Prof Jenkin's summer reading list for young conservatives: Part I

Rob Jenkins is a Higher Education Fellow with Campus Reform and a tenured associate professor of English at Georgia State University - Perimeter College. In a career spanning more than three decades at five different institutions, he has served as a head men’s basketball coach, an athletic director, a department chair, and an academic dean, as well as a faculty member. Jenkins’ opinions are his own and do not represent those of his employer.    

If you’re a conservative college student hoping to spend your time profitably this summer, here’s a suggestion: Read a book. Read several. That will broaden your horizons, deepen your understanding, and improve your vocabulary.

Plus, tackling longer works—as opposed to short pieces like this, which, don’t get me wrong, you should also read—helps you develop self-discipline and improves your powers of concentration. 

I’ve put together a short list of five great summer reads, starting with a couple of brand-new contributions to conservative resistance literature. In my next column, I’ll add three more selections: a conservative classic, one of the great novels of the 20^th century, and a gripping sci-fi page-turner. 

But here are my first two recommendations:

“Brutal Minds: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities,” by Stanley K. Ridgley.

A professor of management at Drexel University, Ridgley has produced a thoroughly researched and highly detailed account of the Left’s well-coordinated mind-control program on America’s college campuses.

Despite the stories of left-wing professors indoctrinating students in the classroom—which is a real thing, as you know from reading Campus Reform—Ridgley says that’s not the biggest problem. Such professors, he argues, are actually in the minority.

The primary mind-control practitioners are student services administrators, who have been trained at colleges of education in literal brainwashing techniques. 

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These neo-Marxist functionaries have wormed their way into every aspect of campus life, creating and implementing what they call the “co-curriculum”—a non-academic regimen aimed exclusively at breaking down students’ resistance to concepts like “anti-racism” and turning them into perfect little leftists. 

Ridgley concludes with some practical ways students and their parents can fight back, but I won’t spoil the ending for you. Read it for yourself. “Brutal Minds” is fascinating, frightening, and inspiring, all at the same time.

“When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives,” by Heather Mac Donald.

I’ve written quite a bit about the “equity” scam here at Campus Reform (for example, here and here), but Mac Donald is the acknowledged expert. As a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal, she is rightly regarded as one of the conservative movement’s most distinguished and effective scholar-journalists.

This book, a follow-up to her critically acclaimed The Diversity Delusion, chronicles the ascendence of the “equity” movement and shows how, over time, it has eclipsed time-tested concepts like merit and excellence.

Her focus is on the doctrine of “disparate impact,” which asserts that if the percentage of Blacks or other minorities in a particular group does not match their representation in society, then the only possible explanation is racism. 

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Blacks, for instance, make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population. So if we don’t have 13 percent Black doctors, or if the prison population is greater than 13 percent Black, those “systems” must be inherently racist. The only way to “fix” them is to artificially raise or lower the numbers.

If that means watering down the Medical College Aptitude Test (MCAT), or even throwing it out altogether, so be it. If it means letting Black felons off the hook, that’s only fair. If it means erasing the contributions of some of the world’s greatest artists and composers—well, they’re just a bunch of old White men, anyway. 

The consequences for our society, Mac Donald writes, will be dire. But again, I don’t want to spoil the book for you.

For now, try following up “Brutal Minds” with “When Race Trumps Merit.” You’ll find they complement each other well. And I’ll have three more recommendations for you in a couple of weeks.