Even Small Colleges Fully Display Their Marxist Proclivities

by Al Benson Jr.

It should come as no surprise that colleges and universities, big and small, continue to have their leftist bent on full display. This should be a somber warning to those parents who are considering sending their kids to some of these schools for “higher education.” You’d be better off sending the kids to a vocational school to learn a trade of some kind. Most colleges and universities do not provide real education. They, like most K-12 public schools, provide leftist indoctrination, because the true intent is not to educate but to indoctrinate the kids in a leftist worldview, which they will pass on to their kids.

It was with some interest that I saw on the internet just this morning an article from WJAR tv in Providence, Rhode Island about a so-called “antisemitic” protest at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. The article noted, in part, “Twenty-three Rhode Island School of Design students and one outside participant took over the second floor of the Washington Place Building Minday night. Students are asking university officials to divest from pro-Israel groups. Students for Justice in Palestine were livestreaming with a projector the students inside the building. Organizers say they are prepared to stay indefinitely until their demands are met…RISD officials sent NBC 10 a statement that read in part, ‘We have, and continue to affirm our students’ right to freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and peaceful assembly…”

Freedom of speech is fine, but when you go so far as to start occupying buildings, as has happened on some campuses and denying those that work in those buildings the ability to do their jobs then you have moved beyond “peaceful protest.” I have contended that these campus protests are not really about antisemitism, but are really about giving the far left an excuse to radicalize college students for whatever cause they are pushing at the moment. The whole “antisemitic” thing as a farce anyway, as most modern Jews are not Semites to begin with.

The Rhode Island School of Design, an art school, has a colorful history of leftist activity to begin with. Back in 1970, in January of that year, one of the professors there invited Carl Braden, billed as a “community organizer” (sound familiar? That’s what they told us Obama was) to come and spend about a month, supposedly helping students to “organize their lives.” I happened to see the flyer that was sent out about this at the time.

You might be tempted about now to say “well, so what?” Well, as it turns out, Carl Braden was an identified Communist Party Member who had done jail time for contempt of Congress. If you get a chance, look Comrade Braden up. You can still find him on the internet. He was also involved with Martin Luther King Jr. and the “civil rights” movement. When it was discovered what Carl Braden’s true background was, Pastor Ennio Cugini of the Clayville Church in Foster, RI called the School of Design and asked them flat out why they were bringing in Communists to lecture the students. He was told that the school wanted “to expose their students to all different perspectives. If that were really the case, then the school should also have invited someone to come in to speak that came from a rightist perspective, possibly someone from the John Birch Society. But of course that never happened. What the school really wanted was to expose the students to various shades of far left doctrine. I doubt such has changed in the last 50 years. The School of Design sits right next door to Brown University, another Northeastern bastion of liberal/left ideology.

When the Kent State riots erupted in the early 1970s, RISD students were right out there protesting with all the other campus radicals, their professors out there instructing their students out of Mao’s Little Red Book on how to riot and demonstrate. If you ask me how I know all this, I worked in Providence, Rhode Island at the time and saw it all firsthand. I can remember talking to the mother of a RISD student back then who was bemoaning the leftward trend she was seeing in her daughter. She remarked how her daughter now wasn’t the same person she’d originally sent off to college. She commented about how she’d considered sending her daughter to a “more conservative” school, though I doubted she’d be able to find such a school. Back then they mostly didn’t exist.

But I can remember telling her, “if you want your daughter back, you need to get her out of RISD otherwise you’ve lost her forever.” I don’t know what she ever did. We left that part of the country the following year and moved to the Midwest. But I agree with what writer William Lind said about colleges in this country–that they are “little ivy-covered North Koreas.” There may still be a mere handful of colleges in this country that still try to truly educate kids, but you’ve got to search long and hard for them. Most colleges and universities today, are like most K-12 public schools, nothing more than leftist indoctrination centers that exist only to revolutionize the next generation. They like the public schools, should be avoided like the plague!