“The poll found that 58 percent of right-leaning people (and 45 percent of people polled across the political spectrum) believe “colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country.””
For the first time, a majority of Republicans think that colleges and universities have a negative impact on the country. Fifty-eight percent say that colleges “are having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country,” according to Pew. In other words, the Wall Street banks are more popular with Republican voters than Stanford, Harvard or the University of Akron.
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Last month, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, held a hearing titled “Free Speech 101: The Assault on the First Amendment on College Campuses.” The Wisconsin State Assembly passed a bill last month allowing college administrators to expel students for “disrupting” college speakers.
It’s likely no coincidence that just as conservatives decry the scourge of “political correctness” on liberal arts campuses, their campaign to undermine the institutions that defend a growing diversity of voices among students and faculty is bearing fruit. Arizona Republicans recently threatened to cut funding by 10 percent from public institutions that offer courses and events that are “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or advocate “solidarity” based on ethnicity, race, religion or gender.
So here we are, decades into a campaign against the principals of enlightenment that our country was founded on to find that the oligarchs have, by spending hundreds of millions over decades, successfully convinced one of our parties that ignorance is bliss.
So what should we do about it? Call them willfully ignorant when they have been subject to decades of propaganda? Maybe we should call them “low information voters”. Rednecks? What name can we call them that will change anything?
Stop with the name calling and start enlightening. If we fail to educate we fail. Completely.