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<p>I had no idea that a simple statement of fact would be so controversial, and I can’t understand the reaction here. Is it that this is the first time you are hearing about the undeniable leftist bent of college faculties in general, the humanities in particular? Or is it that you think I’m trying to make the case that all English professors are communists and that English curriculum is purposefully designed to propagandize?</p>
<p>Let me break it down. The first point I made is that many of the self-described communists on college faculties tend to be English professors. I don’t know why this is, I just know that any time I’m reading about a far-left professor, most of the time they teach English. I really don’t feel the need to cite specific examples when they are so abundant to an astute Googler.</p>
<p>Is it what I said about Leninism? That is also true, that is the teaching of Lenin and plenty of other communist leaders and activists, that education ought to be used as a means of shaping society and indoctrination. The New Left movement of the 60s was explicitly communist, and it was they who went from taking campus buildings hostage as students to actually teaching in them. This too is well-known history to anybody who’s read about that movement. Bill Ayers is the perfect example of this, he’s one among many who use education (especially higher education) as a propaganda tool. You don’t have to take my word for all of this.</p>
<p>Now, I have no idea to what extent the Bill Ayers’s’s’s of the world have succeeded in shaping college curriculum, but there’s no doubt that their ideas have become part of the higher ed cultural zeitgeist, even if most people are unaware of their source. Many English classes are definitely taught with an unmistakable political message, “labor literature” and so forth. I was curious if this politicization was responsible for how unfocused English has become on many campuses, or what other forces were at work.</p>
<p>There’s this term “economic imperialism,” which despite its name actually has to do with economists using economic analysis and economic principles to understand such things as criminology, anthropology, sociology, law, etc., things that are often seen as having nothing to do with economics. This is actually a misunderstanding of what economics was always all about. So another good question is, am I misunderstanding what English was supposed to be? Has it been the case for centuries that to study “English” in a university setting was to study sociology and various other things?</p>