To Avoid Liberal Indoctrination, Duke Students Avoid Humanities
by Jim Brown
November 8, 2004
(AgapePress) - The head of a campus watchdog group says students at Duke University are resisting attempts at political indoctrination by their liberal professors. How are they doing that? By steering clear of humanities courses.
Conservative professor Michael Munger notes that a surprising 25 percent of the Duke political science faculty are Republicans. But professors registered as Democrats outnumber Republicans in the Duke history department 32-0; in the literature department, 11-0; and in the English department, 18-1. Mal Kline, executive director of Accuracy in Academia (AIM), says students are getting wise to the fact that the political activity of those professors spills over into the classroom.
"There's been an enormous drop at Duke in the number of students taking humanities courses," Kline offers. He adds the drop as been such that two political science professors, including Dr. Munger, taught more students in two classes than the entire humanities department combined. At least at Duke, Kline says, students know what to expect with course titles like "Sexualities in Film and Video," "Feminist Studies," and "Poetry and the Healing Arts."
Too often, the AIM leader says, college students find themselves stuck in classes that look like they promise a lot of knowledge and information, but frequently do not deliver anything but a political diatribe.
"Unfortunately, in so many schools they've got courses with titles such as "Introduction to Fiction: A Review of Fiction as It Has Developed Through the Centuries" -- in which you think you're going to get Henry Fielding and Ernest Hemingway, and wind up with a course in lesbian literature," he says. According to Kline, that is exactly what happened at Purdue University.
Kline maintains that it is not the political affiliation of professors that is the real problem on campuses today, but rather political indoctrination -- because it comes at the expense of the subject matter.
