A student walks across the campus of Columbia University in New York, October 5, 2009. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

More and more, education in the U.S. is turning into propaganda for statism. What’s taught is not knowledge that helps people to live their lives but rather beliefs that are calculated to turn them into obedient citizens of the welfare state. The overseers of that state don’t want people who can think, but people who won’t question what the state does.


The National Association of Scholars has been doing its utmost to expose this spreading plague, and it has just released a new study on social justice education in higher education. The author of the study, David Randall writes about his findings in today’s Martin Center article.

Randall writes, “Social justice activists say they want to bring about a golden age. The road to the golden city always requires more gold from our pockets to pay the activists’ salaries. Social justice activists always work to create more activists. Everything they do in higher education has an eye to the bottom line—seizing control of general education requirements, of departments, of administrative offices. They want to do well for themselves as they do what they think is good.”

Higher education is being transformed so that the activists can have the greatest impact possible on students. What they regard as correct thinking (about equality, power, the environment, etc.) is pushed at every turn, while incorrect thinking (such as the importance of private property, limited government, and individual responsibility) is denounced or even punished.


Randall provides lots of examples in his article and far more in his report. If you think it’s proper for our universities to train political activists, you’ll be happy. If you think not, you’ll be deeply upset.

What is to be done? Randall concludes, “Our own tactics have to aim at disrupting higher education’s ability to sustain social justice careers. Above all, state legislatures should use their powers to keep social justice advocates from securing safe careers in our public universities. We don’t need to remove every social justice advocate from higher education. We just need to shift incentives, so that the average would-be social justice advocate decides to pursue a different career. If we can manage that, half the battle is won.”