My colleague, Jordan Lorence recently commented on the pronounced leftist slant in the selection of university commencement speakers.  To say this is unsurprising is an understatement.  Over 80%  of America’s university professors identify themselves as Democrats.  And further studies have shown that they are not content to keep their views to themselves, but rather, seek to indoctrinate their students.  In fact, a 2005 American Council of Alumni & Trustees study found that nearly half of students at the top 50 colleges ranked by U.S. News & World Report reported that their professors applied significant political pressure in the classroom.  But would you be surprised to find that this indoctrination begins before the students arrived at campus? Neither was I.

The National Association of Scholars recently reviewed the required summer reading lists for incoming freshman at 290 colleges.  Shockingly (I hope you’re picking up my sarcasm) the study  found that the assigned books were overwhelmingly leftist.  Of the 180 books assigned, 126 (70%) promoted a leftist political agenda, only 3 books (2%) advanced a conservative sensibility and none promoted any conservative political causes.  Only five schools came close to assigning books that could be considered classic texts, and those books were Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 

The NAS’s study further undermines the academy’s claim to thrive on intellectual diversity and the freedom of inquiry.  Instead, from beginning to end, America’s universities largely promote a leftist agenda.  Thomas Jefferson would be ashamed to find that most universities will follow Truth wherever it may lead . . . as long as it leads left.