Customer Reviews

Freefall of the American University: How Our Colleges Are Corrupting the Minds and Morals of the Next Generation

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

My response when I bought this book was "it is about time someone wrote this book!" It documents how our colleges are corrupting the minds and morals of the next generation. Having taught in several American colleges and Universities for over 35 years, I have seen this first hand. I love the university and intellectual life, but have seen intolerance in academia grow to the point that its faculty are now often in a different world than the rest of America. An example is the intolerance against Republicans. I do not agree with many Republican ideas (and am generally an independent, and we are usually ignored, so I personally do not have a problem here), but there is something wrong when over 90 percent of all faculty in most departments are Democrats, socialists, or communists (Marxists or conflict theorists). This concern is discussed in detail in this book. As I am on the science faculty, one area that does strike close to home is the intolerance toward those who doubt Darwin. For example, on page 230 Black discusses intolerance at Harvard (in contrast I have several good Darwin doubter friends who earned their Ph.D. in science at Harvard). Black claimed that "critical discussion of Darwin is taboo" at Harvard (this is what my friends also claimed) and that the "modern university has no religion but Darwinism... the most important question for any society to ask is the one that is [now] forbidden" Page 231. How true. Those who disagree are the ones who should be reading this book.

When done, the reader of this book needs to visit the Web site "The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education," at <http://www.thefire.org.> This org defends students who have actually gone against the political correctness that is discussed.

The reader may also want to visit Speech Codes Web site at <http://www.speechcodes.org> that tracks the words students are not allowed to use on campus. The org is not talking about "The seven words one can't say on television." It's talking about words like "girlfriend" and "boyfriend," speechcodes.org telling you the universities these restrictions belong to.

Also, one doesn't need this book to tell them that professors have been pushing left-wing ideology as bullies in the classroom, discouraging real debate. There have been too many real complaints from students in the news, ones who felt their free speech was spit on by radical professors; professors who would otherwise be fired in a public school environment for trespassing on student rights.

Finally, if you really want an education on what's going on at some American universities that will raise the hair on the back of your head, visit Academic Bias on the Web at <http://www.academicbias.com>. Click and download the movie titled "Brainwashing 101." You will see real-live college administrators on film and at work discouraging free speech, even calling the campus police for the smallest of infractions that suggest the existence of free thought other than what the university has pre-approved.

While you might see some reviews of this book displaying a distrust for people of religion, many of today's universities had their literal foundations built on early Christian values in America but now taken over by strange and sick ideologies. One doesn't have to look far to find them, such as Professor Singer of Princeton who advocates humans have sex with non-humans (animals) his saying in an interview, "If your dog can tell you when he wants to go out, he can tell you other things, too."

What this has to do with an education is beyond me; Princeton putting the professor in the "Human Ethics Department" at a time when over 40,000,000 Americans have an STD, according to the CDC. Now the CDC has released a new warning that 50% of today's teenagers will have an STD by age 25-years old, certainly the CDC attributing the spread of the diseases to the lack of discipline at universities they will be attending.

The fact these students can no longer give blood for the general public is certain to come back and bite us all in a national emergency; something else universities are probably not mentioning in the name of political correctness, a subject this book could easily add as an addendum titled "Consequences."

I wonder if one were to talk about The Fourth Estate on campus to university students today, would they think it's a new bar down the street, this book documenting American History is hard to find in a world that doesn't want to teach, but to preach?

Give this book a good read, then go to the above Web sites to see the real world you've just read about.

Freedom is knowledge. The absence of freedom is bondage, this one spelled with a silent P as in Ph.D.

This book is mandatory reading, not only for parents of those who may be headed for college, but for current students and their parents as well, ... that is, if the safety and well-being of their children, as well as the future of this country is of any concern to them.

The stark reality of the transformation of our educational institutions from halls of learning into seedy bastions of perverse indoctrination is portrayed all too clearly by Jim Nelson Black, ... and its frightening. The author did well to draw not only upon academics and other credentialed observers for input, but also from among the more keenly aware students.

It is very disturbing to learn that the once cherished goal of sending Johnny or Jane to a local college for higher education has now become a potentially dangerous proposition. Unfortunately, today, Johnny and Jane may indeed graduate from what now seems like Sodom University or Gommorah Tech. ... with a degree, but they may also come away with more than they wanted, and it has nothing to due with knowledge.

The moral decay and perversion of principles on today's campuses is not taking place in a vacuum. While it may be going on behind the backs of many parents, those in positions of influence and authority are, or should be aware of the damage that is taking place, ... but then again, tenure has a way of accelerating the onset of deafness, dumbness, and blindness.

Those who do try to spend their college years in earnest pursuit of knowledge often find themselves ostracized or confronted with either academic malaise or coming under the tutelage of some of the most extreme of the anti-authority and anti-establishment anarchists whose purpose is not to teach, ... but to recruit and indoctrinate.

The rest of us should not dismiss what is going on as a phenomenon that is restricted to the campus and its local environs, ... it has more far-reaching effects than some may be willing to admit. After all, these would-be graduates may receive a degree purporting some sort of academic achievement, and that is suspect in and of itself, ... but what is not inscribed on that faux sheepskin is the degree to which any given student has been exposed to radical counter-cultural philosophy and who-knows-what else, so that the Johnny and Jane that Mom and Dad sent off to college emerge four years later as the minions of the septic perversion that they have been steeped in.

This book, along with Ben Shapiro's "Brainwashed:How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth" are must reads, not only for parents and students, but for the rest of us as well, ... after all, the students of today will supposedly be the leaders of tomorrow, ... and right now, that is not exactly something to look forward to.

As a recent college grad myself, I can vouch for the validity of this book. Some reviewers may try to convince you this is Christian propoganda, but that simply isn't the case. The fact is that professors today are not trying to be fair and balanced. They are trying to make students agree with their perspective, and the vast majority of that time, that perspective is left-leaning. Far left-leaning. The scary part is, most students are naive enough to take everything these professors say as fact and don't even realize they're being brainwashed. Jim Nelson Black really gets into the details of this situation with examples from the best of America's university and interviews with very respected professors. You will be blown away by the truth. Let's hope this book will wake up America.

The reviewers who are attacking the author have obviously not read the book. There is no way to refute the data here. These are facts about what is happening at schools around the country. There are interviews with high ranking professors at very prestigious schools. They tell you, in their own words, what is happening at their schools. The author's opinion is based on his investigation. This is an impressive, thought-provoking and very well-organized book that will shed light on exactly what is going on in today's universities. Jim Nelson Black really has done his research.

This book is the absolute truth. Also, if anything, the book pulls some punches.

This reviewer is a former Army officer. I received my degree in the mid-80s and decided to change careers in the mid-2000s. I was shocked at how different the colleges had become.

First, many of the students are openly fat or obese. That is a subject for another book. Second, I was amazed at how absolutely leftist the professors had become. Yes, the professors were liberal back in the '80s. However, they were just liberal, at odds with the Reagan years, and were generally glad when the Soviet Union went away.

This reviewer went to Ferris State University. In the Teachers Colleges, which teach little about actual teaching, there was a very leftist professor who actually was advocating the establishment of state schools for children. These state schools would take the children from the parents at the age of five and be totally responsible for raising them.

And few of the students actually saw this as wrong.

This reviewer actually started challenging the professor. The professor finally told me to leave the class. Ferris State University refused to back up my arguments against the professor. I told the administrators at Ferris that Fox News would like the story. They gave me a full refund and we parted ways.

The level of sedition preached at colleges is mind-boggling. Traditional families are scorned. Homosexuals are held up as paragons of virtue. The 1950s (actually a quite progressive era in America blessed with low unemployment) are presented to the class as an equivalent to living under the Taliban. Men worked, women stayed at home, and children enjoyed two stable parents. "Horrors!" the teaching professors will exclaim. How dare this culture impose a traditional construct upon the families? The professors will get openly mad at a student if you show the Juvenal crime rate, teen suicide rate, and mental illness rates in the 1950s were a fraction of modern America. The professor says that old America was evil, thus it must be evil. Don't confuse the situation with the facts. (You have to wonder about professors at that point. Professors say they care about kids. Traditional families are good for kids. The professors don't like traditional families, screw the kids.)

Well the end results are the state teachers colleges are turning out, basically, traitors.

If you don't believe me then I give the example of Jay Bennish, the infamous teacher from Colorado. Mr. Bennish was recorded for over 20 minutes on an anti-American tirade. Prior to 1970, Mr. Bennish would have been terminated. Post 2000, Mr. Bennish is called a hero. Indeed, Mr. Bennish actually gave a threat to a student. Mr. Bennish used the threat of violence to back up his leftist thinking.

The only thing I didn't like about this book is the fact is it's preaching to the choir. We traditional Americans know what is wrong with the colleges. That's a fact. The leftist's will give this book one star. Why not? Leftists pretty hate all that is good and righteous in America. Sheeze, they preach that the State has the right to take your kids away from Traditional families. Do you think they want the truth known?

But the worst thing is these professors will often pull down pay checks of $80K or more a year. The typical American family has to try to get by on less than $40K per year.

My advice is for traditional families are to send their kids to private colleges. The Missouri Synod Lutherans have an excellent education system (it is evolved from the Germans). Many private colleges do a better job of providing a "liberal" education than the State leftist dominated universities.

And, yes, these leftist colleges are killing this country. We are losing control of our borders; the colleges tell us we're racist if we care. Iranians are building atomic weapons to attack Israel; the leftist in colleges tell us we're intolerant towards Islam. Sexually transmitted diseases are rampant at colleges; professors tell us refraining from unmarried sex will not work. We all can "feel" that if we follow the advice colleges give us that it will be the death of this nation.

Oh, I don't know if the author's solutions can be used to fix higher education. The only way you could fix the colleges is fire all the professors. That will never happen.

Personally I don't think this nation will see another 50 years with the types of students our colleges are putting out.

You've been warned. American universities are the poison pill of this nation. Even the left knows it.

The vast majority of books on higher education over the last decade have pointed to serious problems, serious failings and serious challenges. With the exception of a book like Jonathan Cole's The Great American University (which indicates the vast accomplishments of America's premier research universities), most commentators have significant criticisms which they wish to lodge.

Jim Nelson Black's book is no exception. Indeed, much of what he says is true, but he pushes his arguments to the point that they verge on screeds. We have seen screeds from the left, screeds from the right and `revelatory' screeds that inform us that all professors are lazy sots who need to be put back to work, once they have been denuded of their tenure and slapped around a bit.

Black's book is on the right end of the spectrum. It looks at a host of issues which are causes for concern (diminished core curricula, political indoctrination, tenured radicals, reduced standards, a corporate antipathy to religion, the sponsoring (or at least the countenancing) of behaviors that were once seen to be immoral, and so on. These are issues which merit attention. They also need to be subjected to analysis. Black's views tend toward the monolithic. The extremes (which can be identified) are seen as the dominant--everywhere, in all times and in virtually every case.

He does give some shoutouts to alternatives--George's Madison program at Princeton, the Directed Studies program at Yale, the recognition by prominent conservatives who are also highly reputable academics (Donald Kagan, Harvey Mansfield, et al.) that there are some conservative voices crying in the wilderness and some challenges to leftist orthodoxy--but the book does not go out of its way to analyze the problems in detail. It remains, largely, a lamentation.

Lamentations have their place. This will give heart to those who felt that no one else was of like mind and it will bedevil the left by beating them, unrelievedly, about the head and shoulders. To change, however, to persuade those on the left, right and in the middle that we have lost our way, requires hard facts along with common sense. We need to enlist all possible voices in the effort. There are thinkers on the left, e.g., who are equally concerned about many of these issues and there are thinkers across the political spectrum who will, for example, applaud "access" to higher education but be willing to listen to the facts concerning graduation rates, debt levels, default rates and the other hard realities that lie below the rosy surfaces of platitudes and political pieties.

This is a book designed, essentially, to alarm and that is important. It is less effective in that task, however, when it seems to scrupulously tell only one side of the story. The author's intention is to bring about change and to spark such change by creating alarm. That is fine, but we need a more detailed sense of the current condition (there are plenty of reasons for alarm) and a program for change that will enlist the numbers necessary to actually bring it about.

I'm stunned to see how deeply corrupted the university system is. I returned to school recently after a hiatus of over thirty years and was personly amazed at the bias of my text and my history professor. I didn't know how wide spread the problem was until I did some online research, ordered this book as well as Ben Shapiro's "Brainwashed" The situation is rancid. The kids have been intellectually and morally deconstructed by the legacy of French and German atheist intellectuals from the 19th and 20th centruies. This is soul rot. They are taught that since 'God is unknowable', all perspectives, cultures, ideas and behaviors are to be seen as equal, unless, unless, one questions the assumption that God is actually unknowable. Then the thought police come out in force and shut you down....Watch out, it's not coming, it's here.

As a graduate student at an Ivy League school, I too know first hand that almost everyone on campus (faculty as well as students) are liberal. That is fine, as my experience has been that they don't tend to shove it down your throat. While some may argue (as the book does) that liberal professors try and indoctrinate their students, what I found most disturbing was the books discussions of how "throw-away" a college education has become. The book discusses how most schools offer all sorts of junk courses and have very few "general education" requirements, sometimes leaving the "core curriculum" totally up to the students. This book has also reinforced my fear that many students are not interested indeed, can not think critically. They tend to memorize things and look for answers as opposed to understanding the material.

In addition, the book makes a strong case (though not explicitly) for the fact that a college degree is the new high school degree, meaning that everyone goes to college now whether they should be or not because it's the thing to do. This is a disturbing trend, not because "I want to keep the hallowed halls all to myself," but because it breeds relativism. Some people just aren't cut out for college, and that's OK. But the book argues that the standards are being set so low, and once you factor in grade inflation and the unwillingness of professors to flunk students, we have everyone graduating college, regardless of their abilities, and a college degree means less and less.

I think this book serves as a real eye-opener. It's a pretty light read; a lot of it is back and forth dialogue between the author and a student or professor that is being interviewed. It certainly is something to read before you send your child off to school.

The author of this book has his heart in the right place. He wants to expose the closed-mindedness and indoctrination that are going on in the humanities/arts/education/religion/"studies" departments in almost all American universities. Unfortunately, he is not equipped to do this task. His method is to visit a campus, state at length what he thinks is wrong, quote verbatim and at length from an interviewee who has the same opinion, then move on to another interviewee or another university. The opposition could use the same method to show that things are perfect on campus! Also, his owns prejudices sometimes get aired as though they were as obvious as the issues of free speech and unfettered inquiry, as some of the reviewers here have fastened on. The fact is, we know from other books like The Rape of Alma Mater that the things this author portrays are happening. Undecided readers would do better to consult those other books first. Unfortunately, the mistakes and the one-sidedness of this book give an easy way out to those who are wary of anyone who disagrees with their honored professors.