Campus Reform: Suffolk University

As a UConn undergrad studying economics, I felt disappointed by the unchallenged drumbeat of Keynesian theory in my classes. Even after Ron Paul's presidential campaign and the financial crisis had reinvigorated interest in the Austrian school, it remained absent from our lesson plans. I decided to track down the Econ department's only Austrian, Richard Langlois, to see what could be done to fix this injustice.

Last week the University of Connecticut, my alma mater, announced that it was discontinuing the waiveable student fee charged to support ultra-liberal Public Interest Research Group (also known as PIRG). The UConn Board of Trustees cited PIRG's poor bookkeeping as the reason for its decision, which was widely celebrated by the school's conservative minority.

Campus Reform recently went through a course analysis of the University of Rhode Island revealed a definitive liberal bias in the core curriculum.  Within this extensive study a few courses were found that truly shocked the researchers.  These courses are so outrageously liberal that we felt they deserved to be highlighted on their own.

 Keep in mind that each course costs at least$1,676, or $409 per credit, which doesn't include other fees associated with enrollment.  As you will see, this is a hefty sum to pay for useless courses that do nothing other than indoctrinate students.  Through these blogs we hope to show you what those on the right mean when they criticize college institutions as being liberal.

 Here the two courses we are reviewing.  The first is PHIL 218, Power/Justice: Contemporary Critical Philosophies.  This course studies:

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INTRODUCTION

Brown University is a private Ivy League university in Providence, Rhode Island with a reputation as one of the more progressive academic institutions in the country.  It is the third oldest school in the country and was founded in 1764 prior to the American Revolution.  Brown's curriculum which was revised in 1969 eliminated any core curriculum requirements.  Every course at the college can also be taken on a pass/fail basis.

GENERAL

School: Brown University
Population of Students: 6,380

Status: Private (Ivy League)

Cost: 42,230

The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public university with a wide course selection.  The University has a main campus in Kingston, as well as three other locations in Providence, Narragansett, and West Greenwich.

General

School:  University of Rhode Island
Population of Students: 19,095

Status: Public

Cost:  Instate $ 9,824.00 Outstate $ 25,912.00  Regional $ 17,192.00

Findings

The studies in Sociology and Grand Challenges are the two most blatantly liberal departments with openly biased course titles or descriptions.  The Anthropology, Environmental Economics and Political Science departments also have a strong liberal bias in their courses, which is evident in the high degree of liberal classes in their course selection.

While other departments appear to be neutral in their course descriptions, it is all too common on college campuses for professors to interject politics into non-political or apolitical courses, or to be biased in their approach of a particular subject. 

Of the courses evaluated in this study 14% of them contained a liberal agenda.

Providence College administrators are obsessed with diversity.  The Princeton Review consistently rates Providence one of the most homogeneous schools in the country.

It's not like Providence College neglected its duty as a modern American institution of higher education to promote multiculturalism and diversity at every possibly opportunity.  Scholarships, academic departments, well funded student groups, events, and an entire administrative wing of the school were already dedicated to promoting diversity and multiculturalism on campus.

Even though Providence already put a high emphasis on diversity, administrators took the Princeton Review's assessment as the mark of Cain and jumped to action.  At the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year the Providence administration hired its first ever Chief Diversity Officer and created the Unity Center which is another space on campus dedicated to multiculturalism.

Administrators at the school decided that despite their institutional efforts, enthusiasm for diversity and multiculturalism was still not at the necessary levels.  Administrators decided diversity would no longer be a choice and decided to institute a change in the school's curriculum to include a mandatory diversity requirement. 

About thirty Yale students stormed the school dining hall on Monday to protest Arizona's House Bill 2281.

Why do liberal students in faraway Connecticut believe they have something to say about a state house bill in Arizona?

ORGANIZED ALPHABETICALLY BY DEPARTMENT

Amidst controversy last week, Yale's School of Health considered withdrawing its invitation to Nancy Brinker, director and founder of the Komen Foundation to speak at its graduation.