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Borjas on Indoctrination
According to FIRE, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:
The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs....
The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”
George Borjas writes:
Why am I super-sensitive to this? Because as a young boy I myself went through a one-year course in ideological reorientation. I attended an elite elementary Catholic school in Havana. Castro took over, the Catholic school was shut down, and I got transferred to a revolutionary school where the entire day was spent teaching Marxist-Leninist ideology. Luckily, this lasted only a year and I continued my education in Miami (where the entire school day was instead spent talking about the upcoming football game). I am certain that the blind zealotry that I saw in the young teacher's eyes that year turned me off from that particular way of viewing the world for the rest of my life. One can only hope that many of the students forced to attend the re-education programs at Delaware and other universities react in the same way.
I'd be interested to hear from anyone with first hand experience of the University of Delaware program.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on October 31, 2007 at 07:05 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
Not to burst anyone's bubble, but this program is sure not as strifling as the bloggers / news media is making it out to be. I am an RA at UD and our main focus is getting residents to think about issues on their own. We do have to have one on one meetings and floor meetings with education-based themes but it is a very open and inclusive. This whole racism thing too is taken really out of context bc it was from an outside speaker we had during training.
Posted by: laura at Oct 31, 2007 7:46:43 AM
Again, what I find interesting is that university administrators seem to think indoctrinration works in
breaking deeply embedded attitudes about race and gender, but social conservatives are constantly told
that they are naive for thinking chastity-based education could possibly work.
Posted by: JohnMcG at Oct 31, 2007 7:58:08 AM
JohnMcG, Sex is much more fun that Racism.
Posted by: David Shor at Oct 31, 2007 8:21:45 AM
The money quote is "students forced to attend re-education programs"--could be a Fox News subtitle!
Stick with the econ, guys. Rush has this stuff covered. :-)
Posted by: MostlyAPragmatist at Oct 31, 2007 8:35:55 AM
My sister went to UD 1997-1999 and she didn't go through said program.
Posted by: jw at Oct 31, 2007 8:36:42 AM
To Laura -just look at the "intensive training" link in Borjas' post. If anything Borjas understates the level of PC indoctrination.
This is the Univ of Del's own statement.
Posted by: critic at Oct 31, 2007 8:55:56 AM
From one of the university documents available through the links:
Citizens capable of contributing to the development of a sustainable society must first develop empathy. This empathy will be developed through an advanced awareness of oppression and inequity that exists at a local and national level. Students will become aware of inequities, examine why these inequities exist, understand the concept of institutionalized privilege, and recognize systematized oppression (e.g. individual, institutional, and societal). Students will also examine forms of oppression related to specific social identities (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, SES, religion, and age) and will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems that support this oppression. By having this knowledge, students can then learn how to change these systems and other systems which impact equity of resources.
The stifling prose doesn't give me much hope that the program will be successful in impacting equity systems or contributing to sustainable society development.
A course on rhetoric for the author may help, or even just an afternoon with Strunk and White.
Posted by: Mike-KP at Oct 31, 2007 9:13:00 AM
Alex, I'd be wary of basing a post solely on two links from "The Fire" website. I know from first-hand experience that there are untrue allegations on that site. Given the statements so far from UD students here, I would not give the Fire benefit of the doubt unless confirmed by a more reliable source.
Posted by: DG at Oct 31, 2007 9:42:06 AM
DG your point is well taken which is why I asked for anyone with first hand experience to report. Note also the title of the post. I thought Borjas's experiences and background were especially interesting regardless of the exact situation at U. Delaware.
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Oct 31, 2007 9:54:12 AM
Just look at FIRE's website and notice that among the senior staff, founders, and directors you will not find a non-white face or a hispanic name. Is this coincidence? After all, an organization ostensibly dedicated to the core values of "liberty, legal equality, and dignity" would appeal to all.
FIRE appears to be neo-con wingnut site.
Posted by: squik at Oct 31, 2007 10:37:31 AM
Amazing isn't it? Denouncing the messenger and denial. In fact, all you have to do it poke around the UD website -relevant diversity parts of it -and you will see that Borjas fears are more than justified. Frightening, unless this is some Halloween joke.
Posted by: critic at Oct 31, 2007 11:03:38 AM
Whether this particular story is true or not, there has been enough of this malarkey coming out of the Academy to make one consider it highly likely.
Posted by: Michael Mace at Oct 31, 2007 11:21:13 AM
FWIW, I've followed a lot of FIRE's activities thru the years, and calling them a bunch of neocon wingnuts strikes me as 'way off base. The organization came together during the worst of the PC years and has done a lot of really heroic work attacking thought-police absurdities and standing up for freedom of speech.
Posted by: Michael Blowhard at Oct 31, 2007 11:59:32 AM
Squik attacks the racial make-up of FIRE. A quick look at UD's racial makeup shows a white male President, a white male Provost, a white male Executive Vice President & Treasurer, a white male Associate VP of Facilities, a white male VP & U. Secretary, etc. In fact, every VP I can find that has a name listed with the position is a Euro, male name, and any women listed, serving in "oppressed" underling roles beneath their superior white males, are also, in fact, white names.
Predictably, libs insist on inclusiveness for all, but not at the expense of their own cushy jobs.
Posted by: Guest at Oct 31, 2007 12:02:35 PM
I agree that the UD program, at least as described, is repulsive, but there is something interesting about Borjas' comment:
...as a young boy I myself went through a one-year course in ideological reorientation. I attended an elite elementary Catholic school in Havana. Castro took over, the Catholic school was shut down, and I got transferred to a revolutionary school where the entire day was spent teaching Marxist-Leninist ideology. Luckily, this lasted only a year...
I don't doubt that the year spent studying Marxism-Leninism counts as "ideological reorientation." But what about the earlier years at a Catholic school? Did Borjas experience no ideological, i.e. religious, indoctrination there?
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Oct 31, 2007 12:25:30 PM
Non-inclusiveness is often a sign of racism, regardless of who is excluded.
If UD were "indoctrinating" students with neoclassical economics, I doubt any of the commenters would be upset about it. They'd hail it as a great step forward in education. One wonders, then, why people are afraid of UD's anti-racism program. Are you really trying to defend racism? It appears so.
Posted by: squik at Oct 31, 2007 12:27:56 PM
We still haven't heard from someone with first-hand experience of the program.
Posted by: PJ at Oct 31, 2007 12:45:48 PM
@Bernard Yomtov: On a per capita basis, I'd wager that Catholic believers have done less harm than Marxist-Leninist (Stalinist-Mao-et al) believers. (Yes, I am including the crusades and the choir boys.) From this metric, teaching ML thought is contrary to the goals of humanity and counts as indoctrination more than education. QED :)
Posted by: David Zetland at Oct 31, 2007 12:49:54 PM
If UD were "indoctrinating" students with neoclassical economics, I doubt any of the commenters would be upset about it. They'd hail it as a great step forward in education.
No indoctrination necessary; just encouragement to think. Sort of the opposite of the UD program.
Posted by: RJ at Oct 31, 2007 1:21:07 PM
PJ, you missed the very first comment, from "laura", who said that the program was not as depicted by "the bloggers / news media"... RJ, if this sole comment by someone at UD is trustworthy, the program's "main focus is getting residents to think about issues on their own", rather than the opposite, as you suggest.
Posted by: alex r at Oct 31, 2007 1:30:22 PM
I have never been through a Marxist education, but I have been through a Catholic one (this was ages ago, when the Mass was still in Latin). I did not then and never since saw it as indoctrination. The concept of free will was fundamental to the Catholic doctrine - ultimately individuals could and did choose what to believe.
Contrast this with the concept of 'treatment' for 'racism', etc . The presumption is that students' minds need to be rewired so that they cannot engage in a thoughtcrime, so to speak.
Posted by: PJ at Oct 31, 2007 1:39:30 PM
I'm not sure I understand. Is their definition of "racist" simply "white people"? Isn't that kind of, um, racist?
Posted by: d.cous. at Oct 31, 2007 2:01:44 PM
I went through a freshman orientation class at a pretty stereotypical liberal arts school. You could probably make an argument that it was indoctrination (and this was a favorite topic amongst some of my more conservative classmates), but the experience is more of a constant gentle nudging towards the school/liberal world view as opposed to the intentional and coerced experience some might have you believe. If there was any sort of indoctrination happening, it came just as much from the overwhelmingly liberal student population as from the professors. That's not to say it wasn't full of organizational silliness though. I definitely had to suffer through a reading on the 'population bomb', which I understood to be discredited by the time it got to our gentle young minds in 2001. I was a bit of a loud mouth and had a good time playing devils advocate to the professor. Of course any facts or world bank predictions I presented were politely dismissed by the class at large.
More to the point: How bad was it? Meh, it was a pretty obnoxious waste of my parent's money, and I think there was quite a bit more reaffirmation of the beliefs people already held than actual changing of our collective young minds, but it was overbearing enough for the occasional fellow student to come up to me in private and thank me for arguing the minority view.
Posted by: John El at Oct 31, 2007 2:05:28 PM
A good methodological point (which Alex obviously gets): when you're looking at these complaints, look for evidence of students speaking up on their own behalf. My time looking at the FIRE website, and trying to come up with something on google make this look like there aren't many Delaware students speaking out about this. Combine that with Laura's assertion that this was an outside speaker who did not represent the program, and you have reason for caution.
Think about it this way: RAs are crack left-wing commando squads. They're ordinary college kids who want free housing in the dorms. Surely some of them will be speaking up against the program if it's that bad. So if you find students (a lot of them) confirming these reports, then and only then should you make a stink. It's always too easy for outside groups to create a controversy.
Posted by: Justin at Oct 31, 2007 2:30:24 PM
Maybe because I went to a good liberal arts bastion of liberal thought, all we ever got for floor meetings and RA-led activities had to do with dealing with school and studying stress, getting along with each other, and the school honor system and traditions.
Posted by: megs at Oct 31, 2007 3:39:24 PM
