As I travel the country speaking about my book, Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture that’s Gone Stark Raving Mad, I’m met with nearly universal desperation from parents who are sick and tired of the battle for their kids’ hearts, minds and very souls.

As the mother of three teens, I admit that I sometimes “fall back” in my own war with the culture. It’s often tough, tiresome and even tedious. But raising children who will tower above the culture makes the battle well worth my unwavering commitment.

So where to start? Here are five basics:

1) Envision, assess, compare.

Envision the type of adult you want your child to become. Whether you are liberal, conservative or somewhere in between, all decent parents pretty much want the same thing for their kids. We all want them to grow up and have happy families of their own. We all want them to be marked by good character; to be responsible, honest, healthy and courageous; to be respected and respectful. But taking the time to actually picture our children’s best future reminds us that we need to do our best every day to help shape them in to all that they can be.

Next, assess the media your child is consuming. According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report, today’s teens consume 6 ½ hours of media every single day. The number-one cable choice for girls is the racy MTV; the number-one music genre choice for kids from all races and socio-economic levels is the often foul rap and hip hop; 90% of kids who go online stumble across hard-core porn, simply because parents have never taken the time to install a filter. (I protect my kids with a great filter from www.bsafe.com). What are your sons and daughters watching and listening to? Do you even know? Time to spend some time in their world — to find out the messages that are being pumped into their still-developing brains.

Now, compare: Do the messages and materials your child is feasting on teach the values and behaviors you want him to embrace as an adult? If the vision and what you’ve discovered in the assessment are at odds, it’s time to move to step two.

2) Commit to the daily battle.

And believe me, it is a daily battle. The attacks of the killer culture are relentless. From the commercials, to the gangsta and street-walker clothing styles, to the movies, magazines, games and music marketed to teens, decency is under attack. Try breaking it down to one day at a time, and you will succeed. I awake every morning with a simple prayer, “Lord, please help me today to uphold the values and standards my husband and I have set for our family.”

3) Teach your child that he has intrinsic value in God’s eyes.

The greatest gift we can give our children is to let them know that there is a God who loves them and knows them by name. We must teach our sons and daughters that the God of the Universe is intensely interested and familiar with every aspect of their lives and wants what is best for them. Today’s culture teaches even the young child that he is here by accident, and that he is just another creature on a big, impersonal planet, no different from any other animal. It’s no wonder that kids today are experiencing depression and loneliness in record numbers.

4) Improve your family life.

A few years ago the mantra was, “It’s quality time, not quantity time, that counts.” WRONG! Kids need a good dose of both from their parents. If we think we can spend one great hour a day with our kids and counteract the negative garbage they’re getting from the culture “24/7,” we’re fooling ourselves. Drop the senseless activities that take everyone’s time and leave your family stressed out and exhausted. Spend more time talking to your kids and less time watching TV. The Heritage Foundation reviewed stats on the tremendous impact that even the simple act of having family meals has on our kids and found that teenagers who eat dinner with their families only two nights a week or less are more than twice as likely to smoke, drink or use illegal drugs than teens who have frequent family dinners.

5) Take a hands-on approach with your child’s education.

Whether your kids go to private or public schools, you should be intimately acquainted with what, and how, they are taught. When was the last time you picked up your child’s English book, or science book, and actually read it? Do you know what she is being taught in history? Exercise your right to opt your child out of misguided sex-ed classes. Challenge the reading lists if the assigned books are pop garbage. The point is to remember that you, as the parent, have every right — and the ultimate responsibility — to make sure your child is taught well, and well taught.

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>>Study: Church-Going Teens Have Higher GPAs (Christian Post, 080823)

Regular church attendance may boost a student’s GPA, according to a new study.

Students who attend religious services weekly average a GPA of 0.144 higher than those who never attend services, said Jennifer Glanville, a sociologist in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Despite the positive link between church attendance and academic success, the study surprisingly found the importance of religion to teens had “very little impact” on their educational outcomes, Glanville noted, according to the University of Iowa News Services. The study had looked at whether the teens said religion was important to them.

“That suggests that the act of attending church – the structure and the social aspects associated with it – could be more important to educational outcomes than the actual religion,” the sociologist suggested.

Glanville, who led the study, and David Sikkink and Edwin Hernandez of the University of Notre Dame analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally representative study that explores the causes of health-related behaviors of adolescents in grades 7 through 12 and their outcomes in young adulthood. Students from 132 schools in 80 communities participated.

While other studies have also noted a link between church attendance and positive educational outcomes, the latest study is one of the first to examine reasons for the academic success.

According to the study, church-going teens tend to do better in school because of regular contact with adults from various generations who serve as role models; their parents are more likely to communicate with their friends’ parents; they develop friendships with peers who have similar norms and values; and they’re more likely to participate in extracurricular activities.

“There are two directions you can go with this research,” said Glanville. “Some might say this suggests that parents should have their kids attend places of worship. Or, if we use it to help explain why religious participation has a positive effect on academics, parents who aren’t interested in attending church can consider how to structure their kids’ time to allow access to the same beneficial social networks and opportunities religious institutions provide.”

In addition to higher GPAs, teens who attended services regularly also had a lower dropout rate and felt more like a part of the school and happy to be a part of it, according to the study, which is published in the winter 2008 issue of The Sociological Quarterly.

“For typical teens in the study, the probability of dropping out of high school for those who attend religious services and youth activities at least once a week is .05,” Glanville noted. “For teens who never attend services, the probability is .084, over 60% greater.”

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>>Religion gets an ‘A’ at U.S. colleges (WorldNetDaily, 070503)

Peter Gomes has been at Harvard University for 37 years and says he remembers when religious people on campus felt under siege. To be seen as religious often meant being dismissed as not very bright, he said.

No longer. At Harvard these days, said Gomes, the university preacher, “There is probably more active religious life now than there has been in 100 years.”

Across the country, on secular campuses as varied as Colgate University, the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkeley, chaplains, professors and administrators say students are drawn to religion and spirituality with more fervor than at any time they can remember.

More students are enrolling in religion courses, even majoring in religion; more are living in dormitories or houses where matters of faith and spirituality are a part of daily conversation; and discussion groups are being created for students to grapple with such questions as what happens after death, dozens of university officials said in interviews.

A survey of the spiritual lives of college students, the first of its kind, showed in 2004 that more than two-thirds of 112,000 freshmen surveyed said they prayed and that almost 80% believed in God.

Nearly half of the freshmen said they were seeking opportunities to grow spiritually, according to the survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Compared with 10 or 15 years ago, “There is a greater interest in religion on campus, both intellectually and spiritually,” said Charles Cohen, a professor of history and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who for a number of years ran an interdisciplinary major in religious studies. The program was created seven years ago and has 70 to 75 majors each year.

University officials explained the surge of interest in religion as partly a result of the rise of the religious right in politics, which they said has made questions of faith more talked about generally. In addition, they said, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by Islamic zealots underscored for many the influence of religion on world affairs.

And an influx of evangelical students at secular universities, along with an increasing number of international students, has meant that students arrive with a broader array of religious experiences.

Gomes said a more diverse student body at Harvard had meant that “the place is more representative of mainstream America.”

“That provides a group of people who don’t leave their religion at home,” he said.

At Berkeley, a vast number of undergraduates are Asian-American, with many coming from observant Christian homes, said the Reverend Randy Bare, the Presbyterian campus pastor. “That’s new, and it’s a remarkable shift,” Bare said.

There are 50 to 60 Christian groups on campus, and student attendance at Roman Catholic and Presbyterian churches near campus has picked up significantly, he said. On many other campuses, though, the renewed interest in faith and spirituality has not necessarily translated into increased attendance at religious services.

The Reverend Lloyd Steffen, the chaplain at Lehigh University, is among those who think the war in Iraq has contributed to the interest in religion among students. “I suspect a lot of that has to do with uncertainty over the war,” Steffen said. “My theory is that the baby boomers decided they weren’t going to impose their religious life on their children the way their parents imposed it on them,” Steffen continued. “The idea was to let them come to it themselves.

“And then they get to campus and things happen; someone dies, a suicide occurs. Real issues arise for them, and they sometimes feel that they don’t have resources to deal with them. And sometimes they turn to religion and courses in religion.”

Increased participation in community service may also reflect spiritual yearning of students. “We don’t use that kind of spiritual language anymore,” said Rebecca Chopp, the Colgate president. “But if you look at the students, they do.”

Some sociologists who study religion are skeptical that students’ attitudes have changed significantly, citing a lack of data to compare current students with those of previous generations. But even some of those concerned about the data say something has shifted.

“All I hear from everybody is yes, there is growing interest in religion and spirituality and an openness on college campuses,” said Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at Notre Dame. “Everybody who is talking about it says something seems to be going on.”

David Burhans, who retired after 33 years as chaplain at the University of Richmond, said many students “are really exploring, they are really interested in trying things out, in attending one another’s services.”

Lesleigh Cushing, an assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at Colgate, said: “I can fill basically any class on the Bible. I wasn’t expecting that.”

When Benjamin Wright, chairman of the department of religion studies at Lehigh, arrived 17 years ago, two students chose to major in religion. This year there are 18 religion majors and there were 30 two and three years ago.

At Harvard, more students are enrolling in religion courses and regularly attending religious services, Gomes said.

Presbyterian ministries at Berkeley and Wisconsin have built dormitories to offer spiritual services to students and encourage discussion among different faiths. The seven-story building on the Wisconsin campus, which will house 280 students, is to open in August.

The number of student religious organizations at Colgate has grown to 11 from 5 in recent years. The university’s Catholic, Protestant and Jewish chaplains oversee an array of programs and events. Many involve providing food to students, a phenomenon that the university chaplain, Mark Shiner, jokingly calls “gastro-evangelism.”

Among the new clubs is one established last year to encourage students to hold wide-ranging dialogues about spirituality and faith. Meeting over lunch on Thursdays, the students talk about what happens after life or the nature of Catholic spirituality.

Gabe Conant, a junior, said he wanted to contemplate personal questions about his own faith. He described them this way: “What are these things I was raised in and do I want to keep them?”

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>>Survey: High School Seniors ‘Graduating from God’ (Christian Post, 060810)

Thousands of Jesus-following students who graduated from high school this summer will be claiming independent lives as they enter the big college campus in the fall. A new research study, however, is indicating the majority of those students will also be “graduating from God” upon entering college.

Fuller Theological Seminary’s Center for Youth and Family Ministry launched a three-year longitudinal study, surveying Christian students and their life transition into college and what provides for a better transition especially when it comes to faith. The milestone study is set to confirm the large number of students that youth workers say are leaving the church.

Denominations and youth workers have estimated that between 65% and 94% of their high school students stop attending church after they graduate. But no broad, multi-denominational, research-based calculation has confirmed any number.

Research for the first pilot phase of the College Transition Project began in January 2005. Initial results revealed that 100% of the 234 students surveyed had engaged in risk behaviors including alcohol use. Those surveyed were students who had graduated from the youth ministry of a Presbyterian church within the last four years. The second most frequent engagement in risk behaviors was sexual encounters.

According to the study, the struggles students were found to have when making their shift into college were related to friendships or lack thereof. In addition to not having friends or a community, students also indicated being alone for the first time and having a desire to find a faith community or church as some of the most difficult elements of their transition.

Southern Baptist Convention President Dr. Frank Page expressed alarm over the high number of church drop outs and failures on the part of churches.

“It is a disturbing trend and part of it is that our churches have become one- or two-generation churches, and we’ve failed to learn how to reach out to this younger generation.”

Intergenerational relationships were found to be enormously beneficial to students, according to Kara Powell, executive director of the Center for Youth and Family Ministry. The College Transition study will be measuring components such as intergenerational community, parents, and youth groups that impact the move into college life.

Powell pointed out a significant finding from the initial study. “One of the most interesting findings from that pilot project was the importance of doubt in a student’s faith maturity. The more college students felt that they had the opportunity to express their doubt while they were in high school, the higher levels of faith maturity and spiritual maturity [they had].”

“Whether it was with the youth group overall or with a specific adult leader, students who had the opportunity to struggle with tough questions and pain during high school seemed to have a healthier transition into college life,” stated the study by Powell and Krista Kubiak, youth worker and graduate of the Marriage and Family program at Fuller.

And youth workers play a significant part in such conversations involving struggles and tough questions. But in the big picture, youth groups are leaving out any preparations to help students make a successful transition.

“A lot of youth pastors assume everything goes well with those kids [who graduate],” said Powell. “The reality is that the transition into college is a lot tougher.”

Ben Burns of Campus Crusade for Christ had mentioned that the “send-off” of high school seniors to college is not a part of the youth ministry cycle. And the pilot study revealed the consequences of that.

“Nicole” – a church’s common high school small group student – was an active member of her small group for four years. When she went off to college, however, she and the small group leader lost contact. Soon, she dropped out of the church scene. Three years later, the small group leader found Nicole with a nine-month-old son, unmarried and unchurched.

“We all have our students who walked the narrow path in high school but somehow made a U-turn and stumbled, or maybe even sprinted, in the opposite direction,” stated the study.

Thus, Powell joined a host of other youth ministry leaders and college campus groups to form the Guiding Coalition of the Youth Transition Network, which is just beginning to bud. The coalition is a national effort fostering an effective transition for students from high school.

Despite the lack of college preparation tools in youth groups, Powell commented, “We’re amazed at how many churches, denominations, and national ministry organizations are very concerned about how many students are not transitioning well. This project seems to hit a real need.”

The Fuller study was conceived by Dr. Cameron Lee, professor of Marriage and Family, and final results are expected in 2009. Findings will be published along the three-year track and can be found at www.cyfm.net.

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>>Exposé of the year: ‘The Marketing of Evil’: ‘How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom’ (WorldNetDaily, 050802)

One of the most anticipated books of the year – David Kupelian’s blockbuster “The Marketing of Evil” – is now available at WorldNetDaily.

Already receiving wide and enthusiastic acclaim, the book, published by WND Books, is subtitled “How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom.”

According to “The Marketing of Evil,” Americans have come to tolerate, embrace and even champion many things that would have horrified their parents’ generation – from easy divorce and unrestricted abortion-on-demand to extreme body piercing and teaching homosexuality to grade-schoolers. Does that mean today’s Americans are inherently more morally confused and depraved than previous generations? Of course not, says veteran journalist David Kupelian. But they have fallen victim to some of the most stunningly brilliant and compelling marketing campaigns in modern history.

“The Marketing of Evil” reveals how much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged, perfumed, gift-wrapped and sold to them as though it had great value. Highly skilled marketers, playing on our deeply felt national values of fairness, generosity and tolerance, have persuaded us to embrace as enlightened and noble that which all previous generations since America’s founding regarded as grossly self-destructive – in a word, evil.

In this groundbreaking and meticulously researched book, Kupelian peels back the veil of marketing-induced deception to reveal exactly when, where, how, and especially why Americans bought into the lies that now threaten the future of the country.

For example, few of us realize that the widely revered father of the “sexual revolution” has been irrefutably exposed as a full-fledged sexual psychopath who encouraged pedophilia. Or that giant corporations voraciously competing for America’s $150 billion teen market routinely infiltrate young people’s social groups to find out how better to lead children into ever more debauched forms of “authentic self-expression.”

Likewise, most of us mistakenly believe the “abortion rights” and “gay rights” movements were spontaneous, grassroots uprisings of neglected or persecuted minorities wanting to breathe free. Few people realize America was actually “sold” on abortion thanks to an audacious public relations campaign that relied on fantastic lies and fabrications. Or that the “gay rights” movement – which transformed America’s former view of homosexuals as self-destructive human beings into their current status as victims and cultural heroes – faithfully followed an in-depth, phased plan laid out by professional Harvard-trained marketers.

No quarter is given in this riveting, insightful exploration of how lies, both subtle and outrageous, are packaged as truth. From the federal government to the public school system to the news media to the hidden creators of “youth culture,” nothing is exempt from the thousand-watt spotlight of Kupelian’s journalistic inquiry.

In the end, “The Marketing of Evil” is an up-close, modern-day look at what is traditionally known as “temptation” – the art and science of making evil look good.

David Kupelian is the managing editor of WorldNetDaily.com, the world’s largest independent news Web site. He is also a popular WND columnist and the driving force behind the acclaimed monthly news magazine Whistleblower.

The official national launch of “The Marketing of Evil” will be Aug. 22, when Kupelian will appear on both “The Sean Hannity Radio Show” and Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes.” Until then, every copy of “The Marketing of Evil” sold by WND’s online store will be autographed (at no charge) by the author.

‘Important and groundbreaking book’

Already, Kupelian’s book is receiving high praise from his peers:

“David Kupelian dares to tell the truth about the overwhelming forces in our society which take us far away from our original American concept of freedom with responsibility, happiness with commitments, and traditional values. ‘The Marketing of Evil’ is a serious wake-up call for all who cherish traditional values, the innocence of children, and the very existence of our great country.”

– DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER, talk-show host and author

“It’s often said that marketing is warfare, and in ‘The Marketing of Evil,’ David Kupelian clearly reveals the stunning strategies and tactics of persuasion employed by those engaged in an all-out war against America’s Judeo-Christian culture. If you really want to understand the adversary’s thinking and help turn the tide of battle, read this book!”

– DAVID LIMBAUGH, syndicated columnist and author

“David Kupelian’s research brings into sharp focus what many have sensed and suspected for a long time: The effort to change America’s mind on issues like abortion, homosexuality, church-state separation, and more, is a well-thought-out strategic campaign that uses the methods of Madison Avenue to market rank lies. But the good news is that the truth will eventually win out, and Kupelian’s important and groundbreaking book makes enormous progress toward that end.”

– D. JAMES KENNEDY, Coral Ridge Ministries

“Every parent in America needs to read this book. David Kupelian skillfully exposes the secular left’s rotten apple peddlers in devastating detail. From pitching promiscuity as ‘freedom’ to promoting abortion as ‘choice,’ the marketers of evil are always selling you something destructive – with catastrophic results. Kupelian shines a light on them all. Now watch the cockroaches run for cover.”

– MICHELLE MALKIN, Fox News Channel

“Over just a few years, life in America has become indescribably more squalid, expensive, and dangerous. Like the dazzling disclosures in the final page of a gripping whodunit or the fascinating revelation of a magician’s secrets, ‘The Marketing of Evil’ irresistibly exposes how it was done. It will elicit an involuntary ‘Aha!’ from you as you discover who did it and your soul will soar with optimism as you discover the only way we can undo it. In years to come Americans will acknowledge a debt of gratitude to David Kupelian for his honesty, courage, and laser-like insight in this must-read book.”

– RABBI DANIEL LAPIN, Toward Tradition

“Marketers are out to get America’s youth, and they’ll stop at nothing to do it. In ‘The Marketing of Evil,’ David Kupelian treats parents to a rare insider look at exactly how our children – and adults too – are being lied to, confused, and seduced by radicals and phony experts. The game’s over, folks – the con men have been exposed. I urge every parent to read this eye-opening book.”

– REBECCA HAGELIN, the Heritage Foundation

“Did you ever want to know – I mean really know – how and why America is being transformed from a unified, Judeo-Christian society into a divided, false, murky, neo-pagan culture? Even if you think you know the answers to those questions, in fact, especially if you think you know the answers, you must read David Kupelian’s ‘The Marketing of Evil.’ So clearly does it expose the incredible con game to which Americans have been subjected that it offers real hope – because when our problems come this sharply into focus, so do the solutions.”

– JOSEPH FARAH, WorldNetDaily

“Excellent! Simply excellent. If you want to solidify your Christian worldview – or just understand what the culture war is all about – you owe it yourself to read David Kupelian’s ‘The Marketing of Evil.’”

– DONALD E. WILDMON, American Family Association

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>>The Cost of Free Speech: In the universities it’s almost as high as the tuition. (Weekly Standard, 051003)

SENSITIVITY HAS TAKEN OVER OUR society, and nowhere more securely than in our universities.

To see what has happened, consider this small fact. Half a century ago, a liberal Harvard psychologist, Gordon W. Allport, published a book, The Nature of Prejudice, that began the social science study of stereotypes. Though of course hostile to stereotypes, he allowed they might have a kernel of truth. For example, he said, fewer Jews are drunks than Irish.

A remark like that could not be made at a university today except in private to trusted friends. And if you made it, you would be testing your trust. Jews and Irish, to be sure, are not protected groups, but to speak so frankly even about them would betray a very troubling levity in your attitude toward groups that are protected.

Sensitivity is today’s version of the soft despotism that Alexis de Tocqueville worried about in democracies, and it would not have surprised him that the worst of it would be found in the halls of the intellect. Only in American universities, some 300 of them, from 1987 to 1992, did the movement for sensitivity go so far as to enact semi-legal speech codes proscribing offensive speech. These codes provoked the ire of a few free speech heroes on the campuses and, more important, prompted them to mobilize opposition to the codes and to attempts by university administrators to enforce them.

One of these heroes, Donald Downs, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, has written an account of his own successful coup there, together with accounts of a comparable victory at Pennsylvania and failures at Berkeley and Columbia. He accompanies his narratives with reflections, which are those of an old-fashioned free speech liberal. At first a supporter of speech codes, Downs changed his mind when he saw them in operation. Readers get a chance to judge the virtues and defects of the free speech position in trying circumstances when many liberals abandoned it for sensitivity.

During most of the 20th century, Downs says, threats to free speech came from the right and from outside the universities. But in the late 1960s they began to come from the left, and from within. At that time, Herbert Marcuse set forth his notion of “repressive tolerance,” an attack on the liberal free speech doctrine which claimed that, while pretending to tolerate free speech, liberals actually repressed it. This was because liberals frowned on radicals like Marcuse. Real dissent would have to challenge the whole of liberalism; in fact, the only true dissent is challenging liberalism. Conformist speech defending liberalism is worthless; in fact, so worthless that it can safely be repressed. No, safety demands that it be repressed, and in making a demand, safety is transformed into morality. Morality requires repressing liberalism. Downs calls this “progressive censorship,” and says it is just as detrimental to free universities as traditional censorship from the right.

Thus, “repressive tolerance” has quite a punch in two words. By the late 1980s Marcuse’s thinking had infused liberals and deflected many of them from liberalism into postmodernism, one feature of which is a soft therapeutic notion of sensitivity. Instead of repressing liberalism, let’s make it sensitive. Between the late ‘60s and the late ‘80s feminism came on the scene and embraced sensitivity as the peaceable, womanly way to victory over liberalism.

Downs’s first case is Columbia, which enacted a “sexual misconduct policy” in 2000 to assuage feminist protest there. Many more rape victims were being treated at Columbia’s hospital than rapists convicted in the university judicial system. Columbia’s solution was to make things easier for the accuser and harder for the accused. This policy related to conduct, and was not professedly a speech code.

At Berkeley, home of the Free Speech Movement of the late ‘60s, “progressive social censorship” was applied against opponents of affirmative action (outlawed in California in 1996 by Proposition 209). A series of incidents arising over cartoons in the student newspaper, law school admissions, and protests against visiting speakers created an atmosphere of intimidation, even though it was not formalized in a speech code.

At both universities, intimidation was directed at conservatives. As one Columbia student said, “You can’t be conservative. If you are, you automatically get notoriety and infamy.” Conservatives were not altogether silenced, but they were made to suffer when they spoke up.

At Penn, a harassment code initiated by President Sheldon Hackney was passed in 1987, allegedly covering conduct, not speech. But harassment included stigmatizing speech, as Eden Jacobowitz, a Penn student, found out. In a famous incident in 1993, he shouted “water buffalo” at a group of black sorority women who were disturbing his study, and was then called to account and punished by the university. The conservative Penn historian Alan Kors took up Jacobowitz’s cause and succeeded, after much travail, in exonerating him and getting the code abolished.

In the chapter on Wisconsin, Downs tells the story of his own exploits. In 1989, President Donna Shalala (like Hackney, later a figure in the Clinton administration) established codes for students and faculty that explicitly punished demeaning speech, later called “hate speech.” The student code was abandoned two years later, but the faculty code remained until Downs, a First Amendment liberal, organized its abolition in the faculty senate in 2001. His book tells a harrowing tale featuring a few heroes like himself and Kors (plus William Van Alstyne of Duke, Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice, Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal, and civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate), a few villains such as Hackney and Shalala, their politically correct administrators, and many easily confused or intimidated faculty liberals.

Downs ends on a note of optimism, urging others to learn from what he and his friends accomplished. One can imagine his dismay at the recent spectacle at Harvard this spring, when progressive social censorship was enforced on President Lawrence Summers by the Harvard faculty. Not only was Summers’s speech on why more women do not enter science rejected in substance, but his mere choice of topic and call for inquiry into the matter were declared insensitive. In a secret ballot, he was branded as lacking the confidence of Harvard’s bold faculty. Summers, with his apologies for raising the issue, did not, to say the least, react as did Donald Downs. Summers is no Hackney and no Shalala; but still, he was overcome by the forces of sensitivity. Perhaps Downs would not be so hopeful if he were writing with this incident in view.

Let us honor the conscience of free speech liberalism and the passion to defend free speech that it inspires. But let’s also take a look at two problems—balance and truth—arising as liberalism faces the demand for sensitivity.

Downs ends his book remarking that maintaining free speech in universities is a “delicate balancing act,” but he also says that its defenders need to have the “requisite passion.” The trouble is that passion for free speech cools off in the act of balancing. Passionate defense of free speech is attracted to extremes that test the bounds of the First Amendment and require a valiant effort by the defender to tolerate speech he loathes, as in the promise never quite kept by Voltaire to defend to the death the right of a speaker he disapproves of. This is drama rather than balance. Downs himself had written a book in 1985 on the Nazis in Skokie, concluding that, on balance, racial vilification does not deserve First Amendment protection. He changed his mind, he says, because he came to doubt the ability of university administrators to strike a fair balance.

This was a reasonable doubt of administrators infused with the idea of enforcing sensitivity. But the speech codes that gave the alarm to Downs were not the worst danger to free speech in the universities, nor are they today. Those codes prohibited racial slurs and unwelcome lewd overtures—unpleasant, to be sure, to blacks and women, but hardly posing grave risks. They were interpreted, however, in a spirit of political correctness so as to produce a numbing homogeneity of opinion at our universities, and that spirit has proved very harmful. The idea of sensitivity behind the speech codes also led to political correctness, because it was necessary to decide to whom to be sensitive. Being sensitive to blacks and women gave them the right to be offended when they pleased and to talk back offensively to their tormentors. They did not have to be sensitive except to the insensitivity they were subject to, and they were encouraged to react with indignation whenever they felt they were put upon.

Thus, the notion of sensitivity led to less toleration rather than more. Those not tolerated were, of course, conservatives. The victims Downs tells of were not conservatives (they were mostly naive and nonpolitical) and some of his faculty and student heroes were conservatives. Conservatives were silenced not so much by speech codes as by not being hired for the faculty and not being invited to give talks or lectures on campus. Some conservative speakers were intimidated by protests; but for the most part, conservatives were simply not there and not invited. First Amendment liberals prefer the cause of the embattled and give little thought to the need for a balance of reasonable or respectable opinion in universities. To exaggerate: They will defend you only if they hate you, or if you are being persecuted. The near-total exclusion of conservatives from the faculties of America’s elite universities does not alarm them. The fact that partisan debate outside the universities is freer and livelier than within may be deplorable, but it does not strike them as a free speech issue. They take for granted the willingness of citizens to speak up. They become indignant at the suppression of speech, but worry much less about speech that it never occurs to anyone to express.

A society of free speech needs lively exchange between the parties and not just loud voices from its eccentric fringe—and this is true, too, for universities. For lively exchange you need balance, as it is easy for a dominant majority to be unruffled by dissent when it is only from a token few. One could seek balance by declaring partisan opinion to be academically irrelevant, as when President Robert Sproul at Berkeley in the 1930s (Downs notes) banned the use of university buildings for partisan purposes. Many social scientists in universities follow a similar logic when they adopt the fact/value distinction: “My science is over here and my values are over there; there’s no connection!” The fact that most all of us are liberals, and hardly any conservative, is therefore irrelevant. Science is what matters, and that is impartial.

This attitude coexists at universities today with the opposite, postmodern view that science is only a mask of impartiality to conceal the partisan exercise of power. True impartiality being impossible, in this view, we should embrace partiality and politicize the university. Either way, whether from positivism or postmodernism, conservatives lose out. They are not necessary to be heard, and if they are heard, they do harm to progressive causes.

Mention of progress brings up the second problem for free speech liberals, the problem of truth. Liberals stand for progress and, for self-protection, sometimes call themselves progressives. They also stand for diversity and speak of it constantly. Yet progress is hostile to diversity, especially to the diversity that conservatives represent. Progress is progress in truth, in the overcoming of prejudice such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. By identifying and refuting prejudice, progress establishes the reign of truth and narrows the range of acceptable opinions. What, then, is to be done about conservatives who hold these prejudices? Today, conservatives do not, or no longer, hold to racial prejudice, and anyone who does has been banished from responsible discussion. But is it the same for sexism and homophobia? Has debate on these matters been foreclosed, and does it deserve to be?

If liberals agree that one can still believe in sex differences and in the superiority of heterosexual life, they then consent to diversity and admit that conservatism in these respects is respectable. If they do, however, they set limits to progress in truth, or in the spread of truth. They justify a society balanced between liberals and conservatives, the party of progress and the party of order, as John Stuart Mill called them. But this seems to be a society of truth and untruth, permanently divided, which prevents the triumph of truth, of liberalism.

How can liberals accept that? Or respect it? Mill says that truth will become dead dogma if it is not challenged by opposing views, which is his reason for tolerating conservatives. But the problem is that if truth is systematically challenged, it will not be paramount. Diversity will replace truth.

This problem is more acute in universities as opposed to society in general, because universities are dedicated to the pursuit of truth. Downs notes that the difference between free speech and academic freedom is that the latter, unlike the former, relates to truth. A society can have free speech, pace the ACLU, if it does not challenge its own basic presuppositions, like those in the Declaration of Independence. But a university must, in pursuit of truth, hold those presuppositions open to inquiry. To carry out such inquiry, a university would seem to have greater need of diversity than a society. A university would not want to foreclose questions that a society might consider settled.

Conservatism is therefore closer to the mission of the university than liberalism is. Liberals, insofar as they are progressives, believe that it is possible to eliminate prejudice from society. When prejudice is gone, truth prevails, and there is no need to reconsider the errors of the past. Progress is irrevocable, and inquiry shrinks to whatever questions remain unsettled. Conservatives, believing that it is not possible to eliminate prejudice, are more tolerant than liberals; they expect society to be, and remain, a mixture of truth and untruth. Conservatives may be prejudiced themselves, or they may be just tolerant of prejudice in others. If society will always be a mixture of truth and untruth, it may be necessary to see what sort of untruth is politically compatible with truth, and what sort is not.

This is the problem we face in judging the civil rights of terrorists, a problem Downs alludes to but does not discuss. We surely do not need speech codes to hobble conservatives—they should be listened to!—but we may well need measures to suppress the preaching of Islamic terrorists. There we have true hate speech composed of hateful ideas, and as a conservative once said, ideas have consequences.

But Downs points out that the idea of sensitivity erodes the difference between speaking and doing. The function of speech comes to be preserving the self-esteem of those spoken to, rather than addressing them; and sexual harassment, a certain behavior, comes to include words found offensive.

Harvey Mansfield is professor of government at Harvard.

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>>On the ‘sin’ of sending kids to public school (WorldNetDaily, 050207)

Author shares harsh campus realities, urges parents to pull children

The man who helped push the issue of public education onto the national agenda of the Southern Baptist Convention has written a new book that blows the lid off government schools, showing parents the kind of worldview and values their children are influenced by 180 days a year.

Bruce Shortt, author of “The Harsh Truth About Public Schools,” presents myriad reasons why government institutions are failing America’s children and thumbing their noses at parents with a religious worldview.

As WorldNetDaily reported, last year Shortt helped spearhead an unsuccessful effort to have the Southern Baptist Convention pass a resolution urging its members to remove their children from public school.

In “The Harsh Truth About Public Schools,” Shortt, writing from a biblical perspective, presents rigorous research about the agenda and effect of government schooling on the nation’s young people.

Shortt especially wants to educate Christian parents, millions of whom send their kids off to public school every day.

“Contrary to what many Christians have been led to believe, there is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ education,” Shortt writes. “All education is religious and conveys a worldview, and there is no more important decision that we make as parents than how we educate our children.”

Continues Shortt: “Unfortunately, Christian parents allow an aggressively anti-Christian institution to form the minds of their children, and the fruit of that choice is bitter. The overwhelming majority of children from evangelical families leave the church within two years after they graduate from high school; only 9% of evangelical teens believe that there is any such thing as absolute moral truth; and, our children are being forcibly indoctrinated to believe that homosexual behavior is acceptable.”

While Shortt wants Christian parents who use the government schools to read the book, he also encourages homeschooling parents to read it.

“Homeschool parents must have this book to minister to their Christian friends and neighbors, pastors and skeptical relatives. Our government-school habit is sowing the wind, and unless Christians turn from this gross sin we will reap a whirlwind that is unimaginable,” Shortt says.

In the book, Shortt documents the pitfalls of public schools, saying the anti-Christian thrust of the governmental school system produces inevitable results: “moral relativism (no fixed standards), academic dumbing down, far-left programs, near absence of discipline and the persistent but pitiable rationalizations offered by government education professionals.”

Shortt also urges pastors to read the book so they might “understand why the church can no longer abdicate its historic role in the education of our children.”

Says Short: “‘The Harsh Truth About Public Schools’ makes it clear why no Christian child should be left behind in government schools. Our Christian children are perishing because parents and pastors lack knowledge. The information in this book exposes the ‘salt and light’ and the ‘our schools are different’ rationalizations for educating Christian children in pagan schools for the contemptible falsehoods they are.

“Any parent or pastor who genuinely desires to be faithful in the education of Christian children needs to find out what the public schools are actually doing, rather than relying on what they are saying they are doing or on memories of the public schools as they may have existed 10, 20 or 30 years ago.”

Shortt makes his argument by citing a school district in Texas.

“There is no public school district in the country that has more Christians in the community or in the schools than that of Plano, Texas,” he said. “In fact, the largest and most powerful church in the state of Texas, Prestonwood Baptist, is located in Plano. Yet, it took a court order to force the Plano schools to allow Christian school children to privately give classmates Christmas gifts that had a Christian message. Moreover, the school district had even prohibited schoolchildren from bringing red and green napkins to the school ‘holiday’ parties for fear the colors might remind someone of Christmas.

“The truth is that the public school policy and curriculum decisions that matter to Christians are not made locally. They are largely dictated by federal and state court decisions, federal and state legislation and regulations, and the teachers’ union and other professional associations connected with the public schools.”

But what about reforming the public schools? Isn’t that a solution?

Responds Shortt: “Public schools cannot be reformed to provide a Christian education, and the evidence is overwhelming that even conventional secular reforms to reinstate traditional academic and moral standards will continue to fail. But even if you think that we should nevertheless try to reinstate traditional academic and moral standards in the schools, taking your children out is the most effective thing you can do to help the children whose parents have left them behind in the public schools. Only the threat of a collapse of the entire public school system offers even the remotest prospect of positive change. Traditional reform efforts are a waste of time.

“Even if you believe that there is nothing wrong with institutionalizing Christian children in public schools, you need to read this book because you may be wrong. Remember, you only get one chance to educate your children. There are no do-overs.”

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**Student Says Teacher Scolded Him for Viewing FOXNews.com (Foxnews, 090601)

A Michigan high school is investigating allegations that one of its teachers berated and belittled a student for taking part in what the teacher considered an unacceptable activity: reading FOXNews.com.

A young man who identified himself only as Mitchell, an 18-year-old senior at Traverse City West Senior High School, called in to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show Thursday and said he was yelled at in front of his classmates for reading the “wrong” news.

The teacher of his video production class saw what he was looking at and “proceeded to give me a 10-minute lecture on why I can’t read FOX News ... and that I can only listen to BBC and other news venues,” the student said.

James Feil, superintendent of Traverse City Area Public Schools, told FOXNews.com that any attempts to pressure students politically would go against his schools’ policies.

“It would be inappropriate. I would clearly tell you that is not something that we would do anything to indoctrinate students here,” he said. “That would clearly be a violation of our policies and guidelines, written or non-written.”

Traverse City West principal Joe Tibaldi declined to comment about the inquiry he was leading, but school officials said the student hadn’t violated any computer-use rules in his class.

But the school has a strict policy against bullying, which it says “may in circumstances be a violation of federal or state law” and goes against its commitment to provide a safe learning environment.

“Bullying, taunting, stalking, hazing and other forms of harassment ... by any member of the staff are strictly forbidden,” according to the school handbook. “Any student or staff member found to have bullied, taunted, stalked, hazed or harassed another person in any form will be subject to discipline.”

Traverse City West has several art and science teachers, but it was unclear who leads the video production class. The superintendent wouldn’t confirm the involvement of any specific teacher.

Feil said the student never filed a complaint to the school and Tibaldi was following up “in a very responsible and a timely manner.”

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**Survey: Students Lie, Cheat, Steal, But Say They’re Good (Christian Post, 081201)

NEW YORK – In the past year, 30% of U.S. high school students have stolen from a store and 64% have cheated on a test, according to a new, large-scale survey suggesting that Americans are too apathetic about ethical standards.

Educators reacting to the findings questioned any suggestion that today’s young people are less honest than previous generations, but several agreed that intensified pressures are prompting many students to cut corners.

“The competition is greater, the pressures on kids have increased dramatically,” said Mel Riddle of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. “They have opportunities their predecessors didn’t have (to cheat). The temptation is greater.”

The Josephson Institute, a Los Angeles-based ethics institute, surveyed 29,760 students at 100 randomly selected high schools nationwide, both public and private. All students in the selected schools were given the survey in class; their anonymity was assured.

Michael Josephson, the institute’s founder and president, said he was most dismayed by the findings about theft. The survey found that 35% of boys and 26% of girls — 30% overall — acknowledged stealing from a store within the past year. One-fifth said they stole something from a friend; 23% said they stole something from a parent or other relative.

“What is the social cost of that — not to mention the implication for the next generation of mortgage brokers?” Josephson remarked in an interview. “In a society drenched with cynicism, young people can look at it and say ‘Why shouldn’t we? Everyone else does it.’”

Other findings from the survey:

_Cheating in school is rampant and getting worse. 64% of students cheated on a test in the past year and 38% did so two or more times, up from 60% and 35% in a 2006 survey.

_36% said they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment, up from 33% in 2004.

_42% said they sometimes lie to save money — 49% of the boys and 36% of the girls.

Despite such responses, 93% of the students said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character, and 77% affirmed that “when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.”

Nijmie Dzurinko, executive director of the Philadelphia Student Union, said the findings were not at all reflective of the inner-city students she works with as an advocate for better curriculum and school funding.

“A lot of people like to blame society’s problems on young people, without recognizing that young people aren’t making the decisions about what’s happening in society,” said Dzurinko, 32. “They’re very easy to scapegoat.”

Peter Anderson, principal of Andover High School in Andover, Mass., said he and his colleagues had detected very little cheating on tests or Internet-based plagiarism. He has, however, noticed an uptick in students sharing homework in unauthorized ways.

“This generation is leading incredibly busy lives — involved in athletics, clubs, so many with part-time jobs, and — for seniors — an incredibly demanding and anxiety-producing college search,” he offered as an explanation.

Riddle, who for four decades was a high school teacher and principal in northern Virginia, agreed that more pressure could lead to more cheating, yet spoke in defense of today’s students.

“I would take these students over other generations,” he said. “I found them to be more responsive, more rewarding to work with, more appreciative of support that adults give them.

“We have to create situations where it’s easy for kids to do the right things,” he added. “We need to create classrooms where learning takes on more importance than having the right answer.”

On Long Island, an alliance of school superintendents and college presidents recently embarked on a campaign to draw attention to academic integrity problems and to crack down on plagiarism and cheating.

Roberta Gerold, superintendent of the Middle Country School District and a leader of the campaign, said parents and school officials need to be more diligent — for example, emphasizing to students the distinctions between original and borrowed work.

“You can reinforce the character trait of integrity,” she said. “We overload kids these days, and they look for ways to survive. ... It’s a flaw in our system that whatever we are doing as educators allows this to continue.”

Josephson contended that most Americans are too blase about ethical shortcomings among young people and in society at large.

“Adults are not taking this very seriously,” he said. “The schools are not doing even the most moderate thing. ... They don’t want to know. There’s a pervasive apathy.”

Josephson also addressed the argument that today’s youth are no less honest than their predecessors.

“In the end, the question is not whether things are worse, but whether they are bad enough to mobilize concern and concerted action,” he said.

“What we need to learn from these survey results is that our moral infrastructure is unsound and in serious need of repair. This is not a time to lament and whine but to take thoughtful, positive actions.”

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**Forward this Column or Get Stuck on Stupid (townhall.com, 080408)

By Mike S. Adams

If your kid comes home from college one day and tells you that your Christian faith is stupid, welcome to the world in which I live. The college environment does that to our kids. It makes good Christian students stupid. By that I mean it turns them into liberals, atheists, or both. Three out of four Christian kids (that’s 75% for those of you who attend UNC-Wilmington) abandon the church when they go to college and only about a third of them return by age 30. In other words, most stay stuck on stupid.

Christians and conservatives could simply whine about this, but then we would just sound like liberals. Instead, we need to take action. Before I tell you what you can do to help fix this problem, let me clarify what we’re facing.

Two Jewish researchers went on campus (this is not a joke) last year to see just how anti-Semitic the faculty were. Their findings? In a survey of over 6,600 college professors across the country, they found virtually no anti-Semitism. Instead, they found a distinct bias against evangelical students: More than half (53%) of college faculty view evangelical students unfavorably. Mormons are next at 33%, followed by Muslims at 22%.

Let me put this in proper perspective: In the United States of America, professors are two and a half times more likely to view evangelical Christian students unfavorably than Muslim students.

The study also found that: Professors are five times more likely to be atheists than the general public: 19% vs. 4%; There are far fewer Evangelicals among the faculty than the general public: 11% vs. 33%; Professors are more than twice as likely to identify themselves as liberal than the general public: 48% to 22%. (This is consistent with an earlier study which found that Democrats outnumber Republicans ten to one on college faculty.)

But enough with the statistics - what are Christians doing about this? Just take a moment to imagine the following:

There’s someone speaking on college campuses capable of - without quoting Bible verses - showing students solid evidence why Christianity is the most reasonable worldview. Imagine further that the four-point presentation this person gives is so provocative and entertaining that not only Christians attend, but atheists and skeptics show up as well (swelling some audiences to over 1500 like a recent N.C. State presentation). Imagine that during Q&A atheists are treated respectfully, but their arguments are exposed as fallacious. And imagine that there is a book, DVD series, website and TV show available for follow up that strengthens Christians and challenges skeptics to consider Christianity.

You don’t need to just imagine it happening because it already is. Dr. Frank Turek, founder and President of www.CrossExamined.org, is leading a team of Christian apologists to conduct I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist seminars on college campuses and at churches across the country. The seminar, based on Turek Geisler’s award-winning book of the same name, is outstanding (back in September 2006, I told you that this is the book that helped bring Jimmy Duke to Christ).

I hosted Frank here at UNCW a couple of weeks ago, and I can tell you that the Christians were emboldened and the atheists were respectfully but firmly refuted. In fact, we’ve already invited Frank back for next semester, which will coincide nicely with UNCW’s three-year celebration of Charles Darwin (“diversity” demands that we have an opposing view, I’m told).

Please go to www.CrossExamined.org to invite Frank or someone from his team to your campus or church. If you can’t get into the fight directly, then maybe you can help others do so by donating on the website (Frank and his team charge students nothing for campus events—they rely on tax-deductible donations). At the very least, get the book, watch the TV show (Sundays at 6 p.m. Eastern on DirecTV Channel 378), and visit the website to equip yourself and your kids with the truth.

It’s time for conservatives and Christians to stop whining about how secular liberals are dominating our college campuses. It is time to take action and reach out to college students who are stuck on stupid.

Author’s Note: Despite the results of last weekend’s game, Dr. Adams will still speak at UNC-Chapel Hill this Thursday, April 10th at 7 p.m. in 209 Manning Hall. Protestors will not be permitted to bring food into the auditorium. Feminists will be charged $10 admission. Adults and homeless veterans will get in free.

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**Before Sending Your Child to a College, Ask these Questions (townhall.com, 080304)

By Dennis Prager

Before you take out a second mortgage or otherwise deplete your savings in order to pay for your child’s college education, you might want to ask the colleges to which your child is applying some questions.

1. Can one obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree at your college without having read a single Shakespeare play, one Federalist Paper or one book of the Bible?

If so, why attend such a college?

2. Does the college allow military recruiters on its campus?

Before being threatened by Congress with a cutoff of federal funds, many colleges denied military recruiters access to their campus. They did so either because of their hostility to military in general or specific hostility to the war in Iraq, or because of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays. If you believe, as reason and history argue, that the American military has done more to preserve liberty on earth than all the professors in all the universities combined, you might not want to send your child to a university that is hostile to the military.

3. In the political science, English, sociology, anthropology and history departments — or any other liberal arts department — what is the ratio of Democrats to Republicans among the professors?

Over 10 years ago, the Rocky Mountain News reported that registered Democrats on the faculty of the University of Colorado at Boulder outnumbered registered Republicans 31-1. If such a ratio exists in the social science departments of your child’s prospective college, why would you want your child to attend such an institution?

4. What are the names of the speakers invited and paid with college funds to speak last year at the college?

Just ask to see the previous year’s speakers list. Colleges set aside funds for visiting speakers. One would assume that a good college seeks to encourage thinking and to that end invites speakers throughout the political spectrum. If your prospective college has a speakers list that is balanced 10 to one in favor of speakers from the political left, that will help you decide whether indoctrination rather than exposure to great ideas is the university’s real agenda.

5. Can my child live in a same-sex dorm and are the bathrooms co-ed?

One generation ago and for all of American history, the university acted in loco parentis, in the place of the parent. You could send your daughter to college more or less assured that the college would act on behalf of her welfare as you would — meaning, for example, that boys had to leave girls dorms by a certain hour. Now, most colleges have no boys or girls dorms and do everything they can to enable boys and girls to fraternize in each other’s rooms at any hour of the night and even share bathrooms.

6. Is Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” the most widely assigned American history book?

If the answer is yes, you should consider sending your son or daughter to another university or at least be aware that you will be paying a lot of hard-earned money for your child to be manipulated into believing that America is a bad country, certainly no better than others, as he or she reads what is essentially a proctologist’s view of American history. Zinn believes, as he told me in an interview on my radio show, that America has done “probably more harm than good in its history.”

7. Would a typical graduate of your university be able to say anything intelligent about Josef Stalin, Louis Armstrong, Pope John XXIII or Pope John Paul II, differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, Cain and Abel, the Gulag Archipelago, Franz Josef Haydn, Pol Pot, Martin Luther, Darfur, how interest rates affect the dollar, dark matter, and “Crime and Punishment”; explain what the Korean War was about and when it was fought; identify India on a map; and know the difference between the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council?

If not, why not? How could someone be considered in any way educated and not be able to intelligently answer all or nearly all of those questions? If they don’t know about such essential and basic things, what do they know? Movies? The supposed dangers of global warming? The importance of race, gender and class? The meaning of menage a trois (or “threesomes”)? Great gay writers?

Unfortunately, the chances are that if you receive any response at all to these questions, it will be a discouraging one. Outside of the natural sciences, colleges are either more interested in liberal indoctrination than in a liberal arts education, or they enable students to take courses that are so narrowly focused that your child graduate will likely graduate as a cultural and historical illiterate. Why so many Americans go into debt paying so much money to such failed institutions is one of the riddles of the universe.

It is time to demand that universities teach. Forcing them to answer the above seven questions is a good way to begin. Because granting a Bachelor of Arts degree on someone who never heard of Cain and Abel and never heard a Haydn symphony is a fraud.

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**Is Wikipedia wicked porn? Online encyclopedia proudly posts graphic sexual images kids can see (WorldNetDaily, 080507)

One of the more mild photos featured on Wikipedia in the “striptease” entry

Wikipedia, the online “free encyclopedia” written and edited by its users that contains 9 million articles in 253 languages, now includes detailed photos of nude homosexual men engaging in sex acts and a variety of other sexually explicit images and content.

One Wikipedia entry states, “A fluffer is a hired member of the crew of a pornographic movie whose role on the set is to sexually arouse the male participants prior to the filming of scenes requiring erections.”

A photo of two nude men having anal sex on a bed, and a “fluffer” handing them a towel, is shown to the right of the entry.

Matt Barber, a constitutional law attorney who serves as Concerned Women for America’s policy director for cultural issues, expressed outrage at Wikipedia’s decision to allow sexually explicit images.

“Children use Wikipedia all of the time for reports for school, and this stuff is not just pornography, this is hard-core pornography,” he said. “Much of it may even be in violation of our nation’s obscenity laws.”

Barber said many of the filtering devices people have in their homes and schools are not geared to protect against Wikipedia’s material.

“Children are often able to bypass these filtering devices and view hard-core, vile pornography,” Barber said. “There is raw, unedited homosexual pornography and other videos on this Wikipedia website, a site that so many Americans and people around the world rely upon.”

Mark Pelligrini, regional representative for Wikipedia, told WND, “Wikipedia’s goal is to provide an encyclopedia that contains the sum of all human knowledge. To that end, Wikipedia does not censor objectionable material.

“[I]f someone goes to the articles on ‘sex,’ ‘penis’ or any graphic topic, we do provide frank descriptions and images,” Pelligrini said. “For images, we aim for clinical pictures of the sort you would find in an anatomy or medical textbook.”

However, in addition to textbook anatomy images, the following can also be found on Wikipedia:

* Recordings of women experiencing orgasms

* Videos of nude men participating in “ejaculation educational demonstrations”

* Detailed photographs of men and women masturbating

* A man ejaculating on a woman’s neck

* Images of mammary intercourse

* Close-up images of topless women and male and female sexual anatomy

* Large-scale photos of men performing oral sex on one another (and performing oral sex on themselves)

* An illustrated list of sex positions

* Threesomes

* Photos of nude strippers

* An image called “Virgin Killer” depicting a naked little girl from the cover of a Scorpions album

“They say they are not in the business of censorship, but it’s not censorship to remove photographs or make a decision not to place pornography on your website,” Barber said.

The site even boasts a “porn star” award template for “outstanding contributions to pornography articles on Wikipedia,” awarded by Wikipedia: WikiProject Pornography.

Jay Walsh, head of communications for the Wikimedia foundation, told WND, “We don’t censor any of the content. There are a number of images that people might be alarmed by. … You could open up a classic Britannica or World Book Encyclopedia, and you’d find entries on sex and sexual topics, perhaps not as deep or prolific as you might find on Wikipedia, but that’s kind of a reality of the 21st century.”

Barber said he will be contacting the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s office to determine whether Wikipedia may be engaging in the dissemination of illegal obscenity.

“Unfortunately, by allowing this type of material, Wikipedia has really sullied its name,” Barber said. “If it wants to be viewed as being in the business of pornography, it is certainly doing a good job of labeling itself as a bunch of hard-core pornographers.”

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**Next on school agenda: Teaching communism (WorldNetDaily, 080305)

Family advocate: ‘Just when we thought indoctrination couldn’t get any worse’

A new plan by a California lawmaker would allow schools to be used to promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, and let teachers in public district classrooms “inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism,” according to a traditional values advocacy organization.

“Just when we thought the indoctrination in California’s public schools couldn’t get any worse, state lawmakers introduce bills that will further brainwash innocent children,” said a statement from Capitol Resource Institute, a traditional values and family advocacy organization based in California.

“We’re in California. Of course it has a chance of succeeding,” CRI spokeswoman Karen England told WND. “These people get bolder and bolder every year.”

Her organization, along with several others, already has been battling over lawmakers’ orders, already placed in law, that public schools in the state teach nothing but positive messages about homosexuality, transsexuality, bisexuality and other alternative lifestyles.

Those plans are being challenged in court, by citizens’ attempts to place the issue on the 2008 election ballot and by family advocates who say the best option is for families to abandon public schools for private schools or other alternatives.

Now comes the plan, SB 1322, from state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat elected from the state’s 27th District, including the towns of Artesia, Avalon, Bellflower, Cerritos, Downey, Lakewood, Long Beach, Lynwood, Paramount, Signal Hill, South Gate and others.

“This bill would actually allow the promotion of communism in public schools,” CRI said.

That’s because the state’s Civic Center Act already requires a school district to grant the use of school property, when an alternative isn’t available, to nonprofit groups, clubs or associations set up for youth and school activities.

“But the law also states that the property may not be used by anyone intent on overthrowing the government,” CRI said. Now, the group said, “SB 1322 would delete the requirement that an individual or organization wanting to use the school property is not a Communist action organization or Communist front organization.

“This bill would also strike the law that a public school or community college employee may be fired if he or she is a member of the Communist Party,” the group said.

Worse yet, the group said, “the bill would also strike the law that prohibits a teacher giving instruction in a school or on public school property from teaching communism with the intent to indoctrinate or to inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism,” CRI said.

“SB 1322 is simply shocking,” said Meredith Turney, legislative liaison for the affiliated Capitol Resource Family Impact. “The socialist members of the legislature are now advocating that communism, one of the most brutal forms of government in history, be taught favorably to government school students. Anyone espousing communism, which does advocate for the violent overthrow of existing government, will be permitted to not only use government property, but work in schools and colleges, and teach their freedom-hating propaganda to impressionable young people.”

“Less than 20 years after the fall of the communist Soviet Union, California lawmakers are eager to once again begin advancing a political ideology responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people,” England said. “Instead of promoting communism in our schools, lawmakers should be focused on actually teaching students to read, write and think for themselves.”

On a blog on the Red County website, Mike Spence concluded: “I know there is plenty of indoctrination goin’ on already but I gues (sic) they won’t be staisfied (sic) until all school children are gay loving (SB777) and Communist. If only they could all read at grade level.”

The bill itself explains that it would delete provisions “regarding a person who intends to use school property on behalf of an organization to deliver a statement, signed under penalty of perjury, that the organization is not a Communist action organization or Communist front organization required to be registered with the Attorney General of the United States or does not, to the best of that person’s knowledge, advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States or of the State of California by force, violence, or other unlawful means.”

The plan also outlines it would drop provisions that school and college employees could be dismissed for being a part of the Communist Party and drop a ban on “teaching communism with the intent to indoctrinate or to inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism.”

The proposal itself noted that the teaching about the facts of communism was allowed, and the previous requirement banned teaching “for the purpose of undermining patriotism for, and the belief in, the government of the United States and of this state.” However, the new plan drops that.

Also deleted was: “For the purposes of this section, communism is the political theory that the presently existing form of government of the United States or of this state should be changed, by force, violence, or other unconstitutional means, to a totalitarian dictatorship which is based on the principles of communism as expounded by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.”

Also deleted was the conclusion from the California Legislature other nations already had fallen into totalitarian dictatorships through the establishment of communism as well as the recognition that “the successful establishment of totalitarian dictatorships has consistently been aided, accompanied, or accomplished by repeated acts of treachery, deceit, teaching of false doctrines, teaching untruth, together with organized confusion, insubordination, and disloyalty, fostered, directed, instigated, or employed by communist organizations and their members…”

Also tossed out of California law was the recognition that communism even presents “a clear and present danger.”

The earlier school indoctrination into alternative sexual lifestyles has prompted creation of Rescue Your Child a coalition of various groups encouraging parents to withdraw their children from the state’s public school system.

That’s the result of the California Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wrote and signed into law Senate Bill 777 and Assembly Bill 394 as law, plans that institutionalize the promotion of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and other alternative lifestyle choices.

The Discover Christian Schools website reports getting thousands of hits daily from parents and others seeking information about alternatives to California’s public schools.

WND reported leaders of the campaign called California Exodus say they hope to encourage parents of 600,000 children to withdraw them from the public districts this year.

The new law itself technically bans in any school texts, events, class or activities any discriminatory bias against those who have chosen alternative sexual lifestyles, said Turney. But there are no similar protections for students with traditional or conservative lifestyles and beliefs, however. Offenders will face the wrath of the state Department of Education, up to and including lawsuits.

“SB 777 will result in reverse discrimination against students with religious and traditional family values. These students have lost their voice as the direct result of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s unbelievable decision. The terms ‘mom and dad’ or ‘husband and wife’ could promote discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also featured,” she said.

England told WND that the law is not a list of banned words, including “mom” and “dad.” But she said the requirement is that the law bans discriminatory bias and the effect will be to ban such terminology.

“Having ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ promotes a discriminatory bias. You have to either get rid of ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ or include everything when talking about [parental issues],” she said. “They [promoters of sexual alternative lifestyles] do consider that discriminatory.”

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**Dispelling Myths about Young Church Dropouts (Christian Post, 071218)

While reports have confirmed a mass exodus of young adults from the church, one local pastor and researcher says secular universities are not to blame.

Sam S. Rainer III, who heads Rainer Research, says it’s a myth that universities push believers away from the church.

“No significant different exists between the dropout rates of those who attend at least a year of college and those who do not,” he said in his latest weblog.

Sixty-nine percent of active churchgoing youth stop attending church for at least a year between the ages of 18 and 22, Rainer stated. Yet 71% of active youth who do not go to college stop attending church during the same period. Results are based on a three-part research project on why 18- to 22-year-olds leave the church and how to get them back.

But many Christians, including youth ministry leaders, have pointed to colleges as a major influence in the departure of young believers from the church or Christian faith altogether.

For many young adults, transitioning into college life means falling into the party scene as they try to make friends on an unfamiliar campus. And apart from parents, for the first time for many, students experience the freedom of making their own decisions. A lot of times, those choices leave out God and church.

An earlier study by LifeWay Research found that 25% of young adults said transitioning into college was a major reason for quitting church.

However, a more likely reason they listed for dropping out of church was “I simply wanted a break from church,” with 27% of young believers saying so.

A University of Texas at Austin study also found that the highest rates of decline in church attendance were among those who never attended college.

“The college itself is not prompting students to drop out of church,” said Rainer.

Dispelling a second myth about young church dropouts, Rainer said high school students do not plan to leave the church once they go to college. An overwhelming majority (80%) of high school students do not plan to leave their church once they graduate high school, according to Rainer’s research project. Only 20% of high school students have preconceived notions to leave the fellowship once out of their parents’ nest.

“Students are not fleeing the church because of deep desires for personal freedom,” Rainer noted. “Nor are they scheming to leave once out of the house.”

And they’re not fleeing because they are disenchanted by a host of church scandals publicized in the media, the researcher added.

Despite several high-profile sex scandals in church leadership and money fraud allegations, only 15% of young believers who feel displeasure with the church say it’s because of a moral or ethical failure of the leadership, according to Rainer.

These findings are released ahead of the release of a book co-authored by Rainer and his father – Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources. The tentative title for the upcoming book is Essential Church. The release date is planned for fall 2008.

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**Junior Scholastic: PC Indoctrination for the Middle School Set (townhall.com, 071109)

[KH: danger in things students read in schools, even Junior Scholastic]

By Mona Charen

If you want to keep up with what’s happening in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Michael Rubin performs a public service in National Review Online’s Corner by offering periodic updates. This morning’s post contains, among others, these items:

— Ahmadinejad tells war veterans and families of martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war: “Development of this country is dependent on us showing the ethos and principles of the martyrs.” . . . “Pressing need for martyrdom culture.”

— Filmmaker held in Iran after stumbling upon mass grave of prisoners executed by regime.

— Interior Minister: “Our nation resists imported ideas . . . such as liberalism and moral decay . . . Japan and China have lost their traditional values and have become Westoxifated . . . but Iranian women resist the ugly temptations of liberalism.”

— Madrasa, a quarterly journal reflecting views of moderate religious intellectuals such as Mojtahed Shabestari and Abdol Karim Soroush, banned.

It happens that just after glancing at one of Rubin’s dispatches the other morning, my sixth-grader drew my attention to his homework assignment. He was to read an article about Iran in Junior Scholastic magazine and answer questions about it. You surely recall Junior Scholastic from your own school days. It’s been around for 85 years and reaches about 25 million children.

The Oct. 1, 2007, issue featured a cover story titled “Iran: The Other Side of the World?” The piece begins by introducing Mohammad Reza Moqaddam, a 15-year-old resident of Qom, who “speaks quietly and respectfully” and prays five times a day. “A lot of young people these days have distanced themselves from religion,” he relates. “I would like them to be much closer to it.” Mohammad pays close attention to the news though, and offers the view that “Even if Iran wants nuclear weapons, it’s none of the other countries’ business. Some of them have nuclear weapons themselves.”

Okay, so when do we get to the part where it is explained that even if young Mohammad wants a neutral take on the news, he cannot get it in Iran where the press is rigidly controlled by the regime? Nowhere. Where does it explain that Iran is the world’s fourth-largest oil supplier and therefore scarcely in need of “peaceful nuclear power”? You won’t find that either.

The article (written by Roxana Saberi, a reporter for National Public Radio) explains that Iran has been “at odds” with America since the revolution of 1979, which forced out the “U.S.-backed Shah” and brought to power a government “based on strict Islamic principles.” But she doesn’t mention that Ayatollah Khomeini and his mobs denounced the United States as the “great Satan” and chanted “Death to America.” The hostage crisis, in which armed militants, possibly including the current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, held 52 American diplomats for 444 days, goes unmentioned until a glancing reference at the end of the article under Iranian history.

Omitting the nature of the revolution and vehement America hatred of its leaders, the article then instructs students that “the war in Iraq has further increased those tensions” because the U.S. commanders “claim” that Iran is supporting militias but the Iranian defense minister has labeled these accusations a “sheer lie.”

There’s much more along these lines. “Some members of the Bush Administration want to take military action against Iran.” But nary a word on Ahmadinejad’s threat to annihilate Israel or to see a world “without the United States.” Nor is there any mention of the thousands of casualties of the revolution, the public stonings or the virtue police. We meet more Iranian youngsters who defend their regime: “The U.S. thinks we are dangerous. Why shouldn’t we think the U.S. is dangerous?” asks a pretty, scarf-clad 13-year-old. Tania “is devoted to her country. Her wish for her people is that they become wise and well-educated.” She “hopes to help” her nation someday “by becoming a lawyer.”

We get the point. Only xenophobes would find this country hostile or frightening. The more we get together the happier we’ll be.

I’m not urging that Junior Scholastic gird our kids for war with Iran. But this happy patter is insipid and unworthy of them.

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**College Not ‘Public Enemy Number One’ for Religion, Study Shows (Christian Post, 070615)

College students are the least likely to abandon their faith than those who never pursued a college degree, a recent study revealed.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin found that college attendance appears to prevent young adults from losing their religion, contradicting widely held assumptions that students leave the church or their faith altogether during their college years.

The surprising research went further to find that those who never attended college had the highest rates of decline in church attendance (76.2%), diminished importance placed on religion (23.7%), and disaffiliation from religion (20.3%). Students who earned at least a bachelor’s degree, on the other hand, had the lowest rates on those three factors with 59.2% indicating decreased church attendance and 15% placing less importance on religion and disaffiliating from religion.

“Simply put, higher education is not the enemy of religiosity that so many have made it out to be,” researchers wrote in their “Losing My Religion” report which is featured in the June issue of the journal Social Forces.

Many church and youth leaders have expressed wide concern and fears that they are losing the younger generation. Jeff Schadt, coordinator of Youth Transition Network, says thousands of youth fall away from the church when transitioning from high school to college. He and other youth leaders estimate that 65 to 94% of high school students stop attending church after graduating.

Some point to the dangers of secular worldviews that are imparted onto students when receiving a college education. David Wheaton, author of University of Destruction calls secular college campuses “the most radical aspect of society” with many students losing their understanding of what it means to be a Christian.

“Many people assume college is public enemy number one for religion,” said Mark Regnerus, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and author of the book Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers.

“But we found young adults who don’t experience college are far more likely to turn away from religion,” he highlighted.

About 62% of Evangelical Protestant young adults attend a religious service less often than they did as adolescents, the latest study showed. But far fewer (19%) indicated a decline in the importance of religion and even fewer (16%) disaffiliated from religion.

Only religious participation suffers substantial declines in young adulthood, researchers noted.

Groups that are least likely to drop out of their religion are Jews, Catholics, black Protestants, women, Southerners, young adults whose parents are still married, and married young adults.

Overall, the overwhelming majority (82%) of college student maintain at least a static level of personal religiosity in early adulthood and 86% retain their religious affiliation.

“Religious faith is rarely seen as something that could either influence or be influenced by the educational process,” researchers stated.

One reason researchers provided was that “while higher education opens up new worlds for students who apply themselves, it can, but does not often, create skepticism about old (religious) worlds, or at least not among most American young people, in part because students themselves do not perceive a great deal of competition between higher education and faith, and also because very many young Americans are so undersocialized in their religious faith (before college begins) that they would have difficulty recognizing faith-challenging material when it appears.”

Also, universities are no longer viewed as being hostile to religion. Recently, they have been described “not as a breeding ground for apostasy, but as ‘a breeding ground for vital religious practice and teaching,’” researchers noted.

Some of the nation’s largest campus ministry groups are expanding their campus chapters and exploring new colleges, recognizing the growing interest in religion and spirituality on campuses.

Campus Crusade for Christ spokesman Tony Arnold says there is a “deep hunger for something” in students’ lives.

“Losing My Religion” is based on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which tracked more than 10,000 Americans from adolescence through young adulthood from 1994 to 1995 and from 2001 to 2002.

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**Moral confusion (townhall.com, 060313)

by John Leo

Rachel Corrie, a young American woman accidentally flattened by an Israeli bulldozer during a protest in Gaza three years ago: is a hero to Palestinians and the anti-American left. When she died, a photo of her burning an American flag sealed her high status on the left. Her honors included many vigils, memorials, buildings named for her, at least two plays, an annual pancake breakfest and the Rachel Corrie Award for courage in the teaching of writing. Why helping people learn to write should require courage is not explained.

I have been planning for some time to write about America’s peculiar awards, prizes and memorials, and the flourishing of Rachel Corrie awards is a good excuse to list some of them.

Stanford University gives the Allan Cox medal each year for faculty excellence in guiding student research. Cox was a professor of geophysics and dean of the school of earth sciences at Stanford. He committed suicide in 1987 while under investigation for sexually molesting the son of a former student. The molesting allegedly went on for five years, starting when the boy was 14.

One of the most elegant prep schools, Phillips Exeter Academy, gives an annual Edmund E. Perry Award for “diversity and cultural awareness.” Perry was an outstanding black student at Phillips Exeter who was shot to death in Harlem while trying to mug a plainclothes cop.

Convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jama has been honored as a commencement speaker (via audiotape) at Antioch College, Evergreen State University, Occidental Univresity and the University of California-Santa Cruz. Warren Kimbo confessed to shooting a fellow black panther in the back of the head. After his release from prison, he was accepted at Harvard, then served as a dean at Eastern Connecticut State University. Susan Rosenberg, an advocate of “collective violence” against the U.S. government, was caught with nearly 700 pounds of explosives in 1984, and went to prison to begin serving a 58-year term. She was pardoned by Bill Clinton, then hired as a writing instructor by Hamilton College in upstate New York, the institution that gave us Ward Churchill. Her course was in “Resistance Memoirs: Writing, Identity and Change.”

Bard College notoriously maintains a chair in social studies named for Alger Hiss, the Communist spy, traitor and perjurer. This is perhaps the stupidest honor given anywhere in America. The University of Washington’s Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies is named for the late and powerful labor leader, who was a Communist, a perjurer and an apologist for Stalin.

Last year the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York announced a new scholarship named for Ho Chi Minh and another honoring Joanne Chesimard, the former Black Panther and convicted murderer of a New Jersey police officer. Both scholarships were quickly renamed after protests.

Stanford law school paid Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who had been indicted for aiding Islamic terrorists, to speak and mentor students at a conference. After loud complaints, the school withdrew the word “mentor” from her conference title, but let her conduct mentoring and deliver her lecture anyway. Since then, she has been convicted on all five counts of conspiring to to aid terrorists and lying to the government.

Jeffrey Eden, a 17-year-old Rhode Island student, created a high-school art project comparing President Bush and Adolf Hitler, complete with three swastikas, little toy figurines and several slogans. One slogan was “Hitler’s own justification was his own hatred.”

The Bush=Hitler artwork was just what some people wanted to see. It got an A from his teacher and a silver key at the Rhode Island scholastic art awards.

Villanova University installed a memorial plaque honoring a professor who killed her Down syndrome baby and herself in 2003. After protests, including some from parents of Down children, the plaque was removed. A spokesman said, “At no time did the university nor anyone associated with the university intend to devalue the sanctity of life.”

And we have the awards that many Austrians and other Europeans wanted to bestow on Tookie Williams, the unusually vicious multiple murderer who was executed in California late last year. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace prize, and when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denied Williams clemency, a drive began to remove Arnold’s name from an Austrian sports stadium and dedicate the building to Tookie instead. Awards are the new frontier of moral confusion.

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**Budding Coalition Addresses Christian Student Fallout in Colleges (Christian Post, 060713)

The significant loss of students from the Christian faith in their transition from high school to college has put youth and ministry leaders to work to bring a halt to the trend. Major youth groups and college campus ministries are gearing up to strategize for a milestone national campaign that they plan to launch next year.

Before the campaign propels forward, the Youth Transition Network (YTN) is forming a group called the Guiding Coalition to bring together national leaders to help young people transition from high school and still be a vital part of the body of Christ. A second conference to get all the major ministries onboard is being held today.

“I’ve never seen ... the response and the level of cooperation that we’re seeing around this,” commented Jeff Schadt, a major coordinator for the Guiding Coalition and national facilitator of the YTN. “We started dreaming of having a Guiding Coalition of national leaders at a meeting in March of this year.”

In a matter of months, the coalition has already received the commitment of such national college campus ministries as Chi Alpha, the Coalition for Christian Outreach, Campus Renewal and Campus Ambassadors. Major campus player Intervarsity is also on the verge of solidifying its commitment. These groups are in addition to the youth ministries already involved including Youth for Christ and Young Life. And more are to join.

Schadt and other coordinators hope some 40 to 50 national leaders from high school and college ministries will join the major effort to reach every high school student.

Schadt quoted Bill Tell, deputy U.S. director of The Navigators, who said that he sees more potential in this than anything he’s seen in his 30 years of youth ministry.

Studies have shown that 70 to 85% of Christian students exiting high school lose their faith. There are over 4,000 four-year schools in the country and reportedly less than 900 have on-campus ministries, according to the Youth Transition Network. One of the major problems Schadt pointed out is that most students are not even aware of the existing ministries on campuses.

“Most of the students leaving the high school environment do not have name recognition or even know the names of most of the college and career ministries across the country,” stated Schadt. “They don’t even know when they see a sign for The Navigators, what The Navigators is. They think it’s a sailing club.

“They don’t think it’s a place to get connected to the body of Christ.”

Currently in the works, the national campaign will help motivate students to want to get connected to college ministries and be prepared for their new chapter in life. It will also serve to spread awareness to parents of the fallout of Christian students upon their entrance into college life.

Meetings addressing the critical youth issue began last spring and are continuing with an expanding network.

“The meetings that have been held related to the Youth Transition Network are the first ever significant large-scale meetings between youth and college ministry leaders,” Schadt stressed. “So what we’re working on is the handshake...that the high school leaders will ‘pitch’ their students and the college and career ministry leaders across the country will be in position and prepared to ‘catch’ students before they leave home.”

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**Preparing for College by Reading the Bible (Christian Post, 060607)

Chuck Colson

What Students Need to Know

Is it possible to be an educated person without knowing about the Bible? That’s the question that was posed to thirty-nine English professors at some of our leading universities. Their answers should not come as a surprise, although given our culture’s “Christophobia” and the politically correct attitudes on campuses, they probably do.

The relationship between biblical literacy and education was the subject of a survey conducted by the Bible Literacy Project. The study, whose subtitle is “What University Professors Say Incoming Students Need to Know,” found that every professor surveyed agreed with the following statement: “Regardless of a person’s faith, an educated person needs to know about the Bible.” Every professor!

By way of elaboration, Professor George P. Landow, from my alma mater, the very liberal Brown University, said, “[Without the Bible] it’s like using a dictionary with one-third of the words removed.” Professor Ulrich Knoepflmacher at Princeton said that the lack of “Bible knowledge is almost crippling in students’ ability to be sophisticated readers.”

Case in point: A preparation workbook for the Advanced Placement Literature exam lists 67 biblical allusions among the 105 allusions that it recommends students know. Yet, only 8% of public high schools teach about the Bible even as literature.

Then there’s the Bible’s central role in Western civilization. As David Kastan of Columbia said, “The Bible is the foundational text, certainly of the West . . . We need to know more, and we need to know it better.”

Given the Bible’s status, it shouldn’t be “too much to ask,” as Gordon Braden of the University of Virginia put it, for students to read what he called a “core Bible.” This would include “Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, the four Gospels, and the Book of Revelation.” In Braden’s words, “If they have that, then we can get started.”

If leading academics agree on the importance of the Bible, regardless of one’s faith or lack thereof, why isn’t it being taught more? Why are we raising the first generation to have lost the biblical narrative that was second nature to prior generations in America?

The answer certainly is not for lack of a suitable curriculum. The Bible Literacy Project recently released a textbook called THE BIBLE AND ITS INFLUENCE. The textbook has been well received, not only by evangelical leaders, but by Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish leaders as well.

The text enables students to learn about the role of the Bible in an accurate, scholarly, and constitutional way. It helps teachers and administrators feel more confident about their ability to do justice to our “foundational text.”

The problem lies in getting past the “Christophobia” I mentioned earlier. Whether the problem lies in overt hostility or a misunderstanding of what the law actually says, many schools are reluctant to teach the Bible.

That’s where you come in. There is overwhelming evidence of the need for biblical literacy in public education. You need to bring this evidence to the attention of those running your local school boards. You need to help them understand that the goal is not spreading a particular religion but preventing the spread of something far worse: a crippling kind of ignorance.

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**Attention Surplus Syndrome (townhall.com, 060109)

[KH: fun to read]

by Mike S. Adams

Dear Spring 2006 students:

The mainstream media isn’t on to it yet, but there is a new psychological malady sweeping the nation - especially prevalent in our institutions of higher learning. I call it Attention Surplus Syndrome. Perhaps the media will start to discuss it once they find an appropriate acronym. Until then, you’ll just have to rely on my brief description of the syndrome, which is based upon my observations as a college professor.

Attention Surplus Syndrome is characterized by the four major symptoms I will discuss in the next few paragraphs. Interestingly, few people suffering from Attention Surplus Syndrome exhibit just one or two of the symptoms. Where one is present, the other three usually follow.

Lateness. In order to be on time to class one must first recognize that there is an actual objective reality independent of one’s feelings. The Office of Campus Diversity does not feel that this is correct but they are wrong. They are wrong about almost everything including the notion that there is no such thing as right or wrong.

So, in my class, students are required to buy a watch and set it to the real time that is easily accessible on the Weather Channel. Students cannot come in late and tell me they really felt like they were on time. Nor am I interested in any excuses for their tardiness. I made it through a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate program without ever being a single second late for any class. You can make it to my class on time this semester. We only meet 42 times. You can just skip class on the days that you are overwhelmed by the oppressive white, patriarchal, heterosexist, Bourgeois concept of punctuality.

Of course, there is one drawback to my policy. Since you are required to be on time, you won’t be able to draw attention to yourself by running into class huffing and puffing after my lecture has already started. But that’s okay. This class is all about learning. It’s not all about you.

Interruptive-ness. For some reason, the kindergarten hand-raising lesson I learned when I was five years old is no longer taught in our public schools. It’s really quite simple so just pay attention to the following:

It is better to raise your hand and allow the professor to call on you than it is to simply blurt out your commentary before the professor has completed a thought or sentence.

It is also a good idea to get the notes you missed (from all the days you skipped) from a fellow student outside of class. When you pass notebooks back and forth during class saying “dude, I can’t read your @#$%ing hand-writing” you tend to call attention to yourself and away from the lecture.

But, of course, that is really the goal for some of you, isn’t it. It is more fun to be the center of attention than it is to be one of 40 passive listeners in a college classroom. But, regardless, in my class you won’t be a blurter, a constant hand-raiser, or a notebook passer. That’s just not okay. This class is all about learning. It’s not all about you.

Cell phone addiction. You know who you are. You can’t live without your cell phone. It is your security blanket. After every class, you run out into the hall and pull it out to check the “calls received” function. When you have no missed calls, you feel blue. When you have them you feel good enough, you feel smart enough, and you feel like - dog-gone-it! - people might just like you.

But there is a problem. I don’t allow cell phones in class. The reason is really simple: You can’t seem to remember to turn off the ringer and so your phone interrupts me.

And, of course, there’s another problem: Those who do turn off the ringer sometimes like to text message friends during my lectures.

And, there’s a third problem: People are starting to cheat on exams by storing test information in their cell phones. You didn’t think I knew that, did you?

That is why cell phones are banned in my class. I know you don’t like it because you get less attention when you are without your cell phone. But that’s okay. This class is all about learning. It’s not all about you.

And, by the way, if I see you with a cell phone during an exam, you are presumed guilty of cheating until you can prove yourself innocent. Your trial will have one juror. That juror is named Mike Adams.

Excuse-making. There’s really no excuse for making excuses, is there? So, in my class we just don’t do it. Maybe you really did have an abortion last week. Maybe your girlfriend really did give you herpes. Maybe you really are too stupid to set an alarm clock. But, by refusing to listen to your excuses, I protect you from communicating to me the extent of your inability to take responsibility for your own conduct. Since you won’t be bothering me with these excuses, chances are I will not, at any point, come to the conclusion that you are a whiner or a loser. Instead, we will just focus on learning.

I know you don’t like it when you can’t share your excuses for failure. That’s because you get more attention (and sympathy) when you do. But that’s okay. This class is all about learning. It’s not all about you.

The good news about Attention Surplus Syndrome is that most of you don’t have it. You will be punctual, cell phone-less, non-interruptive, non-excuse-making scholars over the course of the next few months. And, for your consideration of others, you will be richly rewarded. In fact, of your three exams, I will double the highest grade you make this semester and divide by four – instead of just dividing by three.

But, those of you suffering from Attention Surplus Syndrome will suffer a different fate. Every time you exhibit your psychological problem – by being late, or interruptive, or toting a cell phone in my class, or by simply wasting my time with idiotic excuses – I will calmly email you a list of my class rules. The copy you are reading today is free. Each subsequent copy will cost you two points on your final average.

My philosophy of teaching is so simple it can be summarized in these two sentences: I only care about learning and retention, not your yearning for attention. If students show their ASS in my class, they do not pass.

Are there any questions before we start?

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**Making wise college contributions (townhall.com, 060106)

by Marvin Olasky

The University of Kansas (KU) did some damage control last month when it announced cancellation of a class taught by an overt hater of Christians — but let’s not let it and other universities get away so easily.

Paul Mirecki, who chaired KU’s Religious Studies department and later claimed he was beaten up for his beliefs by two men in a pickup truck, wrote that he wanted to teach the course to give “the fundies ... a nice slap in their big fat face.” He also bashed Catholics, but a university spokeswoman said Mirecki’s “offensive” and “ill-considered” comments did not represent the values of the university or its faculty.

Hmmm ... I suspect they do represent the views of many professors, and Mirecki suspects the same: He wrote to a discussion group last year, “The majority of my colleagues here in the dept are agnostics or atheists, or they just don’t care. If any of them are theists, it hasn’t been obvious to me in the 15 years I’ve been here.”

Theism among professors throughout this land is rare, but agnosticism and atheism are common, and I know one reason why — the academic blacklisting of any who show Christian belief outside of an hour on Sunday morning. (It’s sadly amusing that college students by the time they’re seniors have heard of “blacklisting” during the dreaded “McCarthy era” a half century ago, but they don’t know about the contemporary blacklist.)

I’ve heard about the current blacklist for years, and until I became mildly notorious, I occasionally received calls from chairmen of academic departments asking for my view of graduate students whose dissertations I had supervised. One call included this hesitant inquiry: “There’s, uh, one question that arose concerning [the candidate’s] background … just a hunch, something that came out of my going through his vita .... assistant managing editor, Good News magazine.”

When I asked what the hunch was, the departmental chairman whispered the horrid possibility: Is the candidate a “fundamentalist”? His concern, he hastened to say, was not with religious belief as such, but “we would not want a person who held beliefs that would interfere with his ability to do mainstream scholarship ... We are so very, very eager to have someone doing mainstream research and publication. We want someone who will be nationally recognized, who will have stature in the field.”

The professor’s caution was logical. Given the biases of leading academics and their journals, a fundamentalist (unless he stays in the closet) will be frozen out, and a university’s national reputation will not grow. What’s illogical is the tendency of many Christian or conservative college alumni to enable the bias against Christians and conservatives by sending contribution checks made out to the institution’s general fund.

Christians particularly, instead of writing undesignated checks, should direct funds to Christian groups on campus such as Reformed University Fellowship, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, or Campus Crusade for Christ. They should also support Christian study centers adjacent to universities. Any donors except liberals should avoid general funds and instead find out about, and support directly the research of, professors who challenge the academy’s left-wing orthodoxy.

Donors who have lots of money and want to make a big difference might work to set up new, non-leftist programs within universities. Some moderates and conservatives, with great determination, have already done that at institutions like Princeton, Duke, Brown, Colgate, the University of Colorado, City University of New York, the University of Nebraska-Omaha, and the University of Alaska. The National Association of Scholars, based in Princeton, N.J., is helping to midwife some efforts.

Some potential contributors pessimistically think that university guardians won’t allow such centers of opposition to arise. It’s important to remember, though, that many academic officials who have turned their backs on God now serve Mammon, and cannot help salivating at the sight of checks waved in front of them. If funding emerges, breakthroughs will come.

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**Ivy League Schools See Rise in Evangelical Students (Christian Post, 051227)

More Evangelicals are attending Ivy League universities where spiritual interest is growing more than ever, according to university faculty and campus fellowship officials.

“People are more hungry than I’ve ever seen; people want to know if it’s true or not,” said Craig Parker of The Navigators, according to CBN. “I’ve seen a growing spiritual interest.”

Noting the increase in Evangelicals at Ivy League schools, Michael Lindsay, a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, said, “This is the unintended consequence of having a more diverse student body. As these elite institutions have recruited geographically…they’ve also produced religious diversity, so there are more Evangelicals going to places like Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, than there were in the past.”

Campus fellowship groups have in turn experienced a growth surge.

The number of students involved with Campus Crusade for Christ rose 163% over the past 20 years at Brown University. At Harvard, participation has grown more than 500% and 700% at Yale.

“The amount of Christian groups has totally proliferated,” said Nicole Leonard, a 1988 Dartmouth graduate, according to CBN. “There were only a couple to choose from when I was a student, and now there’s four to six evangelical groups … it’s just grown so much, that you can’t deny our presence, and it’s really been a positive presence.”

Christian students highlighted their faith in Christ as a fuel for their hard work.

“For me, as a follower of Christ, I’d say that the excellence of my work is motivated by my Christian convictions,” said Lindsay.

Brittany Pheiffer, a senior at Dartmouth, said, “It’s the only part of me that trickles into everything else. It’s something that I want to be able to be express in my academics, be it just that I want to work hard, knowing that I represent Christ.”

While Christians remain a minority at Ivy League schools, many see a spiritual renewal and its impact on society.

“Ivy leagues are really influential. People from all over the world come here, and leaders in society are influential in that. If we can have revival in these schools, it’s going to have an impact not only on our society, but the world as a whole,” said Dr. Richard Denton, a professor at Dartmouth.

Meanwhile, as more Evangelicals have made their way into the Ivy League, enrollment in Christian higher education institutions has also seen soaring numbers over the past 14 years.

According to numbers from the U.S. Department of Education, total fall enrollment at member campuses of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) grew significantly more than enrollment in other segments of higher education from 1990 to 2004. CCCU campuses grew 70.6%, from 134,592 students in 1990 to 229,649 students in 2004. In the same time frame, all public four-year campuses grew only 12.8%, all independent four-year campuses grew 28% and all independent religious four-year campuses grew 27.5%.

CCCU President Bob Andringa, in October, attributed the growth trend to a number of different factors. One big factor that he noted was academic quality.

“More evangelicals embrace higher learning,” he said.

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**Division at Dartmouth—A Christian Speaks His Mind (Christian Post, 051007)

Dartmouth College is older than the United States of America, having been established in 1750 as “Moore’s Indian Charity School.” That’s a part of Dartmouth’s history that would be unknown to most Americans, but the school was established by Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, a leading figure in the nation’s first Great Awakening. Wheelock established the school with the purpose of evangelizing American Indians, and he intended for the school eventually known as Dartmouth College to compete with Harvard and Yale in terms of academic distinction. In other words, Dartmouth College is an Ivy League institution originally established for the evangelization of Native Americans.

Keep that in mind as you learn of more recent developments. On September 20, Dartmouth’s student body president, Noah Riner, delivered the customary convocation address—a responsibility that comes with his elected position. Mr. Riner’s speech was relatively short, intensely personal, and intellectually courageous. All that explains why Mr. Riner, a home-schooled native of Louisville, Kentucky, soon found himself at the center of controversy.

The response to Riner’s speech included vitriolic outrage. He was denounced, criticized, and lambasted for the content of his controversial address. The Student Assembly’s vice president for student life resigned the very next day, indicating that she could not serve with Riner because of his “appalling” speech to incoming freshmen.

What in the world did Riner say? “You really are special,” he told the Dartmouth class of 2009. But Mr. Riner didn’t stop there.

“But it isn’t enough to be special,” he continued. “It isn’t enough to be talented, to be beautiful, to be smart. Generations of amazing students have come before you, and have sat in your seats. Some have been good, some have been bad. All have been special.”

Just a few words into his convocation address, Riner signaled that he intended to address the incoming students with something more than emotionalism, congratulations, and simplistic affirmation. He had another issue in mind—character.

His speech took a fascinating turn when Riner recited a list of Dartmouth graduates who had ended up as examples of deficient character. A member of the class of 1939 became a Soviet spy, even as a later graduate committed murder and yet another was arrested for sexually assaulting a fifteen-year-old student.

“These stories demonstrate that it takes more than a Dartmouth degree to build character,” Riner asserted. Even at this point, we must recognize that Riner’s convocation address must have broken the norm. After all, he was addressing the bright, privileged, and ambitious new class with the message that a Dartmouth education, while important, was not ultimate.

From that point, Riner expanded his focus to include developments such as looting in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and a crisis of character that affects the entire nation.

“We have the same flaws as the individuals who pillaged New Orleans. Ours haven’t been given such free reign, but they exist and are part of us all the same.”

We can be fairly certain that at least some of those bright young people sitting in the audience would have been surprised, if not offended, to be told that they are sinners. “Let’s be honest,” Riner insisted, “the differences are in degree.”

But if Riner’s assertion that character is primary was not offensive enough, his example of character set many to squirming in their seats.

“Character has a lot to do with sacrifice, laying our personal interests down for something bigger,” Riner argued. “The best example of this is Jesus. In the Garden of Gethsemane, just hours before His crucifixion, Jesus prayed, ‘Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me: nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done.’ He knew the right thing to do. He knew the cost would be agonizing torture and death. He did it anyway. That’s character.”

Noah Riner went on. “Jesus is a good example of character, but He’s also much more than that. He is the solution to flawed people like corrupt Dartmouth alums, looters, and me.” As he later explained, “Jesus’ message of redemption is simple. People are imperfect, and there are consequences for our actions. He gave His life for our sin so that we wouldn’t have to bear the penalty of the law; so we could see love. The problem is me; the solution is God’s love: Jesus on the cross, for us.”

The response was immediate, vitriolic, and revealing. The cartoonist for the college’s campus newspaper, The Dartmouth, drew a comic strip depicting Riner as a crusading theocrat and Jesus as a marijuana smoker. Kaelin Goulet not only resigned as vice president for student life, but also condemned Riner for his speech. “Your first opportunity to represent Student Assembly to the incoming freshmen was appalling,” she wrote. “You embarrassed the organization; you embarrassed yourself.” In an email message cited by the campus newspaper, Goulet charged, “I consider his choice of topic for the Convocation speech reprehensible and an abuse of power.”

“I have been looking forward to working with you all and thought we were in agreement for what SA stands for,” the former vice president wrote. “Apparently, I was incorrect.” Her spirit of cooperation evidently did not extend to Mr. Riner’s right to speak his mind in his convocation address.

Leaders of Hillel and Shanti, the Jewish and Hindu religious groups on Dartmouth’s campus, wrote a letter to the campus newspaper that described Noah Riner’s convocation address as a “disrespectful action” which represents “the complete antithesis of the value that Dartmouth espouses.”

The editors of The Dartmouth acknowledged the college’s roots, reminding readers that Dartmouth had been founded “to bring Christianity to Native Americans.” Nevertheless, the paper celebrated the fact that “Dartmouth has more recently eschewed this goal in favor of providing a balanced, secular and inclusive education to its students.”

According to the editors, “The problem with Riner’s address was his insinuation that turning to Jesus is the only way to find character. Indeed, Jesus was the only positive example of character Riner offered. While many of the ideas Jesus exemplified and his followers espoused stretch across faiths, statements such as, ‘Jesus is a good example of character, but He’s also much more than that. He is the solution to flawed people like corrupt Dartmouth alums, looters, and me’ and, ‘The problem is me; the solution is God’s love: Jesus on the cross, for us,’ are explicitly Christian and, as such, managed to alienate many in the audience regardless of their faiths.”

Note clearly—the very fact that Dartmouth’s student body president would espouse convictions consistent with the college’s founding vision was considered an act virtually tantamount to treason against Dartmouth’s current “secular and inclusive” vision.

Brian Martin, guest columnist for the campus newspaper, described Riner’s convocation address as “fire-and-brimstone remarks” that demonstrated “casual disrespect for the diversity of the captive audience.”

“We are a community that welcomes and respects all its members, no matter what your creed,” Martin insisted. Evidently, this means welcome and respect to all members and all creeds—except for the founding creed of the institution.

Martin pushed his point one step further, arguing that “Jesus would not have wanted to make new students feel unwelcome, to make faculty feel uncomfortable or to make alumni question whether this was the same Dartmouth that they had attended.” Are we to assume that Jesus Christ would have felt himself constrained by Ivy League etiquette? So much for cleansing the Temple.

Mr. Riner was not without his defenders. “Had Noah Riner opened his convocation speech with ‘I’m gay,’ this wouldn’t be happening. That’s not Noah, but if it were, no one would have resigned. No one would be organizing protests. Such a reaction, according to our rigid social standards, would be bigotry. If there were any Op-Eds or outcries, they would be praising his ability to encourage individualism and progressivism in Dartmouth.” Those are the words of Stacey Kourlis, who defended Riner in a column published in The Dartmouth. “We chose a leader who is willing to stand up and articulate his or her beliefs,” Kourlis argued. “We didn’t default to someone who’s doing this for a resume. That’s a testament to how special we [are] as a community. So let’s take it one step further and allow Riner to say precisely what he thinks, without fear of political correctness.”

The charter that established what we now know as Dartmouth College was granted by King George III of England, who stated that the purpose of the institution should be “for civilizing and Christianizing the children of pagans, as well as in all liberal arts and sciences, and also of English youths and any others.” Noah Riner’s crime was to fulfill that mission by speaking honestly, courageously, and sincerely about his Christian faith. It was a bold and powerful demonstration of Christian witness, and it was one young man’s demonstration of the very strength of character that authentic education is to stimulate and strengthen, not subvert and marginalize.

The controversy over Noah Riner’s convocation address at Dartmouth is a bracing reminder of the fact that America’s most prestigious academic institutions have become openly hostile to the very convictions upon which they were established. In the name of diversity, voices such as Noah Riner’s are decried and condemned. Just sixty years ago, Ernest M. Hopkins, then president of Dartmouth, said, “Dartmouth is a Christian college founded for the Christianization of its students.” One wonders whether Reverend Wheelock and President Hopkins would be welcomed today on the campus of the college they respectively founded and led.

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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**Convocation Speech with Jesus Reference Sparks Controversy at Dartmouth College (Christian Post, 050926)

A convocation speech made last Tuesday by Dartmouth College’s Student Body President with references to Jesus has sparked controversy on the Ivy League campus, leading to the publishing of a retaliating cartoon and the resignation of the Assembly’s Vice President.

Addressing Dartmouth students at the university’s convocation, Student Body President Noah Riner delivered a speech on the importance of character.

“[I]t takes more than a Dartmouth degree to build character,” said Riner, pointing to stories of corrupt Dartmouth alumni such as murderer Daniel Mason from the class of ‘93 and indicted rapist P.J. Halas from the class of ‘98.

“Character has a lot to do with sacrifice, laying our personal interests down for something bigger. The best example of this is Jesus,” continued Riner, praising Jesus’ decision to take up the cross despite the consequences.

“He knew the right thing to do. He knew the cost would be agonizing torture and death. He did it anyway. That’s character.”

Some students took offense to the speech’s references to Jesus, saying that convocation was an inappropriate forum for the topic.

One of them was the Student Assembly’s Vice President for Student Life, Kaelin Goulet, who announced her resignation last Thursday.

“I consider his choice of topic for the Convocation speech reprehensible and an abuse of power,” Goulet wrote in a BlitzMail message obtained by The Dartmouth – America’s oldest college newspaper.

In an interview with The Dartmouth on Wednesday, Riner said his speech had nothing to do with his agenda for the Student Assembly but was to get students thinking about character.

“I realize that I have a very specific perspective on the issue of character,” Riner said. “And by adding my perspective, I hope that it’ll give other people the opportunity to examine their own perspectives and to add those to the Dartmouth dialogue.”

Others applauded Riner for his courage and defended his freedom of speech.

Chris West, college director of Christian Impact – the Dartmouth chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ – told the Christian Post, “I believe they were appropriate, humble, and heroic.”

He added, “Noah demonstrated the very character of which he spoke when he alluded to Christ’s sacrifice for us all. Jesus is still controversial to this day. The central question of ‘Who do you say I am?’ has divided the academic world, and every other world from the time Jesus walked the earth.”

David Glovsky, a Jewish student, wrote in a guest column to The Dartmouth, saying that he was not offended by Riner’s speech.

He argued that although the speech may have been “preachy” and led to disagreements among the Dartmouth community, “our disagreements do not give us the right to limit his speech.”

The Editorial Board of The Dartmouth condemned the speech, writing, “The problem with Riner’s speech was his insinuation that turning to Jesus is the only way to find character.”

While Riner had every right to speak freely about what matters to him, wrote the Board on Friday, “the forum he chose, however, was inappropriate.”

Patirick Dunn, a member of Christian Impact, noted that there were no restrictions placed on the speech’s content. While he expressed regret from the quarrel and division caused by the speech, Dunn told the Christian Post, “I make no apology, however, for the content of the claims made by Jesus Christ, nor would I apologize for Jesus’ specific commandments to speak openly about the good news of his death and resurrection as the remedy for humanity’s sin.”

“My suspicion is that those who believe convocation is an inappropriate place for the gospel message find few appropriate places for the gospel to be publicly expressed, and that limitation is not possible for those of us who believe in God’s saving grace through Christ Jesus,” added Dunn. “I respect Mr. Riner for his courage and I believe Dartmouth is a wonderful institution capable of encompassing a wide variety of viewpoints.”

Some pointed out the hypocrisy of students and the newspaper that had no qualms about a comic strip by Paul Heintz, who lost to Riner in last spring’s Student Assembly race. The cartoon, which appeared in The Dartmouth, portrayed Riner as a crusader who wants “to vanquish all those infidel looters and rioters” and Jesus as a pot-smoking hippie who tells Riner to “Take a hit off this s— and chill the f— out.”

In a letter addressed to The Dartmouth’s editor, John Stern from the class of ‘05 wrote, “I understand that some students may not enjoy hearing beliefs espoused at Convocation that conflict sharply with their own; and students have every right to raise respectful objections. But, especially in this atmosphere of tolerance and open-mindedness, Heintz’s response was egregious.

“I dare say it was equally offensive to Christians, if not more so, than Riner’s speech was to non-Christians,” Stern continued. “When will we finally learn the lesson we claim we know so well: to treat the people and ideas with which we disagree with respect?”

Dunn admitted to finding the cartoon “offensive,” saying it does nothing to contribute to a legitimate discussion of religion and spirituality in the university. Nonetheless, he defended Heintz’s freedom of speech.

“Mr. Heintz is free to express his opinions, and rightly so,” said Dunn.

Although Dartmouth College was founded in 1769 for the purpose of providing Christian-based education for Native Americans, Christian Impact’s West notes, “Today Dartmouth is a diverse institution representing many voices, and varying beliefs.”

“Opinions differ but we ought to be able to present our views without apology and discuss them with civility,” he said. “Pluralism may be here to stay and in this milieu everyone has a voice. But a plumb line of truth remains.”

“There was a day when Dartmouth truly was a Vox Clamantis in Deserto (Voice calling in the wilderness),” West continued. “I believe Noah is a remnant of that voice calling to the wilderness Dartmouth has become.”

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**Shock and Surprise: Scholarship Supports Empiricism – Academe Is Liberal! (Free Congress Foundation, 050505)

From time to time a scholarly study comforts one in that the study confirms, or tends to confirm, what one perceives he has observed all along. (Of course, sometimes it’s the opposite but we won’t dwell upon that.) The writer has friends – and indeed, also professional colleagues – among academics; himself has one college (in history) and two law degrees; has lectured at programs of a number of law schools; has served as president of his law school alumni association; reads some law review articles and other academic publications, as well as the popular press; has published some such pieces; and so forth. That’s enough empirically to conclude that academe disproportionately is liberal.

Guess what? A study by prominent George Mason University Professor S. Robert Lichter, Ph.D. (in government, Harvard University), in collaboration with two other academics (Retired Smith College Political Science Professor Stanley Rothman and University of Toronto Political Science Professor Neil Nevette), published by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, of which Dr. Lichter is President, offers a scholarly study which confirms empirical observation: Academe disproportionately is liberal.

The study is based upon a survey of 1,643 full-time faculty at some 180 full four-year colleges. To a point even scholarly surveys must be evaluated with a touch of skepticism but they are far more apt than popular polls to reflect accuracy. When the statistics are overwhelming it matters less because the overall message, not arithmetic precision, is reflective of the facts.

Consider, then, a few such statistics.

As to social issues: Women have a right to an abortion – 67% are said strongly to agree, another 23% somewhat agree. Extra-marital cohabitation is acceptable – 50% strongly agree; another 25% somewhat. The practicing homosexual lifestyle is as acceptable as the heterosexual: 44% strongly; another 23% somewhat. As to political issues: Environmental protection predominates over cost increase and job diminution – 48% strongly agree, another 40% somewhat. Government should reduce the income gap: 38% strongly agree, 34% somewhat. Government should guarantee employment – 25% strongly agree, another 41% somewhat.

By self-description 72% of such faculty is liberal, 15% conservative; 50% is Democratic, 11% Republican.

Do we wonder that a Duke University philosophy professor publicly opined that liberals generally are brighter than conservatives? Or that Harvard President Lawrence Summers, considered liberal-to-somewhat-liberal when in Washington as a Clinton Secretary of the Treasury, transmogrified into a faculty-censured conservative after uttering a (supposedly private) comment about the relative ability of women as compared to men in mathematics and the sciences?

Do we wonder that 51% never, or seldom, attend church or synagogue?

Are we surprised that the percentages summarized above run generally higher in the so-called “elite” schools than in others?

Are we surprised that the quest for “diversity,” powerful in academe and widely touted (or forced) in employment and elsewhere, refers only to differences in racial, sexual, sociological and environmental background, but never ever to differences in political complexion?

Messrs. Lichter, Rothman and Nevitte are due ample congratulations for their research, notwithstanding, alas, it merely further substantiates that which is obvious to those who choose to observe. Truly knowledge of the academic disparity accords new meaning to the adage that “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”

Part of the solution, of course, individually difficult though often it may be, is for more scholars of moderate and conservative bent to pursue academic careers. Academe greatly influences a civilized society, as indeed it should – but with some balance.

Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq., is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.

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**A Textbook Case of Junk Science (Weekly Standard, 050509)

What our children is learning?

SEVERAL CENTURIES AGO, some “very light-skinned” people were shipwrecked on a tropical island. After “many years under the tropical sun,” this light-skinned population became “dark-skinned,” says Biology: The Study of Life, a high-school textbook published in 1998 by Prentice Hall, an imprint of Pearson Education.

“Downright bizarre,” says Nina Jablonski, who holds the Irvine chair of anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences. Jablonski, an expert in the evolution of skin color, says it takes at least 15,000 years for skin color to evolve from black to white or vice versa. That sure is “many years.” The suggestion that skin color can change in a few generations has no basis in science.

Pearson Education spokesperson Wendy Spiegel admits the error in describing the evolution of skin color, but says the teacher’s manual explains the phenomenon correctly. Just why teachers are given accurate information while students are misled remains unclear.

But then there’s lots that’s puzzling about the science textbooks used in American classrooms. A sloppy way with facts, a preference for the politically correct over the scientifically sound, and sheer faddism characterize their content. It’s as if their authors had decided above all not to expose students to the intellectual rigor that is the lifeblood of science.

Thus, a chapter on climate in a fifth-grade science textbook in the Discovery Works series, published by Houghton Mifflin (2000), opens with a Native American explanation for the changing seasons: “Crow moon is the name given to spring because that is when the crows return. April is the month of Sprouting Grass Moon.” Students meander through three pages of Algonquin lore before they learn that climate is affected by the rotation and tilt of Earth—not by the return of the crows.

Houghton Mifflin spokesman Collin Earnst says such tales are included in order to “connect science to culture.” He might more precisely have said to connect science to certain preferred, non-Western, or primitive cultures. Were a connection drawn to, say, a Bible story, the outcry would be heard around the world.

Affirmative action for women and minorities is similarly pervasive in science textbooks, to absurd effect. Al Roker, the affable black NBC weatherman, is hailed as a great scientist in one book in the Discovery Works series. It is common to find Marie Curie given a picture and half a page of text, but her husband, Pierre, who shared a Nobel Prize with her, relegated to the role of supportive spouse. In the same series, Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, is shown next to black scientist Lewis Latimer, who improved the light bulb by adding a carbon filament. Edison’s picture is smaller.

Jews have been awarded 22% of all Nobel Prizes in science, but readers of Houghton Mifflin’s fifth-grade textbooks won’t get wind of that. Navajo physicist Fred Begay, however, merits half a page for his study of Navajo medicine. Albert Einstein isn’t mentioned. Biologist Clifton Poodry has made no noteworthy scientific discoveries, but he was born on the Tonawanda Seneca Indian reservation, so his picture is shown in Glenco/McGraw-Hill’s Life Science (2002), a middle-school biology textbook. The head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, and Nobel Laureates James Watson, Maurice H.F. Wilkins, and Francis Crick aren’t named.

Addison-Wesley, another imprint of Pearson Education, is so keen on political correctness that it lists a multicultural review board of nonscientists in its Science Insights: Exploring Matter and Energy, published in 1994 but still in use. Houghton Mifflin says it overemphasizes minorities and women to “encourage” students from these groups. A spokesman for Pearson Education blames the states for demanding multiculturalism.

If it’s the states that impose multiculturalism, however, they’re only doing the bidding of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1995, the academy published the National Science Education Standards, which, according to academy president Bruce Alberts, “represent the best thinking . . . about what is best for our nation’s students.” The standards (which explicitly place religion on a par with “myth and superstition”) counsel school boards to modify “assessments” for students with “limited English proficiency” by, for example, raising their scores. They tell teachers to be “sensitive” to students who are “economically deprived, female, have disabilities, or [come] from populations underrepresented in the sciences.” Teachers should especially encourage “women and girls, students of color and students with disabilities.”

This “best thinking” of the nation’s scientific elite is being used by nearly all the 50 states as they centralize their science standards. With 22 states now requiring statewide adoption of textbooks, big-state textbook markets are the prizes for which publishers compete.

A study commissioned by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in 2001 found 500 pages of scientific error in 12 middle-school textbooks used by 85% of the students in the country. One misstates Newton’s first law of motion. Another says humans can’t hear elephants. Another confuses “gravity” with “gravitational acceleration.” Another shows the equator running through the United States. Individual scientists draft segments of these books, but reviewing the final product is sometimes left to multicultural committees who have no expertise in science.

“Thousands of teachers are saddled with error-filled physical science textbooks,” wrote John Hubisz, a physics professor at North Carolina State University at Raleigh and the author of the report. “Political correctness is often more important than scientific accuracy. Middle-school text publishers now employ more people to censor books than they do to check facts.”

The aim of President Bill Clinton’s Goals 2000 project, enacted nine years ago, was to make American students first in science literacy. It didn’t happen. A study by the National Assessment governing board in 2000 found that only 12% of graduating seniors were proficient in science. International surveys continue to show that American high school seniors rank 19th among seniors surveyed in 21 countries.

Members of the scientific elite are occasionally heard blaming religion for the sorry state of science education. But it isn’t priests, rabbis, or mullahs who write the textbooks that misrepresent evolution, condescend to disadvantaged groups, misstate key concepts of physics, show the equator running through the United States, and come close to excising white males from the history of science. Young Americans need to learn science, and they need to distinguish it clearly from Algonquin myth.

Pamela R. Winnick is an attorney and journalist based in Pittsburgh. Her book A Jealous God: Science’s Crusade Against Religion is due out later this year.

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**Campuses Now Major Front in Culture War (American Family Association, 050309)

For decades, network television, public schools, and abortion clinics were some of the main fronts in the nation’s culture wars. Now, however, college and university campuses are becoming a major battleground, as Christian and conservative students are fighting what they call an entrenched and ferocious liberal and humanistic monopoly that tries to silence all dissent.

USA Today highlighted a recent study by researcher Daniel Klein of Santa Clara University in California. He found that, nationwide, Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-1 among university faculty members in the social science and humanities departments. In departments like anthropology, the disparity grew to 30-1.

Do such overloaded faculties make any difference in the classroom? In an attempt to document what students thought, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) commissioned a survey which questioned students on 50 top U.S. college and university campuses.

According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the ACTA report found that 49% of all students said their professors use classroom time to advance their personal political views and “frequently comment on politics in class even though it has nothing to do with the course.”

Even worse, said the WSJ article, 29% of students responding in the ACTA survey said they felt they had to agree with the professor’s political or social views “in order to get a good grade.”

Anne Neal, ACTA president, told WSJ: “If these were reports of sexual harassment in the classroom, they would get people’s attention.”

Conservatives are fighting back. Students for Academic Freedom provides information for students and student groups who feel besieged by the liberal atmosphere on campus. And the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) defends students who have had their constitutional rights violated by colleges and universities. World magazine noted that FIRE has been involved in more than 600 such cases since 1999.

Another option for Christians: foregoing the secular campus altogether. In the WSJ, author Charlotte Allen said, “America’s 700-plus religiously affiliated colleges and universities are enjoying an unprecedented surge of growth and a revival of interest.”

In a review of the new book God on the Quad, written by Naomi Schaefer Riley, Allen said statistics reveal that the number of students attending the 100 schools that make up the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities has risen 60% between 1990 and 2002.

These religious colleges and universities have pumped some 1.3 million graduates into the culture — making them what Riley calls a “missionary generation.”

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**Survey: Teenagers Greatly Influenced by Parents’ Faith (Christian Post, 050228)

A new survey funded by the Lilly Endowment found that most American teenagers are religious, pray while alone, feel close to God, and follow their parent’s faiths, but at the same time have difficulty expressing the faith’s teachings.

“Teenage religiosity for the vast majority is highly conventional,” said Christian Smith, who co-wrote Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. “That may mean that compared to previous generations, teenagers today are more conventional and bound to mainstream values and cultures compared to, say, the ‘60s. They seem pretty content just going with how they were raised.”

The book, to be released in March by Oxford University Press, is the compilation of the first major finding by the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR).

The NYSR project involved a telephone survey of 3,300 randomly selected English and Spanish speaking American teenagers over a period of three years. Smith, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina and Chapel Hill, with the help of a team of researchers, also conducted 267 in-depth interviews with the youth.

Of those surveyed, 82% said they are affiliated with a religious congregation and 71% said they felt “extremely,” “very” or “somewhat” close to God. Sixty five percent also said they pray alone a few times a week or more, and sixty one percent said they “definitely” believe in divine miracles from God.

In a larger picture, the survey found that most teenagers are greatly influenced by that of their parents’: less than one third of one percent reported that they were part of “alternative” religions such as Wicca. Three fourth of the religious teens said their beliefs were somewhat or very similar to that of their parents, and only 6 and 11% of teens said their beliefs are very different from their mothers’ and father’s beliefs, respectively.

Smith, an Episcopalian with three children said to AP that the results gave him greater assurance that he plays a key role in the religious lives of his teenagers.

“After doing this research I feel more authorized as a parent to teach my kids,” he said. “A lot of parents tell me, ‘My kid doesn’t listen to me anyway.’ It really just lets them off the hook.”

At that light, Smith said the survey “speaks more broadly about the direction of American religion. God is something like a combination of Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist.”

Teens, like their American Baby Boomer parent generation, have a strong sense of religious identification, but are unsure of what the identification means in relation to their faith.

“What I find most interesting about the trend is the wide gap between religious knowledge on the part of most teens and their strong sense of religious identification and affiliation, as indicated by this survey,” said Mary Kupiec Cayton, a history professor at Miami University and a specialist in American spirituality.

“I agree that this trend isn’t unique to teens: it increasingly characterizes how many American adults feel about religion as well,” Cayton said. “Contemporary Americans are often looking to religion to meet their personal needs for community and emotional comfort. ‘Belief’ seems to depend a great deal on the degree to which these needs get met.”

The survey also found that religious teenagers are more emotionally healthy, academically successful, involved in community and trusting than those who are not religious.

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**The Self-Esteem Myth (Christian Post, 050208)

A mixture of often contradictory ideas frames the popular imagination and, to a great extent, the contours of the American mind. One of the most cherished of these ideas is of fairly recent vintage, though its philosophical roots go far back into the American experience. This idea can be called simply the “self-esteem myth”—the idea that an individual’s self-esteem is central to success, happiness, performance, and behavior.

The idea that self-esteem is an essential part of a healthy personality is now virtually institutionalized in American culture. A quick visit to the local bookstore will reveal a myriad of titles loosely arranged under the category “self help.” The entire educational structure, especially at the elementary level, takes self-esteem as a basic imperative for the educational process.

The state of California even set up a task force in the late 1980s, charged to raise self-esteem in young people. State Assemblyman John Vasconcellos took the lead, convincing then-Governor George Deukmejian to establish the task force as a state project.

Now, a team of researchers has taken a closer look at the idea that self-esteem is a crucial factor in personal happiness, achievement, and behavior. Their research conclusively destroys the self-esteem myth and demonstrates that the nation’s obsession with self-esteem was never based on science in the first place.

The researchers, Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer D. Campbell, Joachim I. Krueger and Kathleen D. Vohs, published their findings in the January 2005 issue of Scientific American. As the magazine explains, “Boosting people’s sense of self-worth has become a national preoccupation. Yet surprisingly, research shows that such efforts are of little value in fostering academic progress or preventing undesirable behavior.”

This article deserves wide attention, and should serve as a reminder that the reign of pop psychology has produced social effects that continue to influence the minds and lives of countless Americans. Many of the most cherished assumptions of secular psychology run into direct conflict with the Christian worldview. The self-esteem myth is a prime example of how unbiblical thinking can lead to countless problems. At the same time, these researchers are out to prove that the self-esteem myth was never based on any credible scientific evidence at all.

The team aims their sights at the self-esteem movement and, in particular, at the National Association for Self-Esteem [NASE], a group which aims to “promote awareness of and provide vision, leadership and advocacy for improving the human condition through the enhancement of self-esteem.” But, as these researchers counter, “regrettably, those who have been pursuing self-esteem-boosting programs, including the leaders of NASE, have not shown a desire to examine the new work, which is why the four of us recently came together under the aegis of the American Psychological Society to review the scientific literature.”

What did they find? Well, for one thing, these scientists discovered that many of the advocates of self-esteem have no idea what self-esteem is, and have no means of measuring it. It turns out that most of the theorists and investigators who have been dealing with the issue have simply asked persons what they think of themselves. As these researchers argue, “Naturally enough, the answers are often colored by the common tendency to want to make oneself look good.” As these scientists see it, “psychologists lack any better method to judge self-esteem, which is worrisome because similar self-ratings of other attributes often prove to be way off.”

Interestingly, this quartet of scientists reviewed the literature that argues for a correlation between physical attractiveness and self-esteem. As it happens, those who register self-esteem also report themselves to be physically attractive. The complicating factor in all this is that others do not see these individuals in the same way—at least in terms of their physical attractiveness. As these authors explain, “What seemed at first to be a strong link between physical good looks and high self-esteem turned out to be nothing more than a pattern of consistency in how favorably people rate themselves.”

If all this seems like a parody of a self-esteem seminar, hold on. The researchers argue that both high self-esteem and low self-esteem are rooted in a person’s larger worldview and self-concept. Those with low self-esteem, in the authors’ term, those prone to “floccinaucinihilipilification,” are not merely negative about themselves, they are negative about everything.

There’s more. While self-esteem advocates have argued that high self-esteem leads to a lowering of social prejudices, these researchers found exactly the opposite: “people with high self-esteem appear to be more prejudiced.”

This team also accused self-esteem proponents of confusing correlation and causation. “If high self-esteem brings about certain positive outcomes, it may well be worth the effort and expense of trying to instill this feeling. But if the correlations mean simply that a positive self-image is a result of success or good behavior—which is, after all, at least as plausible—there is little to be gained by raising self-esteem alone.”

When it comes to academic performance, the evangelists for self-esteem have argued that raising students’ feelings about themselves would lead to greater academic achievement. The team admits the early work did show a positive correlation between self-esteem and academic performance. Nevertheless, the research did not sustain the claims. Researchers Sheila M. Pottebaum, Timothy Z. Keith and Stewart W. Ehly, all then associated with the University of Iowa, tested over 20,000 high school students in both the 10th and the 12th grades. “They found that self-esteem in 10th grade is only weakly predictive of academic achievement in 12th grade. Academic achievement in 10th grade correlates with self-esteem in 12th grade only trivially better. Such results, which are now available for multiple studies, certainly do not indicate that raising self-esteem offers students much benefit. Some findings even suggest that artificially boosting self-esteem may lower subsequent performance.”

In other words, telling children they are doing well when they are actually doing poorly is a destructive lie that misleads the student and, if anything, leads to even further frustration.

Another claim routinely made by self-esteem advocates is that adolescents are likely to show more sexual restraint and behavioral control if they demonstrate high self-esteem. “All in all,” these researchers report, “the results do not support the idea that low self-esteem predisposes young people to more or earlier sexual activity. If anything, those with high self-esteem are less inhibited, more willing to disregard risks and more prone to engage in sex. At the same time, bad sexual experiences and unwanted pregnancies appear to lower self-esteem.” Is this surprising? When it comes to alcohol consumption, another common adolescent form of risk-taking, the data appear to conflict. Nevertheless, at least some studies have shown that high self-esteem is linked to frequent alcohol consumption. All this suggests that adolescents with high self-esteem may translate much of that confidence into risk-taking behavior.

An individual’s high self-esteem does seem linked to a personal sense of happiness. “After coming to the conclusion that high self-esteem does not lessen the tendency toward violence, that it does not deter adolescents from turning to alcohol, tobacco, drugs and sex, and that it fails to improve academic or job performance,” the researchers “got a boost when we looked into how self-esteem relates to happiness.” They found that people with high self-esteem seem to be happier than others, and are thus less likely to be depressed.

Nevertheless, this team raises again the question of correlation versus causation. Does self-esteem produce happiness, or does happiness tend to boost self-esteem?

What about all those self-esteem programs? This research team concluded, “We have found little to indicate that indiscriminately promoting self-esteem in today’s children or adults, just for being themselves, offers society any compensatory benefits beyond the seductive pleasure it brings to those engaged in the exercise.”

This is an amazing article, but it is not likely to receive the attention it deserves. Those pushing the self-esteem agenda hold sway throughout the educational establishment, the psychological community, and the culture at large. An entire industry of self-esteem enhancing seminars, conferences, books, and therapeutic programs means big business and big money. Furthermore, the idea that self-esteem—simply feeling good about ourselves without reference to reality, achievement, virtue, or behavior—is a prerequisite to contentment is itself both seductive and dangerous.

The Christian worldview completely reverses this cycle. The Christian finds satisfaction, not in a sense of self-worth, but in knowing the one true and living God. Human beings are indeed made in God’s image, and every single human life is thus worthy of respect and dignity. Nevertheless, the gospel makes clear that the Christian’s identity is found in Christ—not in the self.

As a matter of fact, this is one of the most transformative and liberating realities of the Christian faith. It’s not about us—even as we are the recipients of God’s grace and mercy.

Scientific American has done us all a great service by exploding the self-esteem myth, and indicating just how superficial and baseless the claims of self-esteem advocates are now shown to be. Expect an energetic retort from the self-esteem industry. They won’t go down without a fight.

_____________________________________

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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**The Moral Freefall of Today’s American Universities (CBN, 050125)

CBN.com – (CBN News) - Many of America’s leading universities were started by Christians as places to teach the Bible, train students for the ministry, and nurture the values needed to strengthen America. But today, things are very different. On many college campuses, professors are teaching a radical left-wing anti-American point of view.

There is no question that leftist views have infiltrated our colleges and universities. But what most people may not know, is just how far left the pendulum has swung.

Ben Shapiro is a recent graduate from UCLA. He is also the youngest syndicated columnist in the United States. What he says has crept into American universities is astonishing.

Sharpiro said, “You go on campus, you pick up the campus newspaper and see editorials comparing Ariel Sharon to Adolf Eichmann. And then you walk outside class and you see the Muslim Student Association handing out pamphlets actively fundraising for Hamas and Hezbollah, and you figure, boy, I better do something about this.”

When he tried to do something, he was fired from the UCLA Daily Bruin, the campus’ newspaper.

Shapiro commented, “It had something to do with insensitivity, they actually later would claim that I was a racist for attempting to expose the fact that student dollars were going to the promotion of terrorism.”

So how did our colleges and universities become havens for anti-American thought and rhetoric?

Some say the Leftist agenda that is running rampant today got its roots in the 1960s. The radicals of the Sixties Revolution are the same men and women at the head of our educational institutions and are in charge of shaping the minds of our young people today.

And it is not just anti-Americanism that has escalated. Just look at this list of courses taught at some of America’s top universities:

At Columbia, Sorcery and Magic

At Dartmouth, Queer Theory, Queer Texts

At Cornell, Gay Fiction

At Swarthmore, Lesbian Novels Since World War II

At the University of Wisconsin, Goddesses and Feminine Powers

And, at the University of Pennsylvania, Feminist Critique of Christianity,

to name just a few.

In his new book, “Freefall of the American University: How Our Colleges are Corrupting the Minds and Morals of the Next Generation”, Jim Nelson Black says it will take a massive uprising of concerned citizens, students, parents and allies to turn the situation around.

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**The left monopoly (townhall.com, 050107)

Thomas Sowell

Recently Albert Hunt’s last column for the Wall Street Journal mentioned how he was recruited by the late and great Robert L. Bartley, who made that newspaper’s editorial page unsurpassed in quality. What made the hiring of Albert Hunt especially significant was that Bartley was a staunch conservative in the Reagan tradition, while Hunt is a standard issue liberal.

It was precisely for that reason that Bartley wanted Hunt to write for the Wall Street Journal, so that readers would be sure to get more than one side of the issues discussed.

Many years ago, when I was teaching economics at UCLA, we likewise had a staunchly conservative department. We were sometimes called the west coast branch of the University of Chicago, because so many of us had studied under Milton Friedman and other leaders of “the Chicago school” of economists.

Like Bob Bartley, we wanted our students to see more than one way of looking at economics. One young, liberal-minded economist was regarded by some as a possible permanent member of the department, to add variety.

He never really measured up to our expectations, but he was probably kept on longer than he would have been if he had been a conservative economist, because of hopes that he would turn out to be better than he did.

Even though the word “diversity” has become a mantra on the left, there is no such drive for intellectual diversity in bastions of the left, such as academia or the mainstream media.

In recent years, the liberal media have at least added some token conservatives, but our colleges and universities are content with whole departments consisting solely of people ranging from the left to the far left. In academia, “diversity” in practice too often means simply white leftists, black leftists, female leftists and Hispanic leftists.

Perhaps it was the remarkable popularity of conservative talk radio and the meteoric rise of the Fox News channel that led liberal TV networks to begin adding some conservatives to their lineups. No such competitive pressures operate in academia.

There are a few good small conservative colleges like Hillsdale or Grove City, but Ivy League schools have no conservative rivals of comparable size and prominence, and neither do most state universities.

A student can spend four years at many colleges and universities and graduate with no real awareness of any other viewpoints than those on the left.

College and university faculties do not simply happen to be leftist. Too often ideological questions are asked at faculty job interviews and ideological litmus tests are applied in hiring.

One reason for the prominence of conservative think tanks is that so many top scholars who are not leftists do not find a home in academia and go to work for think tanks instead.

Not even visiting speakers with a conservative viewpoint are tolerated on many campuses. It seems incredible that there would be fears that a one-hour lecture would undo years of indoctrination. But perhaps it is just sheer intolerance that creates hostility to anyone expressing ideas contrary to the prevailing notions of the left.

Students often report that their professors react against them for stating a viewpoint different from the prevailing orthodoxy of the left. They can be ridiculed in class discussions or given low grades on exams.

Dartmouth College has been carrying on a running battle with the conservative student newspaper, the Dartmouth Review, from the moment it was founded many years ago. On some campuses, conservative student newspapers are destroyed by leftist students or even burned publicly, with little or no effort by the college administration to maintain freedom of speech.

A student at Lewis College in Colorado was actually kicked by a professor for wearing a sweatshirt proclaiming his Republican views. This happened at a birthday party, of all places, and the professor has been quoted as saying that her only regret was that her kick was not “harder and higher.”

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which monitors campus intolerance, is trying to get some action taken against that professor. Good luck.

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**Campus Bias: It’s even bigger than media bias (National Review Online, 041108)

Although conservatives complain loudly and often about liberal bias in the mass media, the truth is that one is far more likely to read a conservative perspective in the New York Times than hear it from a college professor. At least the Times publishes an occasional conservative on its op-ed page. At many universities, just finding a Republican anywhere on the faculty is problematic.

Two recent studies by Santa Clara University economist Daniel B. Klein prove my point. In one study, Klein looked at party registration of the faculty at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. He found 7.7 registered Democrats for each Republican at the former and 9.9 Democrats per Republican at the latter.

In certain departments, Republicans are literally nonexistent. There are no Republicans in either the anthropology or sociology departments at Stanford or UC-Berkeley. At Berkeley, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is 11 to 1 in the economics department and 14 to 1 in the political science department. Stanford is a model of intellectual diversity by contrast, with a Democrat/Republican ratio of 7 to 3 in economics and 9 to 1 in political science.

In a larger study, Klein looked at voting patterns from a survey of academics throughout the country. He found that in anthropology, there are more than 30 votes cast for Democratic candidates for each 1 cast for a Republican. In sociology, the ratio is 28 to 1. Republicans do best among economists, who only vote Democratic by a 3 to 1 margin. In political science, the ratio is 6.7 to 1. On average, across all departments, Democrats get 15 votes for every 1 going to Republicans.

Not surprisingly, the ideological orientation of the U.S. college faculty skews heavily toward the left. According to a survey in the Chronicle of Higher Education, 47.9% of all professors at public universities consider themselves to be liberal, with another 6.2% classifying themselves as far left. Only 31.8% say they are middle of the road and just 13.8% are conservative.

Obviously, this puts the vast majority of professors far to the left of the population as a whole. But, interestingly, they are even well to the left of their students. A survey of last year’s incoming freshmen found that only 24.2% call themselves liberals and 2.8% classified themselves as far left. More than half said they were middle of the road and 21.1% were conservative.

Liberals pooh-pooh these data, sometimes implying that they result because conservatives aren’t bright enough or sufficiently intellectual to make it as university professors. The truth is that it is very, very hard to get a tenured faculty position at a university. And the hiring process is unlike anything in a private business. In most cases, one needs a unanimous vote of the professors in one’s department to get tenure. This puts a high priority on intangibles like collegiality, which often translates into sharing the same politics and ideology.

Bias works in other ways as well. It is extraordinarily difficult to get an article in a top academic journal or get a book published by a university press unless it slavishly parrots the liberal line. That is because such things must be peer-reviewed by experts in the field before they can be published. This makes it very easy for anonymous reviewers to blackball those with a conservative point of view, effectively killing the careers of those who must publish or perish.

Finally, it is essential these days to be taken under the wing of an established professor in your field and be mentored if you have any hope of getting a teaching position at a good school. With so few conservatives on the faculty — and many of those hiding their politics to avoid retribution — the deck is very heavily stacked against any conservative hoping for an academic career, no matter how qualified he or she may be.

Students pay a heavy price for this state of affairs. In certain fields like political science, it is simply impossible to receive a good education unless exposed to conservative thought. Students are also not likely to receive an adequate appreciation or understanding of the conservative perspective if it is only taught by those hostile to it. According to a new survey by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, almost half of students reported hearing only one side of political issues in their classrooms, with professors often using their positions to promote personal political views.

Unfortunately, fixing this problem will take a long time. It is certainly not amenable to a legislative fix, such as a quota for conservatives. It would help, however, to shame universities into treating intellectual diversity the same way they now treat race and gender. But first they have to admit they have a problem. That hasn’t happened yet.

— Bruce Bartlett is senior fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis.

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**The Anti-Excusers (National Review Online, 031027)

No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, by Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom (Simon & Schuster, 352 pp., $26)

JAY NORDLINGER

Odd that Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom should be considered big conservatives today. Mrs. Thernstrom spent the first part of her career as an earnest liberal, a civil-rightsy liberal. Mr. Thernstrom is a history professor at Harvard, and a winner of the Bancroft prize (the number-one award in the writing of American history). I don’t mean to shock you, but they usually don’t give the Bancroft prize to conservatives. And, indeed, the book for which Mr. Thernstrom won—The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis (1973)—is not exactly a conservative tract.

When I was a student under Mr. Thernstrom in the 1980s, I did not detect a rumbling conservatism. I recall that he said to me one day, “I see that you’re interested in conservatism, Jay — have you tried talking to Ed Banfield?” (meaning, the great political scientist who wrote The Unheavenly City). But Professor Thernstrom was a fair and broad-minded historian and teacher, and he did assign one book by Thomas Sowell. He knew that his students should be familiar with that extraordinary man’s work.

It is, to me, the most touching thing about the Thernstroms’ current book—No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning—that it is dedicated to Sowell: “for his pioneering scholarship and unflagging courage.” It is a perfect dedication, in its wording and in its matching of book to dedicatee.

So, did the Thernstroms move right, or did American politics — particularly the Left — just go sort of crazy on them? Probably some of each. Reagan loved to tell audiences, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party — the Democratic party left me.” That was a little too pat, but there was some truth to it. Both Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom took hard looks at the country as it stood in the ‘80s and ‘90s and found themselves roughly in the conservative camp.

And I make my usual point that it takes amazingly little to qualify as “conservative” these days. This couple has clung to their old values, in particular their love of E pluribus unum and their hatred of racial inequality. Their passion in this direction is probably more intense than ever. But their analyses and arguments are deeply offensive to the Left as it has developed, and they have therefore been made pariahs by their old crowd.

No Excuses is a follow-on to their monumental America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (1997). In it, they explore the awful but critical question of why “non-Asian minorities”—that is to say, blacks and Hispanics, though particularly blacks — lag so far behind others in learning. It is their conviction that “the racial gap in academic achievement is an educational crisis,” and also “the main source of ongoing racial inequality”—which is “America’s great unfinished business.” They say that “for too long,” this gap has been treated as “a dirty secret — something to whisper about behind closed doors. As if it were racist to say we have a problem.”

How bad is it? Extremely bad. By the time senior year in high school rolls around, black kids “are typically four years behind white and Asian students, while Hispanics are doing only a tad better.” In other words, “these students are finishing high school with a junior high education.”

Oh, they’re receiving a high-school diploma, all right, and they’re enrolling in college — in very large numbers. But because they are ill prepared, a comedown awaits: the misery of failure, resentment, and stunted life opportunities. And the Thernstroms make clear that time alone will not heal this national condition: The racial gap in education has worsened severely over the last decade and a half. Politicians, voters, educators, and parents — and students themselves — will have to make a decision to do better.

The Thernstroms maintain that nothing works like standards, testing, and accountability (which happen to compose a mantra for President George W. Bush). The couple takes on the enemies of testing, who include the education writer for the New York Times who sniffed, “There is no standardized test for tolerance” (“tolerance” being a holy grail in the modern education biz, along with “diversity”). Yes, but there are standardized tests for reading and math, without which life can be intolerable.

Not wishing to paint a picture of total bleakness, the authors devote a section to “Great Teaching”—to schools that should be models for others. All of them involve more instruction, more parental cooperation (or at least non-obstruction), less nonsense. Also, these schools are more orderly — saner even in a physical way. They present an atmosphere conducive to learning. Trash is picked up, graffiti are effaced, and students dress decently. The famous “broken windows” theory applies in education, as elsewhere. Kids are made to look others in the eye, to say “please” and “thank you,” and to be on time. They are required to behave in ways that used to be unremarkable.

Moreover, schools that work—”break-the-mold” schools — teach a real curriculum. They don’t indulge misspelling, they don’t go in for “rain-forest math” (!), they don’t read the Founders — and Lincoln — out of American history. They actually expect students to acquire genuine knowledge, which is viewed by many educators as radical and fanciful.

The Thernstroms devote a chapter to Asians, those great American achievers, “minorities” though they are. They have no secret—”ancient Chinese” or not: They — the parents — simply require their children to work and study hard, with no excuses, and, miraculously, they do. Asians — who constitute 4% of American students — constitute about a quarter of the freshman classes at MIT and Stanford, and who knows how much higher that percentage would be if not for hidden, though widely and reasonably assumed, quotas?

We absorb an interesting point about Hispanics: that whatever gains they might make are overwhelmed by the constant flood of Latin American immigration. Hispanics as a group — if you will forgive the group-think — are constantly having to start afresh, so to speak. And unlike Asians, they are often trapped in linguistic ghettos, where they can get by (if only barely) without knowing English.

But it is the story of black Americans that is the most heartbreaking and maddening. Many people, when they look at the numbers — the numbers that reveal this yawning racial gap — want to “run for more comfortable ground”: to economic explanations, to geographic explanations, to class-size claptrap, and so on. None of it works; none of it is right. Black students are lagging far behind whether they’re rich or poor, whether they live in the suburbs or in a city, whether their parents are educated or not. What would help is an end to excuse-making and a renaissance in expectations.

The authors explode the superstition — and the wish — that more money for education is an answer. Billions have been lavished on schools, with no results. Class size is another shibboleth: First, small class sizes do not increase learning, and, second, class sizes have become quite small anyway. More integration? The Thernstroms decline to believe that “a black child must sit next to an Asian classmate in order to learn arithmetic.” What counts in a school “is not the racial mix, but the academic culture.” Interestingly, some activists claim that a) black kids must have black teachers, because others can’t be “role models” for them, and b) they must have white classmates. All of it is phony.

The Thernstroms hold out some hope for the Bush-driven act known as “No Child Left Behind”—at least it will demand accountability for the expenditure of federal money. But there are mammoth “Roadblocks to Change” (the title of their final chapter). It will surprise no reader of National Review that the biggest roadblock of all is the teacher unions. No matter how dim your view of these unions is, it will get dimmer after reading this book. Also, the picture — the picture of why we have had persistent failure — will get clearer.

Starkly put, “the job of unions is to protect the interests of teachers,” and “the job of schools is to protect the interests of students.” It is hard — discouragingly hard — to please unions while serving students. And these unions are scared to death of even the tiny number of charter schools in the midst of all the regular public schools. It is rather like a non-tyrannical Iraq in the Middle East — just one counter-example, and everyone else says, “Uh-oh.”

The Thernstroms have written an important, bracing, and deeply conscientious book. It is a combination of cool scholarship and passionate caring. One word we read over and over again is “appalling”: This statistic is “appalling,” and that rationalization is “appalling.” With unrelenting data, they prove what your intuition and common sense tell you; they confirm that what you know in your bones is true.

Their old friends may despise them, but the rest of us — the nation at large — should be grateful. If this pair has “moved right,” it is perhaps because they recognize that the old barriers to progress have been removed, and that there are now “no excuses.” Lester Maddox doesn’t live here anymore; time to get rollin’. They administer reality checks to liberals — and to everyone else — purveying the facts, weighing the options, and pointing out the way. They write, “A decent society does not turn a blind eye” to gross educational inequality. That conviction shouldn’t qualify as “conservative,” but given the furious resistance to reform from the other side — you wonder.

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**Back to School: The look of the campus (National Review Online, 030903)

By Peter Wood

The official notice just arrived: Summer is over. I am referring, of course, to the annual “Almanac Issue” of The Chronicle of Higher Education, thick with charts and graphs, that arrives like an un-seasonal arctic breeze in the sultry last days of August.

Care to know the average SAT scores by sex and by racial and ethnic group of last year’s freshmen? The proportion of 18- to 24-yead-olds in college? The attitudes of full-time faculty members? How about the largest private gifts to higher education? Total return on college endowments?

I admit I turn the pages eagerly. Here is American higher education reduced to its industrial organization and consumerist profiles. Here is the dust in industry (43.8% of college presidents have “education” degrees; 89% of 4-year public colleges offer “distance-education” programs) and the sum in consumerism (43.7% of dependent college students get federal aid; 36.9% of college women chose their college partly on the basis offers of financial assistance, but only 30.7% of college men.) I don’t mean to imply the ideals that make higher education higher are completely absent from this portrait. Here they are on page 17: only 4% of last year’s freshmen said they attended college because “there was nothing better to do.” A whopping 42.1 said “to make me a more cultured person,” which isn’t after all too far away from the 70.5% who said “to make more money.”

I wonder if the Chronicle publishes this compilation as a humility lesson for the overweening professoriate? A faculty member looking in this mirror gets little encouragement for his work as a scholar. Some 83.9% chose to pursue an academic career because of the “intellectual challenge,” but 41.6% have published nothing in the last two years and only 13.3% had published more than four “professional writings” in that time. If publish or perish were really the rule, the academic cemeteries would be crammed.

And if the faculty member’s amour propre is propped more on his teaching than his research, he encounters other disquieting notes. How is it, for example, that 59% of American adults think that “some time in the next 10 years, students who want a college education will take most of their courses over the Internet?”

The Chronicle’s tables are not all turned against academic complacency. Indeed in some areas, he Almanac issue is highly reassuring. The faculty member whose politics trend Left can take solace in knowing that 47.6% of his peers describe themselves as “far left” or “liberal,” and only 17.7 as “conservative” and .3 as “far right.” The prospects get even rosier in public universities, where 54.1% who are far or not-as-far left, and 13.8% conservative.

These labels translate fairly seamlessly into social attitudes. More than half of faculty members in American colleges and universities (55.3%), for example, agree that “racial and ethnic diversity should be more strongly reflected in the curriculum.” Think about that. In most colleges and universities, the curriculum is already a charm bracelet of ethnic-studies courses and special pleading on behalf of minority subcultures, but the majority of the faculty nationwide are saying “not enough.”

Faculty members hitched to the “diversity” agenda can take comfort in group solidarity. Some 67.9% want their college to “hire more faculty members of color” and 51.6% want their colleges to hire more women faculty members. Only 28% say that “promoting diversity leads to the admission of too many under-prepared students.” I guess that means that 72% don’t mind the gross disparities in academic failure and dropout rates between regular students and those admitted because of racial and ethnic “plus factors.” Of the 40 or so topics covered in the survey, only one registered over 90-percent agreement: 90.7 of faculty members agreed that “a racially/ethnically diverse student body enhances the educational experience of all students.”

That’s a breathtaking level of agreement on what amounts to an ideological claim. The real diversity that results from attracting students regardless of their parentage may enrich the experience of some students, but “all” students? Even the academic hacks hired to conjure evidence of diversity’s pedagogical merits at the University of Michigan stopped short of such implausibility. In fact, except for some slipshod surveys put together by diversity advocates, there is no empirical evidence that “diversity” on campus creates any educational benefit, but we do have good evidence that it fosters animosity, self-segregation, and group resentment. Turn a few pages and you discover that 90.7% of faculty members who think diversity is such a good thing compares with the 5% of the general public who believe, “Colleges and universities should admit students from racial minority groups even if they have lower high school GPAs and standardized-test scores than other students.” The truth is we can’t have it both ways, at least at this moment in the nation’s history, and the professoriate has collectively staked a position radically outside what is acceptable to mainstream society.

In reading the Chronicle’s Almanac, I wonder about the 9% who dissent from this great orthodoxy. Are we kindred souls? How many of them, like me, would like to see real racial integration in American society? How many believe that higher education should hew to intellectual standards that are heedless of race and ethnicity but are generous about talent and open-minded about ambition? How many of those 17.7% who say they are “conservative” are putting up a good fight, and how many actually think we can win?

Conservatives outside the academy are often all to ready to cede higher education to the Left, as though it were hopeless and irrelevant. But it is neither. In fall 2000, 15,312,289 students were enrolled in college, and the numbers will keep growing to a projected 17.6 million in 2012. As beginning freshmen, 20% of these students consider themselves “conservative” and 50.8% as “middle of the road.” As it stands, those students are about to be subjected to four years (and often longer) of immersion in a world that is bizarrely out of step with the traditional values of American life. They will find themselves among fellow students, some 40.3% profess to be “bored in class,” and 46.7% of whom “participated in organized demonstrations.” They will be taught by faculty among whom 44.2% believe, “Western civilization and culture should” not “be the foundation of the undergraduate curriculum.” And they will navigate their own way through a system that hypocritically enunciates the importance of free inquiry and intellectual striving while fostering conformity to Leftist political goals.

Americans tend to tolerate campus nonsense out of a spirit of pragmatism. The kids will get their credential and get on with their careers, regardless of what the feminists/Chomsky-ite/anti-globalists do and say. Common sense will indeed prevail with most students but that doesn’t mean they have entirely escaped indoctrination. I see no other likely explanation for the ascendancy of the anti-democratic ideal of “diversity” among educated men and women in this country. It is an ideal that simply did not exist before it was taken up by colleges and universities in the 1980s, and that has since then grown so in the affections of college graduates that it overshadows — at least rhetorically — their love of both equality and freedom.

Confronted with a novel proposition such as gay marriage, educated Americans fall back on the principles not of the Constitution but of the college campus: tolerance is the first virtue; civil rights is the only sensible framework within which to weigh competing claims for the public good; and history is a record of dominant elites oppressing minorities.

But I’m wandering from the neat columns of numbers into the stories they evoke, as numerous as autumn leaves. Here is the donor’s page. What moved Eli and Edyth Broad to give $100 million for biomedical research this year? How did Arizona State University get William Polk Carey to carry $50 million into its coffers? I see Cornell topped Harvard in 2001-2 for alumni support, with $158.9 million to Harvard’s $139.1 million.

Well, either you find the boastful cupidity of colleges interesting or you don’t. For years I pored over the Chronicle’s Almanac Issue with the tender eye of a sportsman fishing with dynamite. But I have mellowed. I now have a more gentlemanly interest in the sport. Though a little dynamite isn’t bad.

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**Academic Postmodernity & the SATs Dark days in the academy (National Review, 010220)

By Stanley Kurtz, a fellow at the Hudson Institute

The deeper cultural costs of affirmative action are rarely recognized or debated. Liberals frame the issue as a choice between bloodless legal principle and the actual social harm of racial and sexual inequality. Thoughtful conservatives point to the toll affirmative action takes on its supposed beneficiaries, who must always doubt their dessert. But do we really understand how profoundly affirmative action has already undermined America’s respect for excellence, or our faith in the framework of democracy? The fateful decision by the president of the University of California to press for the elimination of the SAT as a requirement for admissions compels us to face the frightening truth about affirmative action.

When “right thinking” liberals first introduced affirmative action to our universities, they knew very well that it violated fundamental principles of individual rights and academic excellence. No one at the time imagined that these cherished principles — or the institutions that depend upon them — could truly be threatened. It was simply thought that, for the sake of racial progress, a small and temporary exception to the ordinary rules and standards could be made. Oh what a tangled web they did weave when first they practiced to deceive…themselves. For at every turn, this small, supposedly temporary and exceptional program forced deeper and deeper changes in the fabric of university life.

No one wants to think of themselves as a temporary exception to proper academic standards. So the beneficiaries of liberal condescension quickly became the carriers of a new ideology. The rise of academic postmodernism, with its assumption that classic democratic principles are just a cover for white, male, heterosexist, first-world power, is directly attributable to affirmative action. The only way to preserve self-respect as an exception to standards of academic excellence and democratic principle was to mount an attack on those very principles and standards. So affirmative action didn’t simply admit a few disadvantaged people to the academy. It effectively devastated nearly every discipline in the humanities and social sciences by replacing the old pursuit of knowledge with the new vogue for political-cultural “subversion.” And through innovations like our ever more vague and sweeping sexual harassment laws, and the increasingly common belief (especially among judges) that the courts are entitled to turn aside established constitutional principle for the sake of social engineering, these undemocratic ideas have seeped out of the academy and begun to transform society as a whole.

Only last week, Harvard’s distinguished and courageous professor, Harvey C. Mansfield, reached a watershed in his long and lonely battle against grade inflation. For years, Harvey C. Mansfield was called Harvey C- Mansfield, as he alone refused to change his grading standards while grades at the rest of the university inexorably rose. But grade inflation is so pervasive now that Mansfield, so as not to punish his students, has been forced to give out two grades — an inflated grade, for the transcript, and a true grade. Years ago, Mansfield brought down a torrent of criticism upon himself, simply by telling the truth — that the move toward grade inflation had come with affirmative action. The right thinking liberals who wanted to make just a small exception to their own cherished principles couldn’t bear — any more than those they had “helped” could bear — to face the consequences of their own actions. They could not hand out bad grades to students admitted under affirmative action, and so they had to stop handing out bad grades to anybody. The front-page New York Times story on the move to ban SAT quoted ex-Harvard president and passionate supporter of affirmative action, Derek Bok, to the effect that Harvard would resist a change in its use of SAT. But don’t kid yourself, Harvard’s standards have already been dramatically lowered by affirmative action — through both admissions and grade inflation — for years.

Although the words “affirmative action” never appeared in the Times story on the SAT, the push to abandon the test has everything to do with that sadly misguided program. The move to dump the SAT is clearly an attempt to circumvent the decision by the voters of California to ban the use of affirmative action in college admissions, as was all too evident from the coded reference to “diversity” in the Times’s story. Could we ask for more dramatic proof that affirmative action destroys standards — that a seemingly harmless exception to ordinary academic requirements ultimately undermines the very foundations of our belief in excellence itself? Unhappy with the results of the test, the test itself is now summarily dropped.

These are dark days in the academy. The sixties radicals who entered our colleges and universities with the avowed goal of “subverting” them are now at the apogee of their influence. Whether the Bush administration or the country as a whole has the courage or capacity to reign them in is an open question. We simply don’t know the extent to which the sixties generation is the leading edge of a permanent cultural change, or the high water mark of a destructive but passing trend. But this much is certain, the misguided attempt to bring about equality, without going through the hard work of actually improving early educational performance, can only destroy the legacy of liberty and excellence upon which our country depends.

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**Shocking levels of moral illiteracy (001019)

From The National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) Weekly, Thursday, October 19, 2000 — Volume 2, Number 76

In releasing preliminary data from the 2000 “Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth,” a comprehensive national survey on the ethics of young people, Michael Josephson, founder and president of the Josephson Institute of Ethics and the CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition, called on politicians to recognize the vital importance of dealing with “shocking levels of moral illiteracy” as part of any educational reform package. Saying the survey data reveals “a hole in the moral ozone,” Josephson added: “Being sure children can read is certainly essential, but it is no less important that we deal with the alarming rate of cheating, lying and violence that threatens the very fabric of our society.”

The statement and data were released in conjunction with the seventh annual National CHARACTER COUNTS Week, October 15-21. Ron Kinnamon, Chairman of the CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition, pointed out, “There is a solution: more pervasive and proficient character education at home, at schools and on the sports fields. Character education is here to stay,” he added, “and it’s getting stronger and stronger.” The CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition was launched in 1993 with 27 organizations. Today, more than 450 national, regional and local organizations are members and millions of school children in over 2,000 schools and hundreds of youth groups are learning about the Six Pillars of Character - trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship.

The third week in October was designated by Congress as National CHARACTER COUNTS! Week to focus the nation’s attention on the importance of teaching, enforcing, advocating and modeling good character. The states of Arizona and Texas have recently launched statewide character-education initiatives using the CHARACTER COUNTS! model to train teachers to implement character programs in their schools.

Among the highlights of the preliminary results of the nationwide survey of 8,600 high school students:

. Cheating. 71% of all high school students admit they cheated on an exam at least once in the past 12 months (45% said they did so two or more times).

. Lying. 92% lied to their parents in the past 12 months (79% said they did so two or more times); 78% lied to a teacher (58% two or more times); more than one in four (27%) said they would lie to get a job.

. Stealing. 40% of males and 30% of females say they stole something from a store in the past 12 months.

. Drunk at School. Nearly one in six (16%) say they have been drunk in school during the past year (9% said they were drunk two or more times).

. Propensity Toward Violence. 68% say they hit someone because they were angry in the past year (46% did so at least twice), and nearly half (47%) said they could get a gun if they wanted to (for males: 60% say they could get a gun).

The full 2000 “Report Card” will be released later in a series of three reports: honesty and integrity, violence and responsibility, and values and attitudes. The margin of error is +/- 3%.

In addition to producing the biennial “Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth,” the nonpartisan, nonsectarian, nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics operates programs in three principal areas:

The CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition is the nation’s largest comprehensive character education program for young people, reaching millions of young people through thousands of schools and youth groups across the country.

CHARACTER COUNTS! Sports, founded in 1999, seeks through the “Pursuing Victory With Honor” campaign to return sportsmanship to all levels of nonprofessional sports. It has already earned the support of a majority of the “big time” college athletic programs.

Through “Ethics in the Workplace” training programs and Mr. Josephson’s appearances and consultations, the Institute each year reaches thousands of leaders in business, government, journalism and law. Clients have included the CIA, FBI, IRS, a dozen state legislatures, many Fortune 500 companies, leading news media organizations, as well as judicial, legal and public safety organizations.

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Supplemental Articles in a separate file (click here to read)