Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth [Hardcover]

Ben Shapiro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2004

When parents send their children off to college, mom and dad hope they'll return more cultivated, knowledgeable, and astute--able to see issues from all points of view. But, according to Ben Shapiro, there's only one view allowed on most college campuses: a rabid brand of liberalism that must be swallowed hook, line, and sinker. In this explosive book, Ben Shapiro, a college student himself, reveals how America's university system is one of the largest brainwashing machines on the planet. Examining this nationwide problem from firsthand experience, Shapiro shows how the leftists who dominate the universities--from the administration to the student government, from the professors to the student media--use their power to mold impressionable minds. Fresh and bitterly funny, this book proves that the universities, far from being a place for open discussion, are really dungeons of the mind that indoctrinate students to become socialists, atheists, race-baiters, and narcissists.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (May 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785261486
• ISBN-13: 978-0785261483
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (179 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #665,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

126 of 153 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful book with a lot of truth, July 5, 2004

By 

Maria Castelli (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (Hardcover)

Shapiro's book is on-point with so much. I wish I'd written this book several years ago when I was still in college, and then grad school. It would have helped to quell the frustration I felt at being swept up in the liberal tides that my schools assumed everyone supported simply because we were academics.

I think it's great that there are liberal professors in colleges with far-out ideas. However, there seemed to be (in my experience and, apparently in Shapiro's as well) a false premise in colleges that you must be a liberal in order to be an academic. Further, professors, and other students, often get quite angered if you express a view that is not shared by the class or considered politically incorrect. By the time college is over you become adept at couching and qualifying your statements in order to keep the peace in class and avoid being labeled "right-wing", "intolerant", "fascist", et. al. Admitting that you supported the president or were a Republican, for example, was tantamount to academic suicide in my scholastic career. The irony never escaped me and apparently it didn't escape Shapiro either.

You definitely get the sense that Shapiro is venting his frustrations at being silenced during his college years - as well he should. He seems somewhat bitter at times, which some may find off-putting. Nonetheless, I think this book was probably therapeutic for Shapiro to write since he endured so many attempts to silence him in college. He channeled his frustrations quite well by writing this book. Is the book perfect? Of course not - but he takes good care to back up its assertions with painstakingly researched documentation and footnotes. On the whole, it is a noteworthy book.

I entered college a Democrat, and it was my experience in higher education that made me a Republican by the time I finished my MA in '03. I was simply turned off by the lack of tolerance allowed to ideas that departed from the leftist platform. In turn, I became suspicious, and eventually resentful, of the implicitly (and explicitly) stated assumption that, by virtue of being a college student, you should support liberal agendas. I still think people in this country are deluded by labels. I consider myself "liberal" in the sense that I like to consider and discuss all ideas before arriving at my opinions on an issue. However, since all ideas were not given credence in the classroom, I realized what a misnomer the word has become. Kudos to Shapiro for being willing to discuss this openly and defend the importance of critical thinking.

On a side note, I had a very difficult time finding this book at Borders. It was stocked in a remote, low-traffic area of the store, in a section called "Parenting and Education" (near baby name books and such).
When I tried to pay for it, the cashier looked at the book, gave me a patronizing laugh, and (without being asked) volunteered to tell me why she "would not agree with it at all", being a 20 year-old college student herself. When I explained that Shapiro was actually also 20 and just graduating college, she told me that he surely must be making "sweeping generalizations" about the college experience and how he, a 20 year-old, could not possibly write such a "scholarly book, and pretend he's like...this scholar or something". She got really mad! I suggested we both read the book before pontificating about whether or not he's justified for writing it (which of course he is) and she finally shut up, and I was able to escape. Be careful what you try to buy at Borders! You might not find it, or be subjected to a liberal rant as a reward for shopping there.

75 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I just read this, June 6, 2004

By 

Liza P (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (Hardcover)

Interesting book. I finished it last night and this is an enjoyable read. Shapiro is funny and his points are well made. I myself have spent a few years going after a graduate degree and having had my first 4 years of college in Japan I was suprised with American universities.

There is a review below from a someone from Buena Vista University who makes a good case against the observations in this book. I agree with M. Steel in his claims that this is the way colleges SHOULD work. Unfortunately they do not work like this. Instead of openness I have found the universities I attended in the USA ( 3 of them ) to be the exact opposite of openness. Instead of rejoicing in varied opinions, have the "wrong" opinion will get you flunked. There are no frank and open debates - there is "my way or the highway".

We have campus "speech codes" which suppress debate, we have campus groups destroying flyers for speakers or campus clubs that are not "politically correct" and no debate is tolerated.
I have seen speakers heckled and as one reviewer mentioned about a John Stossel 20/20 segment he was yelled down and not permitted to talk to students with the "wrong" opinion. All viewpoints are not explored only the "correct" ones.

I would be inclined to agree with Steel on the points made if my experience had not been so different. I wa told flat out on several occasions by students and professions that I was no to mention certain things nor was I to ask certain questions.

Based on my own first hand experiences I am inclined to accept Shapiros observations. I have heard thes from others and have seen it on 20/20. I have found that this is typical and not an exception.

Nowhere have I ever seen free speech so suppressed and discouraged than in the American University system and this does not bode well for the future.

Excellent book. Shold be read by all, and not just people who have college aged children I would encourage employers to note what having a university degree really means today. Maybe they already have based on the current high level of outsourcing seen today in American business. Perhaps employers are seeing the quality of American college graduates today and reacting accordingly.

58 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good First Effort., May 16, 2004

By 

Coug Moog "s_gil" (York, PA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (Hardcover)

'Brainwashed' is young Ben Shapiro's first book, and it shows.

We have a sharp kid here, reasonably well read for an undergraduate student of a public school. I've spent so much time in university environments (nearly half my life) that I claim a little more experience than Ben has swimming with the sharks.

Shapiro shows an astuteness by identifying the source of the 'brainwashing' as he sees it on the modern college campus: moral relativism. Whether he is right or not depends entirely on the existence of God and the universality of the commandments. If the ten commandments come from a real creator God, then the moral relativism from which all leftist thought flows falls like a house of cards.

And vice versa. The challenge from the Right is to prove God does NOT exist, since the challenge from the Left to prove his existence has been out there for a long time.

Call books like Shapiro's a counterrevolution. After centuries of breakdown of the old moral regime, a huge proportion of the populace looks around at the new, Left-dominated culture and sees an increase in human suffering and a decrease in love and regard for one's fellow human beings that flows from the thesis that there is nothing but the here and now. They see an increase in thoughtless, rude behavior and dishonesty, a callous disregard for the life of any besides the self (especially if the one being disregarded is a child, born or unborn) and like Shapiro they are alarmed at the coarsening and animalizing of humankind that occurs when he forgets to aim for the transcendent and wallows with the beasts instead.

I generally agree with Shapiro. But I'll go further: every place that has embraced the Judeo-Christian morality has seen an increase in human freedom, an increased regard for women and children, greater respect for the property and rights of others, and a less violent way of life. Every place that has discarded the Judeo-Christian way of life has seen increases in poverty, violence, crudeness and corruption.

Does this mean Christianity and Judaism are free of corruption?

Just the opposite: they acknowledge the existence of (and man's susceptibility to) evil, identify it generally accurately and provide tools to fight it. That is why, when the rise of the printing press allowed more and more general literacy and people began to read the Bible for themselves, a reformation, renaissance and enlightenment followed in rapid succession.

As our nation slips back into ignorance of spiritual realities, helpfully pushed into such a sorry state by the education cartel, we will see the most free and prosperous nation in the history of mankind dry up and blow away, to be replaced by another Eurosocialist nightmare. And it's a shame, because Europe is finding out every day that its very premise is a dead end. If we want to follow the rest of the world off the cliff, then I guess we will.

But voices like Shapiro's hint that perhaps, as the rebellion spreads, there is hope for our nation as a shining city on a hill for future generations as well as past. I think the worst of the leftists are hitting retirement age. As the baby boom generation ceases to weild decision-making power and becomes just one huge medical and social security nightmare for the rest of us, the revolt will pick up steam. When you realize, twenty years from now, that more of your paycheck is going to support some greedy geezer than is going to feed your own kids, you too will realize the futility of their plans. Large numbers of us will just shrug our shoulders and stop working. Why bust your ass for the government? It's already happened, most notably back in the Left's Camelot of the USSR. The same dynamic is now picking up steam in the EU. When that train wreck is finished, it has a good chance of repeating itself yet again in the United States of America.

Why is it that we can't learn from the failures of the Left that Life, Liberty and Property are the foundations of a free society, and pay some respect to our own roots, the most sound on the planet? If Shapiro can stick with the themes sounded in the first chapter of his book, engage in meaningful research to provide perspective, and derive conclusions from such sound scholarship, such a work would be, at least to me, more enlightening than the anthology of outrageous anecdotes he provides in most of this book.

But there is definitely a need for the anecdotes to be told to the world.

Here's hoping this is only Ben Shapiro's opening shot, with a devastating salvo of research to follow.