Brown Alumni Magazine — Jan/Feb 2008

ALL IS NOT WELL — More Brown Backwardness



I am making this submission in order to save the souls of the children of a fellow Brown alum recently profiled in the BAM. David Klinghoffer ‘87 missed the point when he declared, “An atmosphere of provocation and challenge does not necessarily lead to one political or religious end” (How Brown Turned Me Into a Right-Wing Religious Conservative, Jan/Feb BAM).

As co-founder of the FOUNDATION FOR INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY (www.idiversity.org), a Brown alumni organization that seeks to restore our alma mater’s academic integrity, I found Mr. Klinghoffer’s notion profound and certainly accurate. But it does not apply to Brown University. It is from this argumentative platform that I warn Mr. Klinghoffer of his proclivity to “[send] my own kids to such a college.”

Brown University is not a place worthy of any credit for fostering intellectual provocation, but rather a campus that has been compromised for the sake of personal creed, and at the expense of academic principles. We are, after all, speaking of the University that denies an ROTC presence on its campus, sponsors homosexual sex-binges within its most prestigious buildings, and whose faculty is marked by a political composition of 94% Democrat.

For those who have not been paying attention, Brown has morphed over the years into a campus that harbors intellectual laziness, and appeals to humanity’s lowest common denominators, sinfully wasting the tuition and intellect of thousands of innocently by-standing students. Like the Christendom of Europe, Brown is a skeleton of academia—a beautiful and convenient façade, but not much more.

So it was an odd conclusion to reach. That is, for Klinghoffer, a self-avowed religious conservative, to seemingly comply with the accusation that Brown has become an anathema to the Western academic tradition—yet, somehow, decided that this is a good thing. Klinghoffer would even be willing to give Brown a crack at debasing his children. “I’d still send my kids to college there,” screamed the subtitle to Klinghoffer’s BAM piece, thereby celebrating and enabling the philosophical sealing-off of a renowned institution of higher learning.

I would have expected a religious conservative to not only object to the lessons of relativity reverberating throughout Brown’s campus, but also to understand the tragedy of such conditions. It is a blessing that Brown’s rabid liberalism kick-started Klinghoffer’s traditionalism. But exceptions do not disprove rules. And just because a man may discover grace through a prison term, it does not mean he should wish incarceration upon his offspring.

“Educators may wish to plant certain ideas in their students, but what happens, in fact, is unpredictable. Ideas can grow in the most fantastically unexpected directions,” Klinghoffer informed us, revealing just how astute Brown has become in masking from its displaced alumni just how dismal things have become on College Hill. Polling the political attitudes of the Brown student body is always a good method of showcasing just how “predictable” the Ivy mind has become.

Brown does not employ a campus that is merely secular and liberal, as Mr. Klinghoffer believes, but exercises a wretchedly backward culture of conformity that is not just as likely to produce quality graduates, as it is likely to produce a perverted form of American citizenry—graduates who believe they know it all, rather than ones who come to the humble realization that they know NOTHING at all; graduates who find it their civic duty to be empty vessels of multiculturalism and bipartisanship, rather than champions of confrontation; graduates who become sexually radicalized, rather than sexually responsible; graduates who sneer at America, rather than marvel at its miracles.

By revealing his willingness to subject his children to the rotting bowels of the academy Mr. Klinghoffer likely made most Brown alumni feel warm, fuzzy, and proud (most BAM articles do). But his lauding article effectively helped to dispel the warnings about Brown’s intellectual lopsidedness—warnings that already struggle to gain footing in the minds of, what could be, a powerful alumni base.

While it probably seems counter-intuitive, Klinghoffer’s article could only be discouraging to those conservative alumni who aim to rectify a damaged institution. The portrayal of an institutional flaw as an academic asset was reminiscent of what President Bush once called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It felt like a cheap table scrap thrown at those who know better—thrown with the intent to convince the alumni community that "all is well" at their alma mater.

We are left to wonder what motivation compels a leftist-controlled university to correct itself if its alumni engage in willful blindness, refuse to hold the University to higher standards, and promise their children’s future enrollment. And now we must suspect that even those graduates who object the most to the University’s intellectually violent state of political correctness will also remain loyal to Brown—star-struck by Ivy League prestige and overwhelmed by the nostalgia afforded to them at the reunions — "I disagree with almost everything that goes on here. But how great would it be to see my daughter march through the Van Wickle Gates!"

It is difficult not to suspect that such fatuous self-celebration by Brown alumni only contributes to our alma mater’s moral and academic decay. Is the FOUNDATION FOR INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY out-gunned within the alumni community as well?


TRAVIS ROWLEY CAN BE REACHED AT trowley@idiversity.org


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BOOK SYNOPSIS
Out of Ivy: How a Liberal Ivy Created a Committed Conservative

Make sure to read Travis' interview concerning the release of his new book, Out of Ivy, with David Horowitz's Front Page Magazine —

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=22128


Inside the Ivy

When Travis Rowley entered the Ivy League he was “politically disinterested.” To the dismay of campus liberals, Brown University changed that. While naively simmering within one of the nation’s most activist universities, Rowley’s personal character ultimately compelled him to engage Brown’s most radical progressives, and he suddenly found himself immersed in campus controversies that were forcing him to develop his own political mind. Now he offers up Out of Ivy, a damaging tell-all of his alma mater, and an unapologetic condemnation of leftist ideology.

Out of Ivy is Rowley’s personal story, and it demands special attention. He was the captain of Brown’s football team, a Catholic raised on traditional values, and a politically oblivious youngster, who somehow became a controversial columnist for the university newspaper. Through his narrative readers are offered an up-close look at a fierce cultural clash of two worldviews—a chance to better understand the sharp contrast between liberalism and conservatism.

Out of Ivy is not for the sensitive reader. The author is stunningly forthright with his opinions, and pulls no punches from those whom he feels deserve the harshest reprimand. With uncompromising certainty and a mocking tone, he tells of his negative reactions to almost everything sermonized by Brown’s campus left. From university speech codes to the open curriculum; from the Brown Democrats to the Queer Alliance; and from abortion to multiculturalism Rowley lays his mind bare, deriding everything he found distasteful with Ivy League liberals—right down to their “incessant, pandering concern for people’s feelings.”

Of course, Ivy League doctrine considered Rowley primitive and bigoted—a racist, a sexist, and a homophobe. Indeed, he was labeled as such by his classmates. But he “had come from a family that taught [him] to be kind and charitable…from a beautiful religion that taught [him] to never judge, and to always forgive.” So he set out to identify his own principles, or otherwise succumb to the pressures of intellectual conformity. In the end we discover that this controversial campus character wasn’t adopting traditional ideals in protest to the liberalism that pervaded Brown’s campus. Rather, he was attempting to quickly define the conservatism that was already inside of him, the values he had arrived with.


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February 2008

Eradicating Term Limits for Campus Conservatives

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/eradicating_term_limits_for_ca/


"The BROWN SPECTATOR is a journal of conservative and libertarian thought and opinion committed to the dissemination and discussion of the ideas and values of Western Culture…Above all, we seek to foster a culture of rational, intelligent debate at Brown, too often the victim of censorship and political correctness.”


One frustrating aspect of the fight against the political indoctrination campaigns conducted by most American universities is the often-quick demise of the numerous promising uprisings pioneered by right-wing students. Especially in recent years, conservative students have initiated countless insurrections against rabidly liberal campuses, only to see their efforts dwindle in the face of overwhelming scenarios of theoretical imbalance.

The failure to embed traditional theory into the academic fabric is heavily due to the four-year term-limits imposed upon scattered conservative activists. The college experience has a rapid current, and by the time right-leaning students realize the bias of the waters in which they have been submerged, they are already wearing caps and gowns. Dissenting students rarely develop beyond the status of one-time polemical instigators. They are then processed into the real world, leaving behind the same environment they had once encountered—a radicalized campus void of any Republican resources.

But a relatively small band of Brown University students have managed to achieve organizational longevity amidst a neighborhood of ideological adversaries. Upon arrival, Brown freshmen have always been able to join the Brown Democrats, the Queer Alliance, the Brown Feminists, the International Socialist Organization, the Young Communist League, or any number of radical, minority student-groups. But for the past several years, they have been afforded the opportunity to join the ranks of the Brown Spectator.

The Spectator was originally founded by several students in the late 1980s in response to a repressive intellectual climate on Brown’s campus. Like so many other attempts at rectifying such conditions, the Spectator only published a few issues before perishing upon the graduation of the students who fueled its publication.

More than a decade passed before the Spectator was revived, this time in response to specific campus controversies regarding Brown’s philosophical boundaries. In the Spring of 2001 conservative author David Horowitz penned an advertisement criticizing the idea of slavery reparations, prompting Brown’s minority activists—abetted by other radical students and professors—to steal an entire press-run of the campus newspaper that brazenly ran the ad. Brown’s anti-intellectualism made national headlines, shaming the University by exposing its dumbed-down campus, and verifying the worst of what was suspected of the modern academy.

But out of Brown’s embarrassment was the rebirth of the Spectator, this time institutionalizing itself into campus life by drafting a constitution and an editorial hierarchy. The magazine was revived in 2003, but in subsequent years went through a growth spurt, exploding from an original squadron of four editors to a staff of thirty. The Spectator is now a monthly publication, managing its own blog-website and mailing issues to subscribers nationwide.

Having developed into premier reading material for Brown students, Spectator staffers are invited to participate in campus debates, bringing clarity of conservative perspectives to Ivy League students and establishing themselves as not just a magazine, but also as an actively pulsating community. The Spectator constitutes an astounding political presence within a university that intellectual maverick Camille Paglia once called—“The most viciously intolerant campus that I ever visited as a lecturer.”

Paglia may be interested to know that for several years the Spectator has been contributing to an ongoing cultural transformation upon College Hill. In 2005 conservative author Dinesh D’Souza came to Brown to promote his new book, What’s So Great About America. Realizing full-well that defending the United States has a tendency to invoke liberal wrath, D’Souza expected his visit to be accompanied by protest. But when his lecture wrapped up without incident, D’Souza remarked, “The kind of hard left that I usually encounter at Brown has declined, was absent, or in a post-election funk.”

D’Souza’s observation was accurate. Brown’s campus left is hardly the tyrannical entity it once was. It was humiliated by the Horowitz incident, deflated even further by some of Brown’s own institutional reform, and perhaps crushed for good by the ever-presence of the Spectator.

However, a fluid student body combined with a liberal faculty framework keeps Brown’s campus continuously primed to return to a state of leftist militancy. His awareness of this cycle is why former president of the College Republicans Christopher McAuliffe once advised hopeful campus reformers to “proceed with cautious optimism.” Trust, but verify.

After all, the Spectator still remains an ideological minority amongst a politically passionate community, and therefore still experiences—let us say—a lack of appreciation. The Spectator is often referred to as “toilet paper” on Brown’s on-line discussion forums, and a Brown Daily Herald columnist disdainfully called it the University’s “premier humor magazine” marked by a “hilarious mix of bad writing, bad arguments and other crimes against journalism.”

Spectator staffers have also acquiesced to the reality that entire stacks of issues risk a short shelf-life upon their distribution. “It occurs almost every issue. But the December 2006 issue was especially grievous, with about 200 copies destroyed,” says current editor-in-chief Andrew Kurtzman.

Yet, these independent-minded students remain obstinate, never hesitating to criticize—or even mock—Brown’s most potent leftist activists. The most recent example of their bravado was senior Josh Unseth’s derisive commentary on Brown’s sexual radicals and their latest shenanigans, which included a program called “FemSex” that distributed pornographic pictures of female genitalia throughout the campus. Invoking the University’s own sexual harassment policy that forbids “sexually suggestive…pictures…that may embarrass or offend individuals,” Unseth concluded, “It seemed pretty clear to me, FemSex sexually harassed me.”

Junior Kristina Kelleher can be just as cutting: “Gun control legislation doesn’t stop murders; it enables them by making [criminals] secure in their knowledge that their victims have no means to protect themselves…Has anyone ever heard of a multiple shooting at an NRA meeting or a gun club?” Ann Coulter would be impressed.

Sophomore Anish Mitra titled his latest piece “Jimmy Carter Needs to Shut Up,” while Linda Zang argued, “If [the US] chooses not to do what it takes to win the War in Iraq today, the geo-political realities of the global war on terror will force us back to the deserts of the Middle East in the not-so-distant future.”

The Spectator’s most scorching opinions come from sophomore Sean Quigley, who often aims his attacks at the highest echelons of the University. “I sincerely hope that every alumnus or alumna of this University realizes that, in almost every way possible, the administrators of this University are enemies of decent society, and subsequently refuses to donate money so that they cannot fund the further degradation of that which this nation and her people hold most dear.” And last year, when Brown president Ruth Simmons denigrated the moral character of George Washington for his absence from the abolitionist movement at the time of the nation’s founding, Quigley lambasted Simmons for her “revisionist history,” and her failure to recognize that the “Father of Liberty…came to detest slavery…[but] understood the need for a type of prudent change that was commensurate with practicality.” Quigley finished his rebuke by advising Simmons to “shelve her moral hubris.”

The Spectator community has obtained the renegade identity, a reputation that the left most often claims, rather than earns. Campus liberals still think it takes guts to stand up for minorities and pierce their ears.

But Spectator staffers are your classical liberals, upholding liberty and defying the establishment—all while defending supply-side economics, neo-con foreign policy, and Christianity. They do more than anyone to sustain the academic tradition, and to avoid Brown University’s inevitable return to intellectual stagnation.


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Agents of Despotism

Providence Journal — 8/22/07

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_trav22_08-22-07_R86LVEN.19424b1.html


A person’s political leanings have no correlation with their level of intelligence. Nor are people’s kindness and compassion deciding variables for personal policy preferences.

This is news to liberals, who for years have self-appointed themselves as the fluffy-hearted custodians of tolerance, gifted with the pinnacle of intellect.

Recently a left-bent letter-to-the-editor railing against Fox News and conservative talk radio responded to the concern over Democrat-heavy college faculties in this manner: “Ninety percent of our most highly educated professionals vote Democratic? Then who, pray, is voting Republican?” The translation of this passage is simply this: Republican support is provided by the ignorant and stupid.

It never occurs to liberals that their stranglehold over college faculties is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the left’s academic takeover, did liberals consider themselves intellectually inferior?

It also never strikes liberals that an overwhelming majority of the “highly educated” don’t become college professors. Rather, they enter the natural work force, start businesses, make money, pay taxes, raise families, and many—gasp—join the Republican Party! What’s that theory that says that people who can’t—teach?

Liberals’ assertion that the American left has a monopoly on lofty intelligence is not a new sentiment. Nor is it rare for liberals, in order to confirm their intellectual superiority, to refer to the fact that the overwhelming majority of college professors ardently vote Democrat. Duke professor of physics Lawrence Evans once defended the existence of philosophically lopsided faculties by declaring, “True, and rightly so…Universities want people of some depth, subtlety, and intelligence. People like that usually vote for the Democrats. So what?” Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff expressed equally repulsive condescension when he affirmed that liberals, “unlike conservatives, believe in working for the public good and social justice.”

Such haughty pomposity is exactly why liberals are often appropriately and derisively referred to as our “elites.”

And here we find the true reason why conservatives are almost entirely absent from college faculties—they’re not welcome!

For those who haven’t been paying attention, the academy has, in many ways, evolved from a place of great learning into a place of heavy-handed indoctrination—enclaves of liberal incubation so hostile to traditional theory that thousands of graduates each year enter society utterly out of touch with reality. “I really had no idea that entire states were against gay marriage…I thought it was just small radical groups,” a recent Brown University student mused after the 2004 passages of constitutional amendments that banned same-sex unions. Most typically, this student was mistaking her liberalism for unquestionable moral uprightness, convinced that anyone with an objection to same-sex marriage was unfathomably dumb and mean-spirited.

Granted, one’s education will have an effect on how one ultimately views political issues. In theory, the more educated an individual is, the more informed he will be to exact correct verdicts.

But it all depends on what we mean by “educated.” Certainly, it has always been my plan to “educate” my future children that their daddy, in his prime, was the best shortstop the world ever saw. And that I discovered the moon. Yet, I realize that most people will likely consider my children’s “education” to be more accurately described as “indoctrination” or “propaganda” or “flat-out lies.”

Thus is the scholarly condition of even our most renowned institutions of higher learning.

Professors are not only the wardens of the academy, they are also its offspring. The fact that ninety percent of them vote Democrat is hardly evidence of the left’s cerebral supremacy. Rather, it’s a disturbing statistic that should raise doubt concerning the academic integrity of our colleges and universities.

Yet, the flattering intellectual reputation of college faculties only manages to proliferate the left’s prejudicial stereotyping of conservatives. It helps to establish an advantageous framework from which liberals can more easily win the hearts and minds of the ethically Christian populace. Their incessant message is one that contends that, even before conservatives are wrong, they’re mean and dumb. So why bother listening to them?

Resulting from this myth of conservative bigotry is a substitution for classical debate between honest and well-intentioned citizens—an exercise that Americans have always had faith will result in truth and justice. Now, liberals have implemented a scenario where, before the debate may ensue, conservatives must first demonstrate that they can read, and then provide a plausible alibi that suggests they were not at a Ku Klux Klan meeting the night before.

Liberals win by default.

The deterioration of crucial, open-ended deliberation is a symptom of a dying democracy. Once members of a political faction believe they have a monopoly on rationale and righteousness, dissent is no longer a necessary nuisance of living in an open society. It is now an insufferable threat to their orthodoxy. We find no better example of this in the situation where, despite the fact that conservative theory has major influence on the American populace, the nation’s universities stubbornly refuse to offer it campus housing.

But the epidemic of intellectual snobbery doesn’t only persist within the academy. We can discover liberal elitism wherever we discover liberals. Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Dick Polman recently submitted a column to the Providence Journal that encouraged Democrats to alter their rhetorical style to one that emulates Republican messaging techniques (Democrats must go for gut against GOP, 7.30.07). In order to win more national elections, Polman advised Democrats to replicate Republicans’ “emotional” and “hyperbolic” language. According to Polman, Republican success at the polls is a result of the fact that they are skilled con-artists, who effectively concoct simple political slogans that resonate with the simple-minded voters. “But that is not what Democrats do…They are cerebral by nature,” says Polman. “[Democrats] should stop thinking they can win simply by appealing to the intellect.”

Liberals haven’t the ability to self-reflect. They actually believe they lose national elections because The People are too stupid to understand the progressive message.

Elitists are the delegates of tyranny. Those who rationalize their minority position as a result of everyone else’s antiquated bigotry and intellectual deficiencies naturally hold hostility toward the voting masses, and therefore become the enemies of democratic process. The left’s self-aggrandizement is not merely annoying. It’s dangerous.



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Undressing Brown University

Providence Journal — 11/23/2005

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20051123_23row.db0e13a.html



Sayles Hall “shall be exclusively and forever devoted to lectures and recitations, and to meetings on academic occasions.” — William F. Sayles, June 14, 1878


Last week Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor delivered to the nation disturbing footage of Brown University’s annual SEX, POWER, GOD party. Images of half-naked students, and reports of public sex within the party did little to maintain the prestigious image of Sayles Hall, where the festivity took place.

However, as a record number of students in one night required the use of Emergency Medical Services, it gave the suddenly-humiliated administration the opportunity to frame this incident in the un-alarming and simple context of college students just having a little too much drunken fun on a Saturday night. But there is much more to this story hidden behind the Ivy curtain.

The Brown administration has declared that they are “reviewing” their alcohol policies by “analyzing” last weekend’s mischief. And Ruth Simmons, the University president, would love for the discussion to end right there. As administrators tell us that they are “consider[ing] policy changes,” they are hoping that we accept the impression that everything is now under control. Go on with your daily routines. The administration will take it from here.

Thus is the campus design of liberal dominion at Brown University—absolute student autonomy, and an administration that is technically detached from student affairs.

SEX, POWER, GOD is hosted each year by Brown’s LGBTA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual Alliance), otherwise known as the Queer Alliance. You will notice that the LGBTA, one of the Campus Left’s most potent activist organizations, has only received a tepid slap on the wrist for their ineffectiveness in keeping alcohol out of their party. In turn, Sex, Power, God has been wrongfully equated with the average fraternity shindig, while the scapegoat has become the University’s alcohol policies. This has allowed Brown and the LGBTA to escape the harsh critique that they both deserve.

Let me tell you a little bit about the sponsor of SEX, POWER, GOD.

The LGBTA is a thunderous and well-organized association of radical students. If they weren’t so repugnant, I’d say that they were a very impressive activist group. Any College Hill veteran will tell you of this organization’s in-your-face practices. But not too many will reveal to you the LGBTA’s top priority—to convert every Brown student into a sexual heathen, numbing their eyes to the sight of anything hyper-sexual. Any words the Queer Alliance speaks, any lectures they sponsor, and any project they take part in—including a party—is a covert step toward that goal.

A frat party? Not even close.

First off, fraternity events are held in—you guessed it—fraternity houses. Not the historical Sayles Hall where portraits of U.S. presidents adorn the walls, and prominent national figures are invited to address the Ivy League school. And last I checked, wearing clothes is the norm. So is privatizing any sex that may result from the party’s debauchery.

But the most significant difference between LGBTA-sponsored parties and other “Animal Houses” is simply the parties’ objectives. Most student organizations coordinate events in order to have a good time. However, like all events organized by the Queer Alliance, SEX, POWER, GOD seeks to advance the gay agenda by desensitizing Ivy League students to sexual deviance. The Ivy League then sends those graduates off to sit on the Supreme Court, in the Oval Office, and the halls of Congress. Any person who equates an LGBTA event with the most common fraternity bash is utterly out of touch with the radicalism of Ivy League student-groups.

Over the years, the LGBTA has discovered the effectiveness of liberal activism; that is, not to bring ideas to the table for discussion and debate, but rather to effortlessly label their political opposition as bigoted, and spend most of their time turning Brown’s campus into one big Hustler Magazine, promoting acts that defy traditional notions of moral depravity, and mock Judeo-Christian ethic.

The LGBTA makes the public claim that they exist for the purpose of providing a safe space for “people of all identities.” Its members organize and rally for “marriage equality,” and they combat “homophobia” and other “forms of discrimination.” Fine. But here’s something you may not know about the Queer Alliance; each year they sponsor lectures by famous pornographers and “sex educators.” They conduct oral-sex and anal-sex “workshops.” They host “porn parties” and “drag shows.” So how could anyone flinch when they tastelessly name their parties SEX, POWER, GOD and STAR-F*CK, and advertise those upcoming events with pornographic posters that decorate the University halls and courtyards? These advertisements always cross the decency line, and are often beyond justifiable. One poster ad my junior year portrayed four naked men performing some sort of anal-sex conga line in a shower room. And now the administration wonders how SEX, POWER, GOD got so out of control?

Bill O’Reilly got one thing right—this was the “party Brown University doesn’t want YOU to know about!”

Ruth Simmons’ hesitation to publicly denounce SEX, POWER, GOD, and ban any further LGBTA events from University buildings is nothing but disgraceful. But that’s the way it has been for decades at Brown University. Radical student groups have been given control over the campus, and they savagely silence any dissenters. For a student to speak out against the indecency of the LGBTA would take John Wayne-type bravery. And if any news organization ever catches wind of campus injustice, the administration has an easy out. Hey, we didn’t know what was going on. But we’ll be sure to take care of this right away.

In 1878, William F. Sayles, in memory of his late son, gave $50,000 to Brown University for a building “which shall be exclusively and forever devoted to lectures and recitations, and to meetings on academic occasions.” They call themselves “progressives” up there on College Hill. Just look how far they’ve come.


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Fun and Faceoffs — Tweaking the Campus Left at Brown

Providence Journal — 8/27/2005

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20050827_27trav.2212d467.html


Brown University’s contempt for its athletes was often proudly pronounced. In a special freshman-orientation edition of The Brown Daily Herald, designed to familiarize first-years with campus specifics, the paper declared, "Our football stadium is two miles off campus, and we like to keep it that way." Within this Ivy League fortress of tolerance, for some reason the only unacceptable lifestyle was spending afternoons kicking a ball around.

We who played football were considered the campus idiots. No doubt we were the Ivy League's "Flyover Country": noticeably right-wing, and therefore lazily regarded by liberals as stupid —a group unworthy of intellectual engagement. But my non-football classmates never struck me as more intelligent than my teammates. In my eyes, the campus left had miscalculated when they decided that our conservatism was a result of inferior intellect, rather than an athletic lifestyle that taught us to despise leftist ideals.

There is no doubt of the connection between athletes' conservatism and the vilification of them. We were a proud and blatant campus minority, wearing Gap and Abercrombie, playing sports, occupying the off-campus bars, and dominating fraternity life. Oh, how they hated us.

Ironically, Brown's athletes were the most likely to be found implementing the leftist creed of alleged acceptance and diversity. Walk onto Brown's campus and ask where the Ratty is. (The Ratty, believe it or not, is what students call the cafeteria, or refectory.) When you enter the Ratty, you will notice the dining tables ethnically divided: black students sitting with other black students; whites with other whites; Asians with Asians. This wasn't a strict rule, but it was reliably commonplace. There was one group, however, that you could always catch exercising diversity dining. The athletes.
Answering one of my black teammates who had asked me where I'd found the fresh apple pie on my tray, I jokingly said, "Oh it's over by the silverware — you know, right next to the black section," referring to the side of the cafeteria occupied by African-American students. He and I laughed, not because it was a stunning observation, but because of my insensitive candor about a previously unspoken truth.

In other words, it was the university's speech codes that made something so obvious so funny.

Not that this type of honesty was rare from Brown athletes. As I said, conservatives were much more comfortable with themselves, unashamed of who they were. We were much less concerned than other students with saying the "correct" thing.

During the spring of my junior year, it came time for the fraternities to elect their officers for the fall semester. Brown's Greek life was dominated by the athletes, and Theta Delta Chi (Thete, for short) was predominantly occupied by members of the football team. It was the "football house."
Well, members of Thete had elected one of their black fraternity brothers as next year's president, and their annual custom was to induct that person by putting him through some sort of hazing.

While being elected president of anything is always an honor, this tradition almost dissuaded Thete members from wishing it upon themselves. The practical joke that was played on the elected was typically unpleasant. And that spring my teammates decided to kidnap their new executive, tie him to a chair in the middle of the quad, and paint him white.

Pause for a second and think about that.

If more people (or perhaps certain people) had seen this episode, you can be sure there would have been expulsions, a heated controversy, or some sort of campus upheaval. Certainly, someone would have had some explaining to do.

Fortunately, this politically incorrect event slipped under the campus radar, for the most part. I heard about it only because my friends had organized and conducted the "paint incident."
Still, one black female student, walking by, did witness the horror. Later she made her repulsion known to my teammates as she informed them just how appalled she was at their insensitivity. Upon learning how upset she had been, a few of my teammates approached her later to apologize.

Insensitive? On Brown's campus, the "paint incident" was much more than insensitive. It was a mortal sin. It was exactly the type of thing that could have caused a riot, earning my classmates appearances on national news programs as they protested the atrocity. For that reason, when I was told what they had done to their new president, I was shocked: My teammates had not heeded the warnings of the Ivy social order; they had risked all for the sake of tradition, laughs and brotherhood.

Events such as this are how Brown's athletes distinguished themselves from the liberal pack. While most College Hill conservatives kept quiet, the Brown athletes were more candid and visible — a highly self-confident group, more difficult for liberals to gag.

And we were colorblind. If there were any racists on campus, it certainly wasn't us. So confident were my teammates that they were not bigoted that they defied Brown's campus correctness in the middle of the quad for all to see. They stared every speech code, every meeting on diversity, and all of Brown's sensitivity training right in the eye and said, "This is our friend, our president, our teammate. And we're painting him white."

I don't know if anyone other than another Brown conservative can appreciate how hilarious I found this story to be. Although I was at first knocked off my stool — stunned! dazed! — it was only because I couldn't believe the spectacle they had dared to create. But I understood all of it; I knew these guys, and where they were coming from. To them, it was funny and innocent. They had elected their friend as next year's president, and they would do what they had always done. They would play a practical joke that was relevant to their own personal relationship. If campus lefties had a problem with it, they could all go to hell.
The defiance of campus correctness: This is why athletes were despised so much. Because we were honest.

As for liberals, truth meant nothing to them. Diversity meant nothing to them. An assault on all that is traditional was the left's agenda. They worked for a new order, a new religion. But they were the most disingenuous people on campus, actually maligning those who dared to exercise their mantra of diversity.



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Rising Deviance Sinks All Souls – The Right's Hypocrisy Isn't the Left's Virtue

Providence Journal — 5/13/2005

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20050513_13trav.1c1ca81.html


If a Sunday preacher challenges his congregation to uphold a higher morality and speaks of the wickedness of pedophilia, murder, and thievery, but then is discovered to have committed such acts himself, who among us would then defend those acts and let them become our societal norm? Nobody would, but such reasoning saturated Joel Connelly's column in the May 9 Commentary section, "The mayor of David Lynch's Spokane."

Connelly, a veteran leftist hailing from Seattle and writing for The Seattle Post-Intellgencer, took issue with the stunning observation that, yes, values-pushing conservatives also do wrong. Gasp! So shocked was Connelly that he has become "deeply suspicious of proper places and public piety."

No column could have better exposed liberals' craving for right-wing hypocrisy, their utter incomprehension of traditional thought, and their shameless assaults on the character of their political foes. When your adversaries are winning the minds of a moral majority, one option you have is to destroy their integrity. If you can't discredit the thought, discredit the source. This is entirely consistent with the left's political heritage, and Connelly wasted no time staying true to leftist form. His column ripped through the personal lives of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.), former Rep. Robert Bauman (R.-Md.), Rep. Dan Burton (R.-Ind.), Rep. Henry Hyde (R.-Ill.), a Catholic bishop, and numerous citizens in the pious town of Spokane.

Of course, these people were critics of former President Clinton and of gay-rights legislation. Connelly was hoping that his readers would see this as evidence of the right's pompous and hypocritical judgment of others. He couldn't have been further from the truth.

However accurate Connelly's accusations are of those mentioned above, they serve no substantive point in the domain of argument, and perfectly exhibit the left's failure to understand why conservatives hold the moral high ground.

If Mr. Connelly wishes to continue his desperate search for Republican transgressions, I will save him the time and say that they are not difficult to find. Rush Limbaugh's drug habit is only the beginning of the moral lapses of those who preach more stringent ethics and conservative philosophy.

Conservatives readily admit to the fall of man. Evidence of this is their humble turn toward religion, which their political adversaries somehow attempt to portray as bigoted and judgmental. This is because modern-day liberals are, in fact, moral relativists, right down to the bone.

The charge of moral relativity has never implied the total decency of those making the charge: that some of us are sinners while others are as pure as the wind-driven snow. It has always been about the acceptance of the slippery slope, and Connelly's column exhibited the contrast between those who are ready to accept the ways of the morally defiant and those who are not. We should be careful with such a literary piece, because it asks us to join the rabble of pacifists and apologists, and a philosophy driven by a cowardly outlook.

This mentality does not discriminate between right and wrong. It does not ask people to do better, or be better. To do so would be cruel, unenlightened, and too critical for liberal taste buds. This is a dangerous mind-set, to say the least.

Conservatives battle such a mentality not out of self-righteousness but out of fear of a decline in cultural decency, and from a concern about what kind of world they may pass on to their children. Therefore, there is no genuine right-wing hypocrisy to be discovered. The slippery slope, conservatives understand, is not a selective phenomenon. Moral deviance invades society as a whole. Just as a rising tide will lift all ships, a depraved society will sink all souls.

Even something as devout as the Catholic priesthood has been infiltrated by an increasingly decadent humanity. No doubt trying to incriminate the traditional Catholic Church, Connelly touched on this fact, but failed to understand the root of American priests' moral failures. They are simply immersed in an immoral society, one whose popular culture consists of Britney Spears, Howard Stern, and widespread pornography.

Connelly declares that all of this hypocrisy from conservative pundits and politicians "fits a pattern."

Sure, but it seems to be a pattern that only the left is willing to accept.


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The Case for a Core Curriculum

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free…it expects what never was and never will be.”—Thomas Jefferson



From the nation’s capital on September 26th the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) released the findings of an unprecedented review of higher education’s efficiency in increasing student knowledge of America’s history and crucial institutions.

The study, conducted by the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy (UCDPP), asked more than 14,000 randomly selected freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and universities 60 multiple-choice questions. The test determined student knowledge in four subjects: (1) American history; (2) government; (3) American and the world; (4) the market economy.

The results of the inquiry are embarrassingly disappointing—especially for those schools unfortunate enough to have been assessed within the study. Brown University was not just one of those schools, but also received a bottom-ranking among them.

ISI’s report presents four primary findings, all of which pertain directly to Brown’s educational methods.

The first key finding reiterates the title of ISI’s report—The Coming Crisis In Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions. “America’s colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about America’s history and institutions,” ISI confidently testifies. Evidence for this pronouncement is found within the results of the test scores. Seniors, on average, scored a mere 1.5 percent higher than freshmen. That average score was 53.2 percent. Even with a most generous grading curve, this is an F.

Worse than a failing grade, however, are the particulars. For instance, only 47.9 percent of seniors knew that the line “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” is found within the Declaration of Independence. And 72.8 percent failed to name the source of the idea of “a wall of separation” between church and state.

Within the second central discovery we see Brown University’s unique role within UCDPP’s probe into higher education. A school’s “prestige doesn’t pay off,” the report screams. “Colleges that rank high in the U.S. News and World Report 2006 ranking were ranked low in the ISI ranking of learning in these key fields.” While seniors at schools such as Rhodes College and Calvin College were found to have increased their knowledge of American history and institutions by 11.6% and 9.5% respectively, this study discovered that students attending more prestigious universities experience a moribund concern for civic literacy during their college years. According to the test results, 16 schools exhibited an educational phenomenon that the report refers to as “negative learning,” a term that describes a situation where freshmen demonstrated more civic knowledge than the seniors. Among the 50 schools surveyed, Yale ranked 44th with a –1.5 percent change in civic literacy. Brown ranked 47th with a –2.7 percent change. And Cornell ranked 48th with a –3.3 percent change. “Our ‘best’ colleges and universities are the worst offenders when it comes to a failure to teach America’s history and institutions,” ISI reports.

The third key finding is a shocker: “Students don’t learn what colleges don’t teach.” Despite the obvious (and properly smug) nature of this declaration, it should also catch the ears of Brown affiliates, as it refers to a loose curriculum structure. ISI’s report actually reiterates what many conservatives have been saying for years—“Civic learning is significantly greater at schools with comparatively traditional core curricula.” This “discovery” reinforces a popular criticism of open curriculums, that failing to require the study of traditional subjects will deteriorate a nation’s memory, and therefore its meaning and purpose.

Proponents of open curriculums often argue that universities such as Brown, that don’t require the study of core subjects, still offer a wide variety of voluntary courses in American history, political science, and economics. But with the freedom to stray from traditional subjects, UCDPP found that students tend to do so (perhaps as a result of what is portrayed as more relevant and stylish topics on these campuses). The ISI tells us, “Students at colleges and universities that make courses related to America’s history, ideals, and the Constitution more available, attractive, and even required showed significant gains in civic learning,” and “even when controlling for numerous variables that influence learning, seniors at schools with reasonably strong core curricula…had double the gain in civic learning compared with those seniors at schools without a coherent core curriculum—for example, Brown, Cornell, and Stanford.”

ISI’s fourth and final verdict pertains to the civic involvement of college students. “Greater civic learning goes hand-in-hand with more active citizenship. Students who demonstrated greater learning of America’s history and its institutions were more engaged in citizenship activities such as voting, volunteer community service, and political campaigns.”

To many members of the Brown community this finding may cause confusion. A campus as politically charged as Brown’s is certainly made up of many students with a healthy tendency to participate in their civic responsibilities, even if the University is failing to educate them on such matters. But according to UCDPP’s study, it was discovered that a high degree of civic involvement was highly dependent on a high degree of civic knowledge. “And the factor most strongly correlated with students registering to vote and voting is the amount of civic learning that takes place during college.”

ISI’s report concludes by providing important recommendations that could help improve higher education’s dire. These proposals include measuring student learning, holding colleges and universities accountable for educational output, implementing required courses, building academic centers on campus that focus on topics deprived of attention, and informing as many people as possible of this looming condition of ignorance.

One troubling assessment of UCDPP’s study is that the results come as no surprise to many educators. To many it seems that a blind eye has been turned to the alarming reality that higher education has become something of a failure, an unprincipled world thinly veiled by a smokescreen of prestige—a place where students now go to be sensitized to multicultural theory, and graduate perhaps having learned absolutely nothing relevant to living within a constitutional republic. Brown University’s late Frank Newman once testified to the lack of integrity found within the ranks of higher education:

“The real reason we don’t test is, we would rather not know…If we start measuring, we will start finding out that you didn’t learn…about the great traditions of Western thought. Then we have a nasty little problem on our hands.”

The question now is: Does Brown University care? Will the results of UCDPP’s study be sneered at in the fashion so common of university elites? Will the Ivy establishment continue to believe in the infallibility of Ira Magaziner’s New Curriculum? Or will Brown view these findings as the maximum point of the pendulum, pulling what was once liberal back from the left, with the hopes that the University may settle in a place comfortably distant from reckless radicalism?

Offering credence to years of warnings over a coming generation of citizens disinterested in, or incapable of, functioning within their own democratic nation, ISI’s assessment now provides evidence of a civic catastrophe that is not merely imminent, but already upon us. Brown University should recognize its contribution to this crisis, and do something about it.

(The full ISI report can be found at isi.org)