keeping with a right-wing vision of markets and capital and that prepare their students, largely uncritically, for that market," adding that, "Whatever elite university presidents say, they preside over massive amounts of wealth they are tasked with expanding."
The author elaborated, describing the schools as having "parked wealth, used to create real estate empires that have a tenuous relationship to any educational mission — and sometimes contradict it directly."
For these schools, their appeals to wokeness are them "doing PR," he added, describing how this "involves a lot of talk that veers directly into political stances, but it avoids any institutional shifts that would back up those stances with actions."
Further, Weatherby railed against the idea that students are indoctrinated with DEI and Marxism, saying that, "Evidence shows that students do not change their political views in college to any significant extent, and the reason is clear to anyone who cares to pay attention."
He added, "The biggest majors are not comparative literature or gender studies but psychology, economics, and computer science. No one is getting ‘decolonialism’ in those departments."
Citing economist Gary Becker, the columnist also claimed that "universities are not indoctrinating students with left-wing views. But they are treating them as ‘human capital.’"
"Universities have in turn sent a clear message to students and their parents: Our degrees are worth nothing but the salaries you get out of them," he wrote, adding, "The cumulative effect of this hypercapitalist thinking is that our country moves further to the right, not to the left."