Excerpt from BRUTAL MINDS: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in America's Universities by Stanley K. Ridgley, Ph.D.

Part IV – Cerberus Apparat of Subversion

Students of politics are familiar with the political metaphor of the “Iron Triangle.” This is an unofficial structure of interlocking interests represented by the U.S. Congress, interest groups, and government bureaucracy. The Iron Triangle purports to explain how “things get done” in Washington as contrasted with the schoolbook description of the three co-equal branches of government crafting legislation and policy. The triangle’s three nodes are mutually reinforcing, and it reproduces itself.

There is another “Iron Triangle,” and this one impacts Higher Education. This one is stealthy, less forthcoming, and aimed at the subversion of the American University. Most persons don’t even know it exists, even those who work in higher education, such as faculty and many staff. The interlocking relationships among the three entities of the higher education triangle are clear and, as far as I can determine, have never been identified and described in quite this way.

This iron triangle is dramatically different from the political model. While the political model comprises three separate entities that negotiate to generate outcomes, the higher education triangle, constitutes three discrete entities—three “heads,” if you will— but with a single cadre of persons who can and often do participate as members of all three. At times they participate in all three simultaneously.

In this, the higher education structure is not a triangle of bodies that negotiate but rather constitutes a single body with three heads — a Cerberus. In Greek mythology, Cerberus comprised three heads of a dog with a single body. Cerberus guarded the gates of the Underworld and permitted no escape to the dead souls consigned there.

The Cerberus of higher education exerts tremendous influence over the total milieu of the university. Its three heads are 1) university schools of education, 2) university “student affairs” offices, and 3) outside non-profit professional associations. These three tightly meshed entities share a common primitive ideology, and they constitute a brutish apparat that exercises increasing power and influence on American campuses, mainly to the detriment of students and the overall intellectual decline of the university.

I call it a Cerberus, because it provides the illusion of three independent heads, but they all connect to one body comprising cadre of trained authoritarian ideologues. The following chapters describe the three entities of this Cerberus and their connections.

This is the beast that ensures that any victory or apparent university reform is fleeting, and that the agenda of university degradation will continue.

Behind the welter of policy pronouncements offered by PR hacks, we can identify the actual people who are responsible, not “policies” or procedures. This is why the student affairs Cerberus must be called out in a naming of names and assignment of accountability. Followed by retraining or removal, preferably the latter.

This metaphorical beast will ensure that no meaningful, lasting reform occurs. With these people still in place—zealots with their primitive ideology—no change is possible and abuse is likely to continue.

Part IV describes the theory, the activities, and the elements of the apparat. All of the material in these chapters is drawn from the writings and speeches and conference material of the apparat, which is freely available for anyone to review (as of this writing). All of this is fully documented here — the people, the schools, the programs, the psychological techniques—and it is characterized here in their own words.