-Caveat Lector-
The Lies Your Professor Told You
An Accuracy in Academia Address
by Daniel J. Flynn
Variations of this talk have been delivered more than a dozen times in
1998, including at the University of Massachusetts, Georgia Tech,
Wabash College, George Washington University, St. John�s College, and
the University of New Hampshire.
My talk is about how little truth seems to matter in higher education
today. At one time, as the mottoes of Harvard and Yale attest, truth
was the ultimate goal of our colleges and universities. Today that
ideal has been subverted by something that modern academics prize more
highly � I�m referring to the concept known as "diversity." For the
modern academic, "diversity" is something to be preserved at all
costs, even when it comes at the expense of truth.
When faculty and administrators talk about "diversity," the term is
used as a euphemism for left-wing conformity � an inversion of the
word�s true meaning. As Thomas Sowell has observed, when folks on
campus talk about creating a "diverse faculty," they mean they want to
hire a faculty that includes black leftists, Asian leftists, Hispanic
leftists, female leftists, gay leftists, and so on and so forth. The
diversity envisioned by many of those who run America�s top colleges
and universities is a diversity where everybody looks like the United
Nations but thinks like a San Francisco coffeehouse. That is to say it
is not diversity at all.
Specifically, I want to focus my remarks on the conflict between truth
and "diversity" in the once political, and now strangely academic,
areas of environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, and multiculturalism.
It is because professors overwhelmingly support these political
ideologies that they have adopted the stance of accepting what Plato
referred to as "needful falsehoods" over the not-so-convenient truth
in these fields.
More than 70 colleges and universities currently offer programs in
lesbian and gay studies. The most popular textbook in the subject
admits that the field was designed to "advance the interests of
lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men" and that it "straddles scholarship
and politics." You don�t have to be Nostradamus to predict what would
happen if it were not gay activists but say NRA members, pro-lifers,
or some other group on the Right that was offering courses that
straddle "scholarship and politics." They�d by laughed out of their
jobs.
Courses in the discipline, as one might guess, reflect this political
mindset: Yale�s "Sexual Diversity and Social Change," the University
of Minnesota�s "Gay Men and Homophobia in American Culture," and
Oberlin�s "Queer Acts" in which the course description reads: "Drag
will be encouraged, but not required."
Those who champion such fields often throw around buzzwords like
"tolerance" to justify the politicization of scholarship. So we should
probably ask ourselves what it is that we are being asked to tolerate?
The very first essay in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, the Bible
of this emerging field, demonstrates just what it is that faculty
activists want us to "tolerate." Anthropologist Gayle Rubin writes,
"Like communists and homosexuals in the 1950s, boy lovers are so
stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders for their civil
liberties, let alone erotic orientation." She complains of a "savage
and undeserved witch-hunt" organized by the Post Office, the FBI, and
local police departments "to wipe out the community of men who love
underage youth." The feminist anthropologist goes on to state that
opposition to "sadomasichism," "transsexuality," and
"cross-generational encounters" have "more in common with ideologies
of racism than with true ethics."
Perhaps the most tireless champion of sex between children and adults
is the New York University Press. In NYU Press� Lavender Culture,
Gerald Hannon blasts what he sees as two "archaic concepts": #1. "the
innocence of children" and #2. "the potential harmfulness of sex."
Hannon argues that gays must "proselytize" in order to "abolish
repressive, ageist legislation." By this he means: "reaching young
people with the message" that "they should get out of their families
as soon as they can" and that "it�s all right to be having sex." And
this is a reoccurring theme in many of the gay and lesbian studies
books that NYU publishes.
Because Gay and Lesbian Studies is admittedly political, it puts
forward claims that have everything to do with an agenda and very
little to do with true scholarship. I want to back this claim up,
briefly, with a few examples from history, literature, and science.
University of Massachusetts-Boston Professor Charley Shively claims
that Abraham Lincoln had numerous gay affairs. "For his taste in men,"
Shively writes, "Lincoln was clearly an ass rather than a crotch man."
What�s Shively�s evidence? Well, Lincoln, it seems, shared a bed with
his law clerk Joshua Speed for a time � a practice that was common and
not thought much about in the 19th Century. Shivley claims that George
Washington was gay as well. Shivley�s "scholarship" would be
laughable, however, the LA Unified School District � based on his work
� instructs teachers to inform homosexual youth that Lincoln was "gay"
to boost student self esteem.
By reading "gay" issues into the literary canon, claimed Richard
Zeikowitz at this year�s Modern Language Association meeting,
"male\male friendships are not only strengthened but eroticized."
Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, because they are friends, are now
read as having an even stronger friendship. "Homosocial" relationships
� where two men compete for the same woman � argued the City
University of New York professor, are actually manifestations of
homosexual feelings between male characters. Thus, Jay Gatsby and Tom
Buchanan, by virtue of their competition for Daisy Buchanan, are read
as gay by many English literature instructors.
The third example I want to employ is that of Alfred Kinsey.
Fifty years ago, Indiana University Professor Alfred Kinsey launched
what was perhaps the first salvo in the Sexual Revolution. Sexual
Behavior in the Human Male, the work of Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, and
Clyde Martin, hit post-war America like a sucker punch. Claiming that
85% of American males engaged in pre-marital sex, 70% had paid for sex
with prostitutes, and between 10% and 37% were homosexual, the Kinsey
Report revolutionized American law, culture, education, and a host of
other areas. Critics of the report, the media informed America, were
to Kinsey what the church was to Galileo. Kinsey was, after all, a
"scientist."
At mid-century, Kinsey�s fame rivaled the likes of Harry Truman and
Douglas MacArthur. Today, he is perhaps best known for putting forward
the idea 10% of the population is gay � this "10%" figure has become
something of a mantra for gay activists and is often repeated as fact
in news reports and in sociology text books. I�m sure you�ve
encountered it before.
The Kinsey that has been passed on by college texts and popular
histories is that of the disinterested scientist, whose research is
unimpeachable. In David Halberstam�s The Fifties, Kinsey is "prudish,"
"old fashioned," and "the very embodiment of Middle American square."
Rutgers University Professor William O�Neil praises Kinsey in American
High as a "hero of science"; those who pressured the Rockefeller
Foundation to cut his funding won "a victory for small mindedness."
William Manchester�s Kinsey in The Glory and the Dream is "an
objective investigator," "a stickler for explicit detail," and a
"disciple of truth." "As a scientist," Manchester informs readers, "he
had naturally played no favorites."
Kinsey, as we know now, was a very different kind of "scientist." A
homosexual, a wife-swapper, a sado-masochist, and, perhaps, a
pedophile, Kinsey was much more involved in his work than the keepers
of the tablets would have us believe. For Kinsey, biographer James
Jones writes, "the personal was always the political."
Taken alone, Kinsey�s bizarre personal life only provides a motive for
why he attempted to uproot the sexual mores of mid-century America. A
close examination of his sample group demonstrates just how he did
this.
Although the total number of men used for the Male volume is in
dispute (estimates range from 4,100 to 6,300), we know that 1,400
members of the sample group were prison inmates. For Kinsey and his
fellow researchers, basing their survey on the inhabitants of an
environment that is a notorious breeding ground for perversion was
still not enough to skew the data to their satisfaction. By developing
key contacts in the urban gay subcultures of Chicago, New York, St.
Louis and other big cities, Kinsey was able to interview hundreds of
homosexuals � managing to tilt his data and procure sexual liaisons
for himself all at once.
This same kind of statistical trickery is pervasive throughout Sexual
Behavior in the Human Female. Prostitutes, for instance, were
reclassified as "married women" to portray American wives as more
promiscuous than they really were.
Attempting to prove that humans are sexual from birth, Kinsey
collected data on at least 324 (and perhaps as many as 2,000)
children. Infants, as young as five months old, said Kinsey, achieve
"orgasm" after being stimulated from those he called "partners."
Symptoms of sexual climax for young children, claimed Kinsey, often
included "sobbing," "violent cries," "loss of color," and an
"abundance of tears."
Kinsey and his apostles have made contradictory claims concerning the
number of child-molesters employed to produce this data. It is quite
possible that Kinsey � who privately condoned child-adult sexual
encounters and served as a longtime counselor for such groups as the
Boy Scouts and the YMCA � was a prime "observer" and source of
information.
>From Thomas Jefferson to J. Edgar Hoover, the sex lives of prominent
Americans have been obsessed over by modern academics. Yet Kinsey, the
very man who would merit such an investigation most, has been largely
ignored. Academics, feeling an ideological kinship with Kinsey, have
balked at attempting to uncover information that might undermine the
work of a figure they hold in such high esteem.
Using "science" as a means to promote one�s political objectives is
certainly not a phenomenon that is confined to homosexual academics.
Environmentalists, too, shout "science" when they are attempting to
fulfill an agenda. It seems the more obvious the agenda, the louder
the shouts of "science" become.
Stanford University Professor Paul Ehlrich�s The Population Bomb,
twenty-nine years after it was first published, is still one of the
most frequently assigned texts at the college level. "The battle to
feed humanity is over," he apocalypticly asserted. "In the 1970s the
world will undergo famines � hundreds of millions of people are going
to starve to death." Like Malthus 180 years earlier, Ehlrich was
wrong. Yet, the Stanford professor�s belief that an increase in human
beings inevitably leads to an ecological disaster is taught as fact at
so many colleges and universities.
Like the "population bomb" that never happened, "global warming" is a
theory that has trouble playing itself out in practice. Over the past
two decades, weather satellites show that the average global
temperature has actually cooled. The global warming point is
especially interesting when you discover that many of the same
so-called "scientists" who argue that the earth is heating up argued
the very opposite thing 25 years ago. In 1971, Dr. Stephen Schneider
warned that there will be "a cooling of the earth" and of the
potential of what he classified as a coming "ice age." Today,
Schneider is a professor at Stanford and the author of the frequently
assigned, Global Warming.
According to academic environmentalists, our forests are being
depleted. Yet, through reforestation and advances in fire-fighting
technology, America has more trees than at any point this century. As
John Tierney points out in a recent New York Times Magazine article,
"Yes, a lot of trees have been cut down to make today�s newspaper. But
even more trees will probably be planted in their place. America�s
supply of timber has been increasing for decades, and the nation�s
forests have three times the amount of wood today than in 1920."
I want to take a few minutes to examine feminism � specifically it�s
academic arm, women�s studies.
Thirty years ago there were no women�s studies programs in America.
Today, there are more than 600 degree-granting programs in the
subject. The American Council on Education states that of the more
than 3000 institutions of higher learning in America, 2000 offer
women�s studies in one form or another. Every Ivy League college, with
the exception of Princeton, now offers more courses in women�s studies
than in economics.
Why is this?
The proliferation of feminist inspired courses does not stem from
student interest. When I examined Harvard in 1996, for instance, I
found that there were 540 economics majors and yet there were only 52
economics classes listed in the school�s program of study. Compare
this to women�s studies, where a mere 13 students majored in the
field, yet had over 60 courses to choose from. The Cornell Review
found that the average women�s studies course at that institution had
four students enrolled. The story is much the same at other
universities. Economics majors have less courses to chose from despite
outnumbering students majoring in women�s studies by 28 to 1 at Yale
and 23 to 1 at Penn. Clearly it is supply and not demand that is
fueling the onslaught of the politically correct curricula.
Students know that just about the only jobs one can secure as a result
of majoring in a field like women�s studies is either to become a
professional activist or to stay in education and teach the same
women�s studies classes that one enrolled in as an undergraduate.
The few students who do enroll in fields like women�s studies often do
so only because they are coerced � it fulfills a "diversity" or "third
world requirement," or they are drawn to the field through the allure
of attaining an easy "A."
What, exactly, is it that students typically learn about in women�s
studies?
In Williams College�s "Practicing Feminism: A Study of Political
Activism," students perform "fieldwork at community agencies" so that
they "might raise awareness of feminist issues in the community." The
University of Massachusetts-Amherst�s "Women of Color and Activism,"
"Moves beyond representations of women of color as storytellers" and
seeks "to establish groundwork for future activism between women of
color and other women." And this comes directly from the course
catalogs.
Perhaps more alarming than the political grunt-work students are asked
to do are the pseudo-scientific theories that are expounded throughout
women�s studies.
Women�s Ways of Knowing is the title of a book and of numerous college
courses. It is also a growing philosophy which states that logic and
reasoning are men�s ways of knowing, and feeling and intuition are
women�s ways of knowing. Now if a man were to say this a few decades
ago, he would be rightfully condemned as a sexist. Today it is
self-proclaimed feminists who are preaching this nonsense.
I�m sure you�ve heard it said on campus that one out of every four
women is raped. Every time I�ve been on a college campus for more than
a few hours, I�ve come across this statistic somewhere. It�s a
constant reminder in women�s studies textbooks, dormitory halls,
campus literature, and at "take back the night" rallies. Implicit in
this statistic is not just that millions of American women are
victims, but that millions of American men are rapists. University of
Michigan Professor Catherine MacKinnon, along these same lines, claims
that all heterosexual sex is rape. The "one in four" statistic is
based on a Ms. magazine survey of college-age women. Amazingly enough,
a full 73% of the women that Ms. categorized as being the victims of
rape actually told Ms. that they believed that they were not raped.
Feminists constantly remind us that every time a woman says she is
raped we should believe her. Judging from the Ms. survey, when women
say they have not been raped we should disbelieve them. This is a
little confusing considering that feminists are the ones saying we
should always believe women. Yet in their own surveys, feminists do
not trust women.
In a heavily publicized case at Georgetown this past school year, two
female undergraduates were denounced by classmates and college
officials for exposing the untruthfulness of such feminist myths in a
publication they produced. The pressure was so great that the girl�s
roommates even denounced them. Said one student, "if one women is not
raped by publishing false statistics than that justifies it."
The final category I want to talk about is multiculturalism.
At its core, multiculturalism is Marxist. Economic Marxism takes money
earned by the wealthy and gives it to the poor. Cultural Marxism � or
multiculturalism � seeks to debase the achievements of the majority
group while exaggerating the accomplishments of so-called "victim
groups."
Multiculturalism is not about trumpeting other cultures. It is about
debasing our own. If so-called multiculturalists were serious about
studying other cultures we might expect to see campus takeovers of
buildings in the name of more foreign language courses, protests
calling for expanded student exchange programs, or petitions
circulated to bring back Will and Ariel Durant�s 11-volume Story of
Civilization. Needless to say we don�t. Instead we get mobs shouting,
"Hey, hey, ho, ho. Western culture�s got to go."
A common practice of multiculturalists is to highlight the sins and
failings (both real and imagined) of Western Civilization. When this
fails to make the achievements of all groups appear relatively equal
they often invent a new "history" to enhance the esteem of minority
groups.
In They Came Before Columbus, Rutgers University Professor Ivan Van
Sertima argues that Africans, not Columbus, discovered the Americas.
Despite no credible evidence to support these claims, the Rutgers
professor�s work is widely cited in Afrocentric circles as proof of
the African discovery of the New World.
In Exemplar of Liberty, professors Donald Grinde and Bruce Johansen
claim the political philosophy of Native Americans was a key influence
on the Founding Fathers. "Someday," state the authors, "when the
dominant society becomes more concerned about reciprocity and less
concerned about superiority and domination, we may all be able to join
hands and celebrate the diverse roots of American democratic tradition
without the blinders of indifference and cultural arrogance."
Afrocentrism holds that ancient Greek thinkers such as Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle, stole their ideas from "black" Egyptians and the
Library at Alexandria. This theory has been touted as fact by leading
Afrocentrist Molefi Assante of Temple University among many others.
Well, it must have ruined Mr. Assante�s day when he found out that the
Library at Alexandria was built after Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
were dead and gone. Facts rarely get in the way of a good story,
however, and this myth is still taught as the truth at many
institutions of higher learning.
However ridiculous these three examples may seem, we should remember
that they�re taught as fact in hundreds of college courses throughout
America. The notion that Indians were instrumental in our Founding
somehow made it into the Clinton Administration�s National History
Standards. The idea that Greeks stole their knowledge from black
Egyptians is taught within the book African-American Baseline Essays
which is part of the public school curricula in Portland, Oregon and
Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Still, you may say: "Flynn, I know they�re teaching this stuff, but I
doubt any sensible person is stupid enough to believe it." This
criticism may be valid, so let me offer up one example of how
multiculturalists have cooked-up a series of events and have had
tremendous success in passing this invented history off as fact.
The example I will use centers around Japanese internemnt during World
War II � a story that I�m sure most of you have heard about in any
class you�ve taken on American history in the 20th Century.
In the widely assigned American history text The Enduring Vision, it
is explained that during World War II, "The worst abuses of civil
liberties � was the internment of 112,000 Japanese Americans" in what
the authors label "concentration camps." This injustice, states the
book that is read by "hundreds of thousands" of students, occurred
despite the fact that "military intelligence had [not] uncovered any
evidence of disloyal behavior by Japanese Americans."
There is a slight problem with this official version. And the problem
is it�s not true.
It is claimed that more than 100,000 Americans were interned during
World War II. The true figure is 31,265. More shocking than this is
that of all those who were interned, half were European-Americans.
Historians don�t dare question the loyalty of Japanese Americans. To
do so would be to undermine their thesis that internment was
unnecessary. Yet it is an undisputed fact that more than 5,600
Japanese Americans renounced their citizenship following Pearl Harbor
and an additional 20,000 joined the Japanese war effort. Nor do
historians bring up the internment of Europeans. This inconvenient
fact de-legitimizes the idea that internment was racist.
If America is truly a racist country, why then, is it that we only
hear about Japanese internment in the history books? Why was it that
the federal government paid $20,000 in restitution in 1988 to
Japanese-Americans who were interned or forced to relocate and
European-Americans who endured the same thing got nothing?
It is true that tens-of-thousands of Japanese-Americans were forced to
relocate from the West Coast. This is why, presumably, historians have
cooked-up the figure of 112,000 for the total number of Japanese
interned.
It is also true that thousands of Italian- and German-Americans were
forced to relocate. The family of New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio, for
instance, was forced by the government to relocate from San Francisco.
Like the Japanese, the Europeans were free to move to any of the 44
states outside of California, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington. Unlike
the Japanese, however, Germans and Italians were not given the luxury
of having the option of relocating to government funded centers that
offered free food, clothing, housing, medical care, and education.
Europeans who were forced to move had to fend for themselves.
These government centers, that historians have derisively labeled
"concentration camps," had the lowest infant mortality rate and the
highest life expectancy rate during the war. Living in the centers was
optional � 35,000 Japanese chose to live on their own elsewhere � and
when the war ended the Japanese American Citizens League protested to
keep them open.
I�m willing to go out on a limb and say that none of the inhabitants
of Kolyma or Auschwitz protested to keep those real concentration
camps open. Only in America I guess.
The story of Japanese internment, like so much of what is taught in
our educational institutions, is a lie. For the purpose of promoting
political ideologies � feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, and
multiculturalism � academics have disregarded their original mission:
the search for truth.
The generation that told us to "question authority" three decades ago
now is the authority on America�s campuses. Questioning authority,
however, is the last thing they want students to do today. John Stuart
Mill�s community eccentric who bucks the norms of society for
society�s sake is public enemy number one at many leading colleges and
universities.
Students who question the prevailing campus orthodoxy are often
shouted down in class by their peers and graded down on tests by their
professors. For academics, the punishment for this "mind-crime" is
much worse. The chances of a professor who doesn�t subscribe to
"identity politics" gaining tenure at a top college or university are
very slim. Allow me to illustrate this with some numbers.
Recent surveys of the political affiliations of college professors
demonstrate the degree to which a monolith of opinion is present among
faculty members. At Dartmouth, Democrat professors outnumber
Republicans by a ratio of 25 to one. Cornell professors also shun
enrollment as Republicans by 25 to one. At the University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill, Democrats yield a greater than ten to one
advantage. A 1994 study showed that among Stanford professors in the
humanities who were members of the two major parties, nine out of ten
were registered Democrat. A similar study conducted by the Rocky
Mountain News, revealed a 31 to one Democrat\Republican ratio at the
University of Colorado-Boulder.
In the history departments of the five schools combined, for instance,
there were 137 Democrats and only three Republicans. In English, the
combined total was 159 to 6.
When it comes to intellectual diversity, our leading colleges and
universities are bankrupt. The very institutions where we would want
the marketplace of ideas to be the freest are the places where it
faces the greatest hostility. Speech codes, sensitivity training,
newspaper thefts, and the banning of controversial speakers are
aspects of university life that have lead to a climate of suppression
at hundreds of schools.
I do want to close on a note of optimism. Although true diversity �
intellectual diversity � is virtually non-existent on campus, things
can, and I think will, change. In the communist world, leaders often
referred to their nations as "democracies" even though they plainly
weren�t. They also utilized democratic rhetoric to support their
plainly totalitarian ends. It shouldn�t have surprised us that after
years of hearing about democracy, people in these nations rose up and
said, "Hey, this democracy thing sounds pretty good, how �bout a
little for me?"
On campus, the situation is much the same. For years, university
commissars have preached diversity while presenting students with a
sham diversity based on superficial characteristics. We should be
encouraged, and not a bit surprised, when students start saying, "Hey,
this diversity thing sounds pretty good. How �bout a little for me?"
Thank you.
(Daniel J. Flynn is executive director of Accuracy in Academia and
editor of Campus Report)
-----------
"Our ideology is intolerant...and peremptorily demands...the complete
transformation of public life to its ideas."
-Adolph Hitler cited in The Psychopathic God 1977
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