I Know I Said I was Done For Today...

...but I came across a classic "What color is the sky in your world?" moment. From Patricians, Professionals, and Political Science, by Michael Parenti:

Today there are right-wing critics who would have us
believe that institutions of higher learning are hotbeds
of “politically correct” leftist orthodoxy, propagated
by liberals, feminists, Black militants, Marxists, and
gay/lesbian-rights promoters, a place where conservative
opinion cannot find light of day. On the average
college campus, it is said, a decent conservative who
refuses to bow his head to the tyranny of campus liberals
dare not hope for a career. In fact, no university
is under leftist rule, and conservatives remain a regular
fixture inmany academic departments. The university’s
corporate-oriented board of trustees and extravagant
monetary compensations for top administrators, its
heavy exploitation of adjunct teachers, steep student
financial indebtedness, increasing corporate arrogation
of institutional functions, and overall growing dependence
on private funding all militate against anything
resembling a radical predominance (Soley 1997;White
and Hauck 2000). If anything, in political science the
spectrum has moved somewhat to the right since the
1970s, mirroring the climate of opinion in the wider
society.

The only people on earth dumb enough to believe this are A) folks who have never been to college and therefor haven't experienced things firsthand, or B) crazed ideologues who look at every dyed in the wool Democrat as a right wing reactionary.

I got my B.A. in Political Science in 1990, my first M.A. in Political Science in 1992, and my second M.A. in political philosophy in 1998, and, before I entered Catholic Unversity in 1995, I dealt with liberal Democrats, Marxists, neo-Marxists, "post-modernists" of various stripes, feminists of various stripes, anarchists, and even one or two Republicans, but no one really conservative or (heaven forbid) libertarian. Of my cohort of fellow grad students I do not know of a single one who was right-of-center now employed in academia. (Some of my grad school buddies read this blog, so I'm sure they will point one out if I have forgotten them.)

I'm not saying you have to subscribe to the Horowitz school of conservative paranoia, but you have to take a leave of your good senses to believe in Parenti's leftist parody of them. Good God, "conservatives" couldn't even remove Ward Churchill who lacks both the academic credentials and the acumen to hold a university position.

So rest easy those of you curled up tonight with your lovingly worn copies of "The German Ideology," big, bad corporate America isn't coming for ya.