By Ross Dubberly, Center for Entrepreneurship & Free Enterprise The faculty at my school, the University of Georgia (UGA), leans left—hard left. For example, a
poll from October of 2016 conducted by UGA’s student newspaper,
The Red & Black, found that nearly 83% of faculty members were supportive of Hillary Clinton. Further confirming what conservatives instinctively knew to be true, an
Econ Journal Watch study from September of 2016 found that the ratio of liberals to conservatives on university faculties—specifically in the social sciences—is a staggering twelve to one. That figure is quite depressing for a number of reasons, but especially for one: Leftists often feel it appropriate, a
necessity even, to inject their ideology into
everything—especially the courses they teach. Let me give you some examples from my own college experience. In a religion course I took my sophomore year, I learned that Israelis were rich and Gazans were poor because Israelis had stolen all the region’s arable land. The next year, in a political theory course, I learned a great deal about how the public greatly misunderstood Karl Marx and how socialism in the Soviet Union was not
real socialism at all. Also during that year, in an international relations course, I learned that Leninism is still a useful analytical tool for understanding the world. This included the idea that free enterprise advocates in countries like America exploit poverty-stricken people of foreign nations to keep production costs low, profits high, and free market countries’ domestic workers content. Let’s call a spade a spade:
None of the assertions above are facts. They are merely opinions—and poorly informed opinions at that. Yet these opinions are taught as if they are indisputable facts. Notions such as those above are stuffed into countless college courses. Many professors hold these socialistic, collectivized views of the world. What is a greater concern, however, is that these professors present young, impressionable people with these wacky ideas without so much as hinting that alternative economic explanations even exist. For instance, wouldn’t it perhaps merit mentioning that Israel’s wealth emanates from its free enterprise economy, while Gaza’s poverty emanates from its police-state tactics enforced by Hamas’s terrorists? Might it not be worth noting that Marxist ideology contributed to the killing of nearly
100 million people in a single century? Should no one mention that the nonsensical dogma of Leninism resulted from Vladimir Lenin’s confused and desperate attempts to explain why Karl Marx’s predictions of a worldwide proletarian revolution hadn’t happened? One would think so. But it’s obvious the Left’s love of “diversity” doesn’t extend to diversity of opinion. Many Americans understand that leftists’ domination of college faculties is a problem. But the problem is not merely the number of leftists teaching—it is, more importantly, the
manner in which they are teaching. The classroom podium has become a place for ideological pontification rather than true education. It is up to conservative students to bring real intellectual diversity into the classroom. We are the ones who now have the responsibility to advance freedom and free enterprise among future generations of leaders. And Young America’s Foundation is the organization that best helps students to succeed in achieving this mission.
Ross Dubberly is the co-chairman of the University of Georgia Young Americans for Freedom chapter. 
