Duke professor: College leaves liberal students ill-equipped
The prof argues a sense of collectivism has left liberal students unable to defend and argue their points against counterarguments and has left them ill-equipped for the real world.
Munger says he is concerned about the self-perpetuating nature of liberalism on campuses.
Professor Michael Munger chaired Duke's Political Science Department for a decade.
A Duke professor says colleges are so left-wing that they are perpetuating ignorance and ideological bigotry.
Speaking at Milton Friedman Day in Wilmington, North Carolina, Professor Michael Munger declared that American college students face a “one-question test”: are you liberal or conservative?
undefinedTweet this
“The correct answer is, ‘I’m a liberal, and proud of it.’ "That concerns me,” said Munger, who chaired Duke’s Political Science department for a decade.
Munger recalled a department chair meeting where a female professor remarked that liberal students already knew the correct answer.
“I find that I don’t really need to spend much time with the liberal students, because they already have it right,” said the professor. “I spend most of my time arguing with conservative students. That’s how I spend my time in the class.”
“It’s as if we asked students to play chess, but only taught them one-move openings,” Munger complained, though he added that conservative students “study the whole game, not just the first move.”
“It may have come as a shock to the parents of these liberal students that they had learned everything they need to know...in high school,” Munger said. “Having memorized a kind of secular leftist-catechism, they were free to wander around the quads of Duke and enjoy themselves.”
Munger said a colleague at Duke coined the phrase “The Women’s Studies Nod” to explain the collective mentality of liberal students agreeing with and perpetuating the beliefs of other liberal students.
“When someone makes a ridiculously extreme, empirically unfounded but ideologically correct argument, everyone else must nod vigorously,” said Munger. “[It is] not just a, ‘Yes that’s correct,’ nod, but ‘Yes, you are correct, you are one of us, we are one spirit and one great collective shared mind’ nod.”
Munger says this sense of collectivism has left liberal students unable to defend and argue their points against counterarguments and has left them ill equipped for the real world.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @MaggieLitCRO
