Brainwashed

by Ben Shapiro

  Dartmouth President James Wright sums up the attitude of the universities with regard to free speech: “In a community such as ours, one that depends so much upon mutual trust and respect, it is hard to understand why some want still to insist that their ‘right’ to do what they want trumps the rights, feelings, and considerations of others. We need to recognize that speech has consequences for which we must account.”66 For the vast majority of college students, the consequences for free speech could be punishment by the administration.

  RACE-BAITING

  University faculties love racial tension. They can’t bear the idea that conservatives might be right about creating a color-blind society in place of a special treatment one. These professors espouse views that bear no resemblance to the views of mainstream America.

  On October 31, 2001, another protest took place, this time for affirmative action. The crowd was much smaller, since the University of California had implemented de facto affirmative action policies, and there wasn’t much to fight about.

  I stood above a crowd of about a hundred protesters; each person in the crowd had a bandanna tied about his/her mouth in silent protest. I had been standing with another anti-affimative action sign for about forty minutes when I was approached by a young, well-dressed Latino student. He looked at my sign, then back at me, and said: “I’m so glad you’re here holding that sign. Otherwise people would think that everyone on this campus is for affirmative action. I am against affirmative action because I made it into this university on my own merit, and everyone thinks I made it here because I am Latino. I don’t want everyone thinking that whatever I do in life, I got the opportunity to do it because of my race. It’s insulting.”

  About half an hour after my conversation with the young man, one of my TA’s saw my sign and stopped by. I had developed a good rapport with the TA and smiled as she came up. She strode up, questioned me about the sign for a minute, and then said, a note of anger in her voice, “I’m going to leave now. I don’t want to be associated with that sign.” She became noticeably less friendly for the duration of the quarter.

  I don’t want to say that all people who believe in affirmative action are malicious or hostile, because I’m sure there are one or two of them who aren’t. But what I can say with certainty is that the universities poison their students regarding race relations. Universities do not strive to make their students color-blind, but instead encourage an acute awareness of color. And that is the tragedy of the situation.

  5

  SEX IN THE CLASSROOM

  During the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s, college campuses were a hotbed for wild, immoral sexual behavior. Sleeping around became a mainstream practice; homosexuality leapt out of the closet; students around the country yelled “make love, not war,” then did it. Professors cheered them on, often even participating in the fun.

  Things haven’t changed all that much since then. Sex is promoted nonstop in the classroom. All types of sex are deemed natural and fulfilling. Homosexuality is perfectly normal. Pedophilia is acceptable, if a bit weird. Statutory rape is laughed off. Bestiality is fine.

  Taking a contrary position means getting lambasted by both professors and the students who “learn” from them. For example, I wrote an article for the UCLA Daily Bruin explaining why a United Nations pamphlet excusing sexual promiscuity in refugee camps should be opposed. The pamphlet promoted adultery, pre-marital sex, and homosexuality. Professor Robert Watson responded to my piece by calling me a stick in the mud: “Ben Shapiro . . . spent a previous column complaining that the UN lets children have too much fun in refugee camps.”1

  I wrote another column opposing “National Coming Out Week,” a week sponsored by the university that encourages homosexual/bisexual/ transvestite students to “come out of the closet.” The response to my piece was loud and vicious. TenPercent, the homosexual magazine on campus, labeled me a “self-righteous homophobe.”2 Every letter printed in the Daily Bruin in response to the column was loaded with personal insults. From student to staff member, they couldn’t resist demonizing their opposition. I was called “small-mind[ed]” and “ignorant,” a person who uses “emotional appeals to spew forth [his] loosely-veiled, blindly-conceived hatred of an entire group,”3 one who “need[s] some help”4 and is “prejudiced and callous.”5 And those are just the responses that were printed.

  DOWN AND DIRTY WITH THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

  Professors and other members of university faculty constantly inject sex into their lesson plans. This is most obvious in English classes, where any subject can be deliberately misinterpreted to bring sex into the conversation.

  I took an English class at UCLA during Fall 2001, taught by Professor Luke Bresky. He taught virtually every story as an allegory about gender roles or homosexuality. Some of this sexual discussion was called for, as when he taught poems of Walt Whitman. But much of it was not. Professor Bresky assigned Henry James’s The Aspern Papers, where he attempted to profile the narrator as a closet homosexual. When I searched google.com for any other literary criticism describing The Aspern Papers as a homosexual allegory, I could find none. Needless to say, by the end of the course, my classmates and I were fed up with the professor’s constant harping on sex and gender.

  Dartmouth University Professor Brenda Silver seems to do the same thing: she turns everything into a metaphor for sex. The independent student paper, the Dartmouth Review, describes Silver: “An avid feminist critic, Professor Silver reads literature with the firm belief that anything longer than it is round must be a phallus. Silver is a vehement addict to anything anti-male, and holds out androgyny as the human ideal.”6

  An unnaturally acute focus on sex is extremely common in English Departments across the country. Many have devoted entire classes to sexual topics.

  • UCLA: M101A—Lesbian and Gay Literature before Stonewall; M101B—Lesbian and Gay Literature after Stonewall7

  • California State University at Northridge: Erotic Literature, Male Sexuality, Gay Literature, and Lesbian Literature and Poetry8

  • University of Arkansas: Literature and Eros9

  • Dartmouth College: Topics in Literary and Cultural Theory:Feminist Theories, Queer Theories10

  • University of Chicago: Problems in Gender Studies11

  • Williams College: Queer Literatures in English: An Introduction12

  • University of Colorado: Introduction to Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay Literature; Queer Theory; Studies in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Literature13

  • Truman State University: Representations of Gender and Sexuality14

  • University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee: Same-Sex Desire in Modern Literature15

  • Stanford University: Orientations: Sex, Self, and Subterfuge in Fiction16

  • Boston College: Literary Themes: Queer Literary Traditions17

  • Georgetown University: Unspeakable Lives: Gay and Lesbian Narrative18

  • Illinois Wesleyan University: Bad Girls; Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women’s Fiction19

  • Carnegie-Mellon University: Gay and Lesbian Theory20

  • Bryn Mawr College: Thinking Sex: Representing Desire and Difference21 ; Queer Literature/Queer Theory22

  • University of Michigan: How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation23

  Some English professors go beyond the classroom to “teach” their students. Professor Richard Burt of the University of Massachusetts posted dirty pictures of himself with bare-breasted women on his university-registered Web site. Later, he “voluntarily” took them down after students began complaining.24 Strangely, Burt was not fired. Can you imagine an employee at a company who posted pornography on his company Web site still retaining his job? But that’s how it works at the universities.

  Professor Christina Hauck of Kansas State University is spending her research time looking into the life of one Marie Stopes, a woman credited with writing the first “sex manual.” “I just think she’s so cool and interestin
g,” she said. “She also made herself unpopular in the same way that women who have drive, power and have a vision they want to see accomplished are unpopular. . . . No one calls Winston Churchill pushy.”25 Yes, you read that correctly. She just compared a sex therapist to Winston Churchill. Makes you wonder where Hugh Hefner stands on the list of all-time important figures.

  Perhaps some of these professors will eventually find their true calling, as did Professor Gloria G. Brame. She was an English professor before eventually switching tracks and getting her PhD in Human Sexuality. She’s now an expert who gives advice on various important topics including bondage, sadomasochism, fetishes, and cross-dressing.26 If she wanted, she could probably still chair an English Department somewhere.

  “IT’S NOT SEX, IT’S ART”

  Liberal professors consider art and sex inextricably linked. All sexual expression is a form of art, and all art is good. While no one would consider Michaelangelo’s David pornographic, sex-as-art on campus goes far beyond the bounds of good taste. Portrayal of sexual objects or the sex act itself no longer has any element of higher beauty or holiness. Professors use art as an excuse to make all sorts of sick actions legitimate.

  In October 2003, Paula Carmicino, a film student at the New York University Tisch School, came up with a brilliant idea for her project: intersperse film of sex acts with film of everyday activities. So Carmicino found two actors willing to have sex on camera, before a class full of students. Why not just simulate the sex on film? “That’s censoring the sex part. My thing is how we censor ourselves during the day when we’re not having sex.” Carmicino’s professor, Carlos de Jesus, thought this was terrific. But before giving his go-ahead, de Jesus asked the administration. The administration refused. All hell broke loose.27

  The Washington Square News condemned the film school’s decision-making process: “The Tisch’s School of the Art’s decision to stop junior Paula Carmicino from including sexual penetration in her student film was made in the total absence of any written policy. It is preposterous that in such a sexualized time—when the Paris Hilton sex tape makes top national news—Tisch did not have a policy regarding films of this nature beforehand.”28 Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union criticized the decision: “Students should be able to make films, write books or compose paintings without their university acting as a moral censor.”

  The administration, while standing by its decision, was contrite. Richard Pierce of the Tisch School called Carmicino a “serious and valued student,” and explained that “the history of art is replete with examples of artists producing great art under limitations.”

  Meanwhile, the administration refuses to do anything about the rampant sexuality in the film school as a whole, despite the fact that Carmicino’s graphic filmmaking is more the rule than the exception. NYU student Lisa Estrin made a film depicting stuffed dolls of Minnie Mouse and Lamb Chop having sex. Vera Itkin described another class film including graphic pornographic images, and recalled two class scripts, which involved hardcore sex scenes including necrophilia.29

  “Since Burlesque, there’s always been a long tradition of art and sex,” says PhD candidate Annie Sprinkle. Sprinkle is a self-described whore, artist, and filmmaker. “Annie Sprinkle would say that her feminist mother would come into her room and tell her she was either going to be a whore or an artist,” states Professor Linda Williams of UC Berkeley. “That’s what sets her apart. She is both. . . . There are some exceptional porn makers who care about art. And Annie Sprinkle is one of them.”30 Sprinkle’s “art” includes photographing her breasts and her buttocks and other such garbage. A modern-day Van Gogh.

  At the San Francisco Art Institute, Professor Tony Labat’s students were told to create a performance art piece for his class. One student, Jonathan Yegge, created what many leftists would call a masterpiece. Yegge got a volunteer and brought him out into a public campus area. After binding and blindfolding his little helper, the two engaged in oral sex and defecated on each other. “It’s about pushing the notion of gay sex, pushing the notion of consent, pushing the notion of what’s legal,” Yegge explained.

  Labat, in a weak condemnation, called the piece “bad art.” But Yegge claims he had run the idea for the piece by the professor, and he had approved.31 So what was Labat doing while the “performance” was going on? Was he just sitting around, enjoying the show?

  The university responded to the incident not by firing the instructor or by condemning the performance piece, but by angrily denouncing the fact that Yegge had unprotected sex, which carried the risk of AIDS. “It is considered a serious violation for you or any individual to participate in any activity, sexual or not, which involves exposing yourself or others to any bodily fluids or excretions including but not limited to feces, urine, semen, saliva and blood,” said a letter from Larry Thomas, vice president and dean of academic affairs for the university.32 Apparently, it’s okay to have oral sex and excrete into the anal cavities of others in public, as long as you’re both using protection. Comforting to know there are people like Thomas looking out for America’s students.

  Perhaps Yegge best explains the universities’ view of art: “They say you can do whatever you want as long as you can justify it artistically.”33

  THE JOY OF LGBT

  At universities, homosexuality is normal. It’s as American as apple pie. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transsexuals all have equal if not superior lifestyles compared to straights. It’s starting to look like San Francisco in little pockets of higher education all over the United States.

  I remember sitting in my Geography 5 class in Winter Quarter 2001. The professor, Joshua Muldavin, decided to tell a personal story.

  “Class,” he said, “I recollect one time I was in a southern state with one of my friends. He’s French, by the way. I was talking to him, walking down the street with my arm over his shoulder, when we were accosted by some religious fanatic carrying a sign that said ‘AIDS is a plague from God.’ We were going to keep walking, but the guy ran up to me and said ‘Take your arm off that man!’ So naturally, I turned around and gave my friend a big kiss, right on the lips.” The students sat stunned for a moment, not sure exactly what to do. Then they burst into laughter and applause.

  That’s the usual response to homosexuality on campus. In one political science class I took, Professor Lynn Vavreck showed two separate polls. One demonstrated that Americans opposed discrimination against homosexuals.

  Another poll showed that Americans also opposed openly gay people holding job positions of authority, in teaching and religious leadership, for example. Said Vavreck: “The fact that Americans support gay rights, but don’t want gays to be teachers—that’s the kind of thing the founding fathers would have disapproved of.”34 Huh? Thomas Jefferson, a supposed liberal, proposed that sodomy be punishable in Virginia by castration.35 The founding fathers weren’t exactly gay rights activists.

  The perspective of Princeton University professor Anthony Appiah is even more shocking. At a panel meeting of the United Nations Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual Employees, Appiah suggested that religion should be limited since it poses a “challenge” to the homosexual agenda.36

  Gay rights are equated with civil rights and women’s rights by professors. “The advances in civil rights over the past half-century have been extraordinary . . . For example, in addition to women and gays the disabled have won significant victories,”37 gushes one assigned political science reading at UCLA. “It is theoretically possible to make peace with ourselves and with our environment, overcome racial and religious prejudice, reduce large-scale cruelty, and increase economic equality . . . A utopian notion? Maybe. But considering the progress that already has been made in areas such as . . . women’s and gay rights . . . it’s worth a try,”38 spouts another assigned reading in a UCLA biology course.

  Then there are the openly gay courses. Almost all major universities have Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) Departments th
at offer majors or minors to students. “In the last five years, just about every podunk college in the United States has established something,” says Professor John Yunger of Duke. “It’s very mainstream.”39

  One course offered at UCLA was taught by Cal State Northridge Professor Jacob Hale. Hale is a transsexual who recently “transitioned” from female to male. The course focuses on answering questions about the meaning of gender and sex and the history of transgendered people.40 Valuable information, to be sure. And taught by one who would obviously know so much about the meaning of gender and sex.

  Some more of the LGBT courses at UCLA, as described by TenPercent, UCLA’s magazine for homosexuals:

  • M101A Intro to LGBT Studies: “To a closeted gay boy soon to shed the cocoon and emerge a winged Nubian Princess, this class was all that and a box of press-on nails . . . The two professors were the perfect Yin-Yang combination: Professor Schultz’s bright fairy flame lit the fires of pride in my soul and Professor Littleton’s Uber-Dykeyness slapped me with reason and political reality.”

  • M101A Lesbian and Gay Literature Before Stonewall: “Greeted every day by a sassy Professor Little . . . this class gives a sometimes foggy, but always thought-provoking look at gay literature . . . Finally, a class that encourages having a queer desire within texts has never been so utterly titillating . . . Who knew assigned reading could be so fun and so ‘GAAAAYYYYY!’”

  • M101B Lesbian and Gay Literature After Stonewall: “If ever there was a class that shocks you with radical queerness, this is the one. This class now brings you literature about angry Asian bottoms, crunchy granola lesbians, a ghetto-fabulous gay hip-hop princess and a vagina jungle.”

  • M147 The Social Psychology of the Lesbian Experience: “‘Dyke Psyche’ is a must for every single queer student on campus, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Culture, history, and psychology converge in this unique forum.”