How US universities morphed from cradles of liberty to cages of conformity

The names are venerable, the history is remarkable: Harvard University was founded in 1636, Yale was founded in 1701 by the Puritans, and the College of Philadelphia was founded by the Quakers and Benjamin Franklin in 1749. These earliest of American universities were founded in independence: independence from government.

In the 1750s the curricula of these institutions included the study of Greek and the part played by Callimachus in voting to give his life for the freedom of Athens during the Persian invasion of the Greek homeland. And there was the study of Latin and the part played by Horatius defending the last bridge into Rome, in defiance of Rome’s last king, Tarquin Superbus, who personally sought to disestablish the liberties of every last Roman citizen. Such are tyrants.

The handful of educational institutions that attempt to maintain their independence are persecuted by the administrative state.

The studies included Isaac Newton’s “Principia”: the new science of gravity and its influence on the stars. In neighboring classrooms, there were free inquiries into the comparative constitutions of ancient Greek and renaissance Italian city-states and how best to compose a free government whose component parts might move with the constancy and eternity of the spheres.

The curricula included the artful contemplation of da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” alongside the study of the works of John Locke, the British philosopher whose devotion to the natural rights of humanity, based on the inalienable rights of the individual, earned him exile from England and set off the revolutionary era of government in America.

The core curriculum of the American university in 1750 was the necessary spark in forging the fire in a revolutionary generation that set America free, among all the nations of the earth, from a tyranny that had enslaved mankind throughout human history. Education in a free society, or to free a society, has that much importance.

The same educational institutions, with the same devotions to the rights of humanity, helped guide the nation through the unprecedented torments of the Civil War, upholding the ideals of individual rights, equality, and common law as the cornerstones of the country under which our nation formed a union and, for that just union, sacrificed more than any other nation … ever.

Then came a philosophical craze among the intelligentsia in European universities, then in America, for the philosophy of Friedrich Hegel and its manifestation in Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital,” which is predicated on an “ideal state” being given absolute power to seize every bit of wealth and property in order to equalize the fortunes of its subjects. This “new education” spawned socialism, communism, and fascism.

The intelligentsia in America did not catch on to the dangers of such an “ideal” system of government until all of their colleagues in European universities who spoke or wrote against their “ideal” regimes in the 1930s were imprisoned, exiled, or executed. Then, with time … they forgot.

The teaching of socialism as a preferable sort of political and economic system returned with gusto to America’s university campuses in the 1950s and 1960s, culminating with student activists forcibly invading administration offices around the country on campuses like Berkeley and Columbia.

Those socialists never left.

Following the strategy of the ’60s German socialist Rudi Dutschke, the radicals who invaded college campuses stayed there. They took over university institutions by gaining professorships, by gaining tenure and administrative positions from which they would determine curricula and teach about the glorious “ideal” state that no nation of Europe, nor Russia, nor China has ever achieved, because it’s slavery.

Over time, federal grants given to universities became a major income stream amounting to billions of dollars. The Obama administration seized the universities’ other income stream, creating a federal monopoly over the student loan industry. Since then, where the money has flowed, the Democratic Party has seized control, with two consequences.

Today, socialism as an economic and political system is lauded on college campuses through classes that canonize Marx and make heroes of butchers like Vladimir Lenin and Ché Guevara. At the same time, the universities attack our Judeo-Christian heritage, and Western civilization itself, through indoctrination programs such as diversity, equity, and inclusion that are showered with federal funding.

Meanwhile, the handful of educational institutions that attempt to maintain their independence are persecuted by the administrative state. Grand Canyon University is the largest Christian university in the United States, and for that distinction it has been accused by the Department of Education of being “a predatory for-profit school.” Because it is an independent Christian institution, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has vowed that “we are cracking down, not only to shut them down, but to send a message not to prey on students.”

Who is really preying on students? The Department of Education has imposed a $37 million fine on GCU for its independence.

The real reason for the fine is that GCU teaches things socialists do not approve, such as an appreciation for the glories of the West and an appreciation of the unique character of American freedom — a unique character Americans celebrated before the onslaught of socialism began driving divisions into our society through re-education programs. Before they banned teaching Judeo-Christian ethics in schools. Before they began systematically attacking the most successful, liberating, and equalizing political and economic system of government ever devised in the history of mankind … and called it an “education.”

It’s time “educators” were sent the Declaration of Independence.