Institutions of Higher Indoctrination and Grooming and how to fix them

Today’s show opens with some advice I wanted to give a caller from my Saturday radio show. I wanted to give a broader and more in-depth answer to a question I think a lot of you face when having conversations about the news of the day with those who don’t want to expose themselves to new ideas. To help with this conversation, I suggest using all or part of Scott Adams’ (Dilbert) hoax quiz to establish a level playing field. Ironically, this is a systemic problem coming out of our institutions of higher indoctrination and grooming.

This leads to the events over the weekend of Liz Magill, the President of the University of Pennsylvania, and Scott Bok, Board Chair of the Board of Regents, both announced their resignations. I wish I could say they did so because they knew they were wrong. Far from it. Even in Bok’s leaked resignation letter, he didn’t apologize to the students or the alum. Instead, he made excuses for Magill’s performance in Congressional testimony. His excuses tell you all you need to know about the culture in our academic institutions.

Let’s move on to Dr. Claudine Gay of Harvard. First we start with a letter penned by former alum, Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square and Co-trustee. It explains how Gay is the result of a long series of decisions to embrace DEI and abandon qualified candidates and students. The culture on campus is more about driving home political messages rather than imparting actual knowledge. He then goes on to list several changes in campus since promoting her from Dean to President.

To add even more insult to injury, it seems Dr. Gay is guilty of plagiarizing parts of her doctoral thesis. According to an investigation by Christopher Rufo and Chris Brunet, they identified whole paragraphs and sections lifted directly from the work of others, sometimes with just mild pronoun changes or removal of commas. While Harvard might want to ignore the climate of anti-Semitism they have created, how can they ignore something so reviled in the hall of academia as plagiarism?

One person Gay stole from is Dr. Carol M. Swain (whom you should follow on X!) and Swain responded online. She said, “I just learned of Christopher Rufo’s analysis of Claudine Gay’s work and the allegations of plagiarism. I have not read the articles or books in question. However, two things come to mind: imitation is said to be the highest form of flattery and secondly Dr. Gay’s committee, reviewers, and colleagues should have caught these alleged transgressions. I will issue a statement after I have more information. Right now it seems like she is a victim of the ‘Adversity of Diversity.’” That just so happens to be the title of her latest book detailing the issues surrounding the DEI ideology.

Next, we have to pick my jaw up off the desk because over the weekend, Fareed Zakaria of CNN actually went into why our colleges are failing and did an accurate and blistering review of the past couple of decades. In short, he concludes that the only way to save them is “America’s top universities should abandon their long misadventure into politics, retrain their gaze on their core strengths and rebuild their reputations as centers of research and learning.”

We close with two positive news items. Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee was just humiliated in a landslide loss to State Senator John Whitmire to be the next mayor of Houston, Texas. And, Elon Musk was quoted as saying, “Media Matters is an evil propaganda machine…We are suing them in every country that they operate. And we will pursue not just the organization, but anyone funding that organization. I want to be clear about that. Anyone funding that organization, we will pursue them. So Media Matters is an evil propaganda machine, they can go to hell. I hope they do.” Both of these items started off my work week with a smile.

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