Things You Can Do: Higher Ed
"Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults" w/Dr. Lyell Asher
Things You Can Do: Higher Ed. Given the dysfunctional state of the American educational system and the damage ed schools continue to inflict, what can the ordinary citizen do? In these final two videos, I'll suggest a few courses of action that people can take. First, with respect to higher education, and then with K-12 education.
Where higher education is concerned, the good news is that there are new institutions emerging that are genuinely dedicated to open inquiry, intellectual diversity, and to challenging students intellectually. Two of these are Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia, and the University of Austin in Texas. I urge you to explore these educational options with your children as you help guide them in deciding if and where they will attend college.
Second, if you and your children do decide to go the traditional route as opposed to these newer institutions, I'd urge you to consult the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, otherwise known as FIRE. Every year, they rate about 150 colleges and universities for their policies and practices on free speech and open inquiry. So I'd give their website a close look to see how the colleges you and your children are interested in stack up. Keep in mind, FIRE is one of the few organizations that is genuinely non-partisan: whether it's a conservative school that's inhospitable to left-leaning points of view, or a left-leaning school that's inhospitable to conservative points of view—it makes no difference to them.
Third, once your children are in college, don't hesitate to call the President or the Provost or write the Board of Trustees to let them know that you take academic freedom and open inquiry seriously, even if they do not. If a college is taking tens of thousands of dollars from you, whether through state taxes, or tuition or both, they have a contractual obligation to live up to their own published principles. You can find these principles by going to a college's website, then search for "catalogue,” and then in the catalogue look for "academic integrity" or "academic freedom."
Fifteen years ago, you could assume that at least some college faculty at nearly every school would stand up for those principles, but those days are pretty much over. So if you choose to send your child to a traditional university, it's going to be up to you, the parents, to push for genuine intellectual diversity and inquiry—it shouldn't be up to you, but it is.
Fourth, if you're a college graduate, you can encourage your alma mater to abide by the principles of academic freedom by joining two very fine organizations: the Alumni Free Speech Alliance and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Both organizations can help amplify your voice and help you influence the direction of your alma mater.
And speaking of your alma mater: please stop giving money to your school unless they've demonstrated a commitment to exposing students to the full range of intellectual thought on the most pressing issues of the day. Are they sponsoring debates on campus? Do those debates involve genuinely opposing points of view or just minor disagreements among ideologues? Do they give in to Twitter mobs when it comes to disinviting speakers or censoring faculty and students? The odds are, the universities you attended even a few years ago are not the same institutions today. If you donate money to them, there's a good chance you'll be supporting some censoriousness, illiberalism and the culling of diversity of thought.
Finally, I have a message for College Presidents and Boards of Trustee members whose institutions are facing declining enrollment and bleak financial futures. You can distinguish your institution from almost every college in the nation by making an overt commitment to genuine dialogue and open debate about the most crucial issues we are facing as a nation—from climate change, to income inequality, to race relations and criminal justice. Young people are hungry for those conversations, but they're not getting them, and the vast majority of them know it. So the market is wide open for real, forward-thinking innovation in higher ed.
If I were a board member, I'd make my fundraising support contingent on an active program of recovering and renovating the very idea of what a university should be. A genuinely safe space for dialogue, for debate, and for diversity of ideas, and an inhospitable space for anyone who tries to use emotional fury or physical force to interfere with that sacred mission.
In the next and final video, I'll talk about a few steps you can take with K-12 education.
Watch this video and all previous videos on YouTube, Odysee, or Rumble.
Video shot and edited by Travis Brown | The Signal Productions (Locals, Twitter, YouTube); Motion graphics by Gav Patel (Twitter, Instagram)
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