A Crisis of Competence<\/em>. This study of the University of California system confirms what national studies of faculty political preferences have previously learned \u2013\u2013 that liberal professors outnumber conservative ones 8 to 1. At the flagship Berkeley campus, ratios are scarier: 10:1 in the hard sciences, 17:1 in the humanities, and 21:1 in the social sciences. And across the system, individual academic departments reveal more lopsided ratios: 29:1 in the Berkeley English department, 31:1 in the Berkeley history department, 29:2 in the UCLA English department, and 53:3 in UCLA history. Are we surprised that the University of California was one of the biggest donors to Barack Obama\u2019s 2008 campaign, giving more money than even Goldman Sachs?<\/p>\nGiven this political bias, it is equally unsurprising that, according to a study by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, a majority of professors now believe their task should be teaching not basic skills, critical thinking, and foundational information, but how to \u201cbecome agents of social change.\u201d For example, the \u201cmission statement\u201d of the Berkeley Department of Social Work states that students must be committed to advancing \u201csocial justice,\u201d code for redistributionist policies predicated on grievance. Or consider the UC Santa Cruz Sociology Department\u2019s mission statement, which proclaims the need to consider \u201chow society is organized in relationship to a vision of a just, free, and equal society \u2014 a vision that may require fundamental social change.\u201d You can bet that \u201cequal\u201d does not mean equality of opportunity but equality of result achieved by the coercive power of the government. And \u201cfundamental social change\u201d is redolent of Obama\u2019s promise five days before the 2008 election that \u201cwe will fundamentally change America,\u201d a promise he has unfortunately kept.<\/p>\n
All these data show that, as\u00a0A Crisis of Competence<\/em>\u00a0writes, there has been in universities a \u201csharp shift to the left in recent decades,\u201d with \u201cthe characteristic pattern of an even more extreme tilt, amounting almost to exclusion of opposing views, precisely in those departments where it matters most to have the full spectrum of social and political thought.\u201d The goals and policies that Obama has pursued have been consistent with this progressive bias, predicated as they are on the unexamined leftist orthodoxy that rules most universities and can be heard every day in a thousand classrooms: American society is racist, its political institutions are unjust, capitalism is an oppressive, corrupt con that benefits the \u201c1%,\u201d and corporations reap obscene profits from the misery of the working and middle classes and the exploitation of nature and the Third World. Examine Obama\u2019s comments on everything from the Trayvon Martin killing to the Keystone pipeline, from the Israel-Arab conflict to relations with the Muslim world, from Obamacare to high gas prices, and one will find behind his words the ideological doctrines of the leftist professoriate, the received, unexamined wisdom promulgated daily in faculty lounges, classrooms, and conferences.<\/p>\nBut there is another dimension of American higher education that illuminates Obama\u2019s character and behavior: the corrupting effects of racial preferences and the liberal racism of low expectations that undergird them. Because Obama is \u201carticulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,\u201d as Joe Biden said in 2007, that is, a light-skinned black with no trace of ghetto accent or thug swagger, he was the perfect \u201cdiversity\u201d applicant for the universities he attended. Thus it was in those institutions\u2019 interests to advance his career whether he deserved such advancement or not. Given the refusal to release his college transcripts or standardized test scores, one suspects that his performance was not quite so stellar, surely not good enough for the subsequent goodies showered on him, such as acceptance to Harvard Law School and the editorship of the Law Review. But his performance in those venues wasn\u2019t the point: his function was to show their \u201ccommitment to diversity.\u201d To paraphrase what Archibald MacLeish once said about a poem, Obama wasn\u2019t supposed to do anything, but to \u201cbe\u201d black.<\/p>\n
As a result of this process, Obama during his university career is unlikely to have been challenged in the way necessary for intelligence to be developed and broadened. All he had to do was mouth the progressive dogma, and he would be advanced far beyond his actual performance. He just had to show up, and white people would do the rest. And this is the tragedy of race preferences made obvious in the failed presidency of Obama: an obviously intelligent, charismatic man never had to confront intellectual challenges, hone his critical thinking skills, and learn discipline through failure. And he was fine, as long as he stayed in the academy or community organizing, both worlds where other people\u2019s money insulate one from failure. But as president, he had to deliver and take responsibility, both of which he has refused to do. Instead, he delegates to aids and Congress, and then blames anybody and everybody for the consequences of the flawed policies. And like the typical professor, he politicizes everything, demonizing those who challenge him with question-begging epithets and\u00a0ad hominem<\/em>\u00a0attacks.<\/p>\nSo if you want the key to Obama\u2019s character, look to the universities that created him, the media that slavishly serve him, and most of the voters who elected him. In other words, Obama represents a failure in our educational system that extends much, much farther than one president\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a92012 Bruce Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The November presidential election was the favorite topic at the Freedom Center\u2019s West Coast Retreat last weekend. Amidst the prognostications and arguments about which Republican would or should get the nomination<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[79,22,362],"tags":[255,12,1014,221,84,308,1026,30,40,93,372,80],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-dU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":694,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-potemkin-president-disintegrates\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":0},"title":"The Potemkin President Disintegrates","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine After nearly four years in office, the tinsel and cardboard persona of Barack Obama is starting to fall apart. The political unifier who claimed, \u201cThere is not a liberal America and a conservative America \u2014 there is the United States of America,\u201d has been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":752,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-gay-marriage-evolution-deception\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Gay Marriage ‘Evolution’ Deception","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine In yet another act of election-year cynicism, Barack Obama has announced, \u201cI think same-sex couples should be able to get married.\u201d This statement follows similar pronouncements by Joe Biden and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. To hear Obama tell it, this change reflects his \u201cevolution\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1138,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-the-president-stupid-the-referendum-on-barack-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":2},"title":"It’s the President Stupid: The Referendum on Barack Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com The people have spoken, and what they have said concerns more than just the wrong-headed policies the Democrats have inflicted upon us in the past few years. This election was never just about policy \u2013\u2013 it was also about Barack Obama and the repudiation of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-clear-alternatives-in-the-presidential-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":3},"title":"The Clear Alternatives in the Presidential Debate","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Forget all the pre-debate handicapping and advice about what Mitt Romney needed to do or what Barack Obama had to avoid. Last night\u2019s debate clarified the stark choice facing American voters on November 6. On the one hand, we heard a candidate who endorses limited\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1426,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/moral-equivalence-is-moral-evasion\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":4},"title":"Moral Equivalence Is Moral Evasion","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The failure of the Congressional budget \u201csuper-committee\u201d to address our geometrically expanding debt and deficits should surprise no one. From the beginning the committee was political theater designed to create the illusion of action when the will to act is missing. Unfortunately, this perennial\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":523,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-the-ryan-choice-means-for-november\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":5},"title":"What the Ryan Choice Means for November","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Last week\u2019s poll numbers seemingly confirmed the doubts about democracy\u2019s viability expressed in last week\u2019s\u00a0column. After a barrage of outrageous smears fired off by the Obama campaign, which accused Romney of killing a woman with cancer and failing to pay any income tax, Obama is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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