Below is my column in The Hill on the rise of advocacy courses and degrees in higher education. Activism has always been a valued part of our colleges and universities. Indeed, many departments have long incorporated advocacy subjects in their course of study, including in law schools. My concern is the degree to which advocacy is now overwhelming academics in some of these programs. It is often hard to tell the difference between advocacy groups and advocacy programs in these universities. For some schools, a new B.A. model — a Bachelors of Advocacy — is emerging in higher education.
Here is the column:
“Field trip for an extra 5 points.” The offer to students at the University of California-Berkeley sounded like a typical offer for students to go to a special exhibit at a museum or lecture at an institute. The “field trip” referenced by graduate assistant Victoria Huynh was joining a protest “against settler-colonial occupation of Gaza.”
This extra credit offer is all too typical of higher education today, where advocacy is now being taught as if it were a course of study. After an outcry, the school solved the problem by ordering “a number of options for extra credit, not just one.”
Many advocacy-based classes have course descriptions that sound analytical and clinical. The UC Davis course “Asian American Communities and Race Relations,” for instance, states that it covers “race relations and the commonalities and differences between Asian Americans and other race and ethnic groups.” However, the assignments and lectures often reflect a political viewpoint that students are expected to mimic if they want to excel in the class.
In this course, a screen shot showed that the class would discuss “Palestinian history in relation to class concepts like colonialism, imperialism, and Third World solidarity.” It is clear enough that “the solidarity” cannot extend to Israel.
Advocacy has increasingly displaced academics in higher education. Activism now permeates higher education as social justice becomes the touchstone for many departments. Today protests rather than Plato are more likely to be the concentration of many students.
Even journalism students are now sometimes told to drop “objectivity” and “leave neutrality behind.” Former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. explained that “pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading ‘bothsidesism’ in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects.”
Advocacy has long been part of graduate programs like law and social work, where students are trained to represent the interests of clients or other individuals. But now, advocacy and activism itself is being offered as a general course for students in place of education. Where protests were once defiant demonstrations held in the university yard, they are now a course of study in classrooms led by academic activists.
For example, Arizona State University offers a BA program entirely on “community advocacy and social policy” that focuses on “historically under-served individuals, families and communities.” Students “complete courses in two core areas: diversity and oppressed populations and social issues and interventions.”
Many schools offer “advocacy and social justice studies.” At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, students are offered the opportunity to “study social justice with distinguished instructors from a wide range of academic departments, from Afro-American Studies to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies.”
Camden County College offers a diversity and social justice degree based on the advocacy work of the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic, which “revealed the depth of social inequality and its life-or-death consequences.” Others offer “a certificate of proficiency in social justice and an A.S. degree in Human Services, Social Justice Advocacy.”
These courses offer far left-faculty platforms to proselytize and politicize. It is often confined to one side of the political spectrum and occurs now on every level of our educational system. In academic departments, future primary and secondary teachers are taught that “teaching is a political act” that allows them to instill political and social values in their young pupils. Those students can then attend college and get degrees in activism and advocacy.
In New York, 1.1 million students were excused by the Department of Education to leave their classes to march against climate change. It seems doubtful that the same accommodation would be allowed for countervailing conservative causes like pro-life marches or demonstrations in favor of gun rights.
These courses dovetail with faculties that have moved radically to the left, with many faculty using their courses to espouse political viewpoints more than educate. The clear message to students is that they are expected to express the same views in their own analysis.
One professor erased any pretense and directly required students to contribute to her advocacy group as part of their training. In the meantime, conservative faculty find themselves censored or suspended for engaging in unpopular speech or attending controversial rallies.
Universities as a whole have largely purged their ranks of Republicans and conservatives over the last few decades. A new survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identify as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4 percent as “very conservative.”
Another study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only 9 percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools.
In these departments with advocacy and social justice components, diversity of thought runs from the left to the far left.
Some of these faculty advocates can teach by example. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. She later pleaded guilty to criminal assault, but the university refused to fire or discipline her.
Other professors continue to engage in violence or destruction in front of students in order to block pro-life or other views from being expressed on campuses.
The same blind rage was shown after the massacre of Israelis by Hamas this month as faculty rallied students to denounce Israel. UC Davis Professor (and undergraduate adviser) Jemma Decristo posted social media threats against the faculty and the families of those supporting Israel as possible targets. Decristo wrote: “one group of ppl we have easy access to in the U.S. is all these zionist journalists who spread propaganda and misinformation…they have houses w addresses, kids in school, they can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.” This threatening language was accompanied by pictures of a knife and an axe, followed by three drops of blood.
The university eventually denounced Decristo’s violent, threatening comments, but it had no prior qualms about the professor teaching American studies to UC Davis students. She is part of the radical chic — the far left professors who have populated departments for years.
The emphasis on advocacy at the expense of education has also contributed to the increasing hostility toward opposing views on campus. These professors and students often show little tolerance for others’ views and “advocate” by canceling or silencing other views as “harmful.”
Many of us encourage political activism and engagement of our students. They need to bring their passion and voices to the debates today over issues ranging from abortion to the environment to wars.
We have long benefited from intellectual activists in our country, but they were intellectuals first and activists second. They were thought-leaders who used classic education to advance societal change. As jobs and markets become more competitive, we are not doing these students any favors as we crank out thousands with few skills beyond staging demonstrations.
Jonathan Turley is J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
It’s all such BS. Kurt Schlichter’s column might be hard to read and it might be hard to digest, but it’s the truth. When people who advocate social justice support butchers like Hamas we are seeing the end of reason and the time to ready for the siege.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/10/30/accept-that-savagery-is-the-true-nature-of-the-world-and-deal-with-it-n2630502
Mary,
That was a good, hard read.
Thing is, the modern world wants it’s conflicts and wars all nice, neat, simple with no one getting hurt.
Yet, Cornell students advised to ‘avoid’ kosher dining hall after violent antisemitic threats
“One post states: “if you see a jewish ‘person’ on campus follow them home and slit their throats.”
And then there is the propaganda war. See the NYT headlines and the hospital airstrike.
I, of course, refuse to “accept that savagery is the true nature of the world”. .. although I do continue to recommend to walk softly and carry a big stick.
Don’t believe the Hospital bombing was an errant Hamas rocket .. . more likely an [errant] Israeli U.S. made JDAM.
*also, don’t believe ‘Russia’ blew up Nordstream pipelines or shelling their own positions around the nuclear power plant in Ukraine. etc. etc.
“Don’t believe the Hospital bombing was an errant Hamas rocket .. . more likely an [errant] Israeli U.S. made JDAM.”
Don’t be dumb. We have seen pictures of Israel shooting targets and when they are shot they are gone. This is definitely a result of a Hamas misfire. It happens all the time and Hamas kills a lot of its own people. Then they blame someone else. All the evidence provided to date shows Hamas did it. The only evidence you have comes from anti-Semitic garbage sites.
We are the same brutal, cruel, and warlike creatures we have always been. Every headline, every act of hideous violence, and every pro-genocide cheer by the grad school sociopaths who fetishize Third-World savages, proves it. What we have to do is lift the scales from our eyes, understand the situation we are in, and accept it.
Thank you for sharing that link Mary. If this is hard for someone to digest, then it would not surprise me that they had mistakenly thought human nature is “better” in a modern culture. The reality is human nature never changes. Just as laws can be used to thwart the worst of our nature, they can also be used excite it. George Soros has spent billions towards the latter and we’re suffering as a nation because of it.
The whole column is a bad, blind, joke. We the uSA have been slaughtering other nations for 20 plus years, on a rampage of death and destruction never before seen.
Same for israel wiping out gazans like they are flies for the past decades as well.
The writer lives in some mental fantasy that he is the good guy and his country and israel haven’t laid a hand on anyone, being the kind and new peaceful peacenick he extols had better wake up to reality.
HE HAD BETTER WAKE UP TO REALITY. HIS NATION IS A SLAUGHTERING MONSTER OF EPIC PROPORTION. SO IS HIS ALLY.
Once he gets that reality under his dumb dumb belt, he should write another column, apologizing for his stupid self induced delusional bubble.
“Same for israel wiping out gazans like they are flies for the past decades as well.”
Shak, your head is on backward. Hamas has been attacking Israel on almost a continuous basis while Israel has barely responded. The savages crossed the border and killed innocent women and children beheading some, so Israel is going to wipe out Hamas. That would be good for the world.
I know you get confused a lot and have to be corrected. Try and do better.
Outside of the STEM curriculum (and even that is not immune), American education at all levels is in a downward spiral. An advocacy degree is basically a program to create future totalitarians who will work to crush all dissent. There will be no development of critical thinking, no training in quantitative disciplines, and no education in civics, history, or the culture of western civilization. They will graduate not knowing the difference between Bach and Copeland nor Da Vinci and Picasso; they will have no knowledge of the history of totalitarianism, they wont be able to find Afghanistan on a map, and they will think Plato is a planet. But they will advocate for climate change policies and not have one single course in Physics, Meteorology, or even basic Chemistry. The strong student support for Hamas is just the beginning. Look at Turley’s own University where a student group can call for genocide of the Israeli population with no consequences. This country is doomed .
When the United States can no longer print money of any value, this whole discussion becomes meaningless.
That happened back in 1971.
De-dollarization was happening slowly until 2022.
De-dollarization has been accelerating since then.
What happens when all those US dollars come back to the US?
No one really knows.
But some speculate the inflation we would experience would make the current inflation look like a picnic.
Invest in chickens, PMs and ammo.
The difference between a person who is truly an activist or advocate and a mindless lemming is that the true activist reaches his or her own intrinsic opinion from personal experiences, from reading widely, engaging people of all opinions, traveling and settling on a working belief that is subject to change if facts and observations tell otherwise.
I would wager that many of today’s “activists” are shallow in both knowledge and experience. They think what they are programmed to think, do what they are programmed to do and say what they are told to say. If time and circumstances were different, they would be standing in line for Kool-aid. Why else would the universities drive out anyone claiming to be a conservative?
Here are the three main enemies of Western Civilization: majority of government; majority of media; majority of academia. Why? They’re mostly staffed by incompetent, yet pretentious people that force feed their ideologies because they’re not sellable.
Dear Prof Turley,
“Hey teacher, leave them kids alone” ~ Pink Floyd
You have “previously written how Hamas is morally and legally a terrorist organization.” You wrote ‘terrorism’ is defined by “any … act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.”
By that definition, as even through a haze of self-absorbed reflection, Trump understood, there are “a lot of killers” and terrorists around the world. By your definition, some of the most hostile and destructive ‘terrorists’ are governments and international organizations.
Consider Joe Biden and the U.S. government, for example. Biden linked the recent request for an additional $100 billion for the ‘two-front’ wars in Ukraine and Israel as our common defense of ‘democracy’ around the world. Notwithstanding, Israel is a ‘Jewish’ state (ie. theocracy?) and Ukraine is run by fanatical and corrupt ultra-nationalists hell-bent on the complete eradication of their own ‘Russian’ heritage. Ostensibly.
That’s advocacy.
Israel is a Jewish state but not a theocracy.
“BA in Advocacy”, because they’re incapable of passing traditional courses. Let’s be honest if there was a proficiency entrance exam 30% to 35% of candidates for “BA in Advocacy” wouldn’t be accepted in any college. Drop all minorities quota demands, government picking up the tab and what will you have?
I salute the efforts within higher education to modernize an archaic curriculum that has proven itself over time to not adequately educate students to the real threats that face them moving forward.
Jon, your approach is largely one of divide and conquer and it’s drifting into obscurity. In particular, you seem to have based your thoughts on the idea that one hundred percent objectivity is possible and it’s not.
In fact, by maintaining that there is this false idea of objectivity you open the door to the worst of bothsidism,, enabling you to equate things like a woman’s right to choose how her body is treated within the law is somehow equal to gun rights. I’m glad what you consider to be advocacy is making the rhetorical tactic you’ve leaned on to justify support of many sketchy causes within your rightist legal community. Onward to proper advocacy!! There isn’t a more worthy tactic to instill in students facing a world of imbalance and dysfunction.
“. . . to modernize . . .”
Today, anytime you hear that expression, run for the hills. Given the culture’s nihilism, it means that some Western value is about to be toppled.
This made me laugh. At you. Thank you.
“This made me laugh. At you.”
Behold the “modernized” psychology. Bereft of ideas and arguments, it uses laughter as a tool of destruction.
(Thank you for illustrating my point.)
Nah. You just made a generalized statement (which you’ve now added to) which is laughable on its face.
“You just made a generalized statement . . .”
Behold the modernized brain.
It stares blankly at a piece of bark on a tree. (Forest? What forest?) But it cannot grasp broad abstractions such as “culture,” “nihilism,” “Western.”
Why not teach them skills to make a living? They should be encouraged to think for themselves, experience for themselves and not go running to designated media or Wikipedia and Google for everything. Instead, many, apparently, cannot tell the difference between a man and a woman?
I despise guns and yet I own one and skilled in its use. I live in a violent city. I have the right to defend myself from violence. My government, when they arrest the criminals puts them right back on the street. Shoplifters take what they want. All of the detergents and cosmetics are under lock and key in Target and Walmart. Advocacy? Try enforcing the laws to protect the innocent instead of the criminals. There is a start.
There is a dearth of skilled labor, doctors and experienced professionals and yet the universities waste time and money on B.S. degrees for students who were cheated during their student careers and cannot meet entrance requirements for the jobs skills that are critical and by the way pay well.
E.M.
Colleges offer B.S. degrees in things like DEI, students take these classes and get degrees and then find out there is no job that will pay that well.
Then the grads complain they cannot get a job that pays $200k from the get go. And that is what they expected. To get paid six figures with no experience.
I know two women who got degrees in women’s studies.
One now works making cabinetry and admits the degree in women’s studies was a waste.
The other, got her graduate degree in non-profits. Her last pay raise got her to $48k.
The government has gone after good doctors and nurses during the covid scam and fired loads of them, some licenses taken, all sorts of scoundrels silencing good medicine.
The US has spent 1 billion on post covid research and not a single early treatment protocol has emerged from it. *Dr P. A. McCullough*
Ivermectin, despite the MSM and government banning, is a good safe early treatment, as is HCQ. With other meds available, the emergency gene therapy could not be forwarded, that is against the law, so the good early treatments were attacked and shut down.
The government health care protection agencies are captured and big pharma and HC money pays 80% of their yearly budgets. CDC NIH etc
We are in trouble.
“Arizona State University offers a BA program entirely on ‘community advocacy and social policy’ . . .”
That is academia’s in-your-face propaganda.
More insidious is its stealth propaganda, aka “stealth courses” or “Trojan horse courses.” They’re listed in a college catalog with vanilla-sounding names, e.g., “Shakespeare.” But in practice, the “professor” propagandizes, e.g., for feminism. (Feminist academics love to “deconstruct” Othello.)
Good luck to the student who complains: I’d like to learn about plot, theme, characterization, style — *in Shakespeare*.
Sam: excellent comment. THanks
lin
L: You’re welcome. And thank you.
Learn about the college you or your kids are going to and do not give those that push this garbage your partronage and the problem will go away.
Twain’s other quotes on School
“I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
“Everything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”
“All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge.”
The genius writer and father of American literature, Mark Twain, was not educated beyond elementary school.
The push to send all kids to college was the tip-off that college wasn’t about education, but indoctrination, for most. Five or six years ago, I was told that 25% of all four-year college courses were remedial-level – I can’t confirm that, but no one has ever denied it.
May I share a story that I believe illustrates your point. I did not have the opportunity to go to college as a teen; luckily I worked for a Fortune 50 company that was super supportive of their employees and offered tuition for degrees in business, sciences, etc. I started to school at night, and like most freshmen, the first course I took was English 101. At the first class, the instructor gave out tests — grammar, spelling, writing, comprehension, etc. The next week, the tests were handed back – when my name was called, the instructor came over to my desk and demanded to know where I went to high school. OMG, I must have really screwed up….but no, I was the first student to make 100% on all the tests. There had evidently been a lot of failures and quite a few students were advised to drop English 101 and take a remedial course first. I expect this happened in quite a few courses. In the 20 years between my high school graduation and when I was able to start to college, basic English and writing skills that were required to graduate high school had disappeared. I was lucky – my employer paid for 2 degrees (including my MS from George Washington University), and I graduated cum laude from both universities. BTW, I did not go to a private high school….but rather a public school in one of the poorest counties in the US (we were a pilot county for food stamps).
Defund
End all federal aid to colleges, cities and states
Let Democrats fund their Brainwashing Failure.
Only a room full of phd’s could be bamfoozled by the current state of College education
GOVERNMENT AT ALL LEVELS, need to strictly avoid even a penny to colleges tuitions. The college system has more than enough endowments to fund ALL students seeking an education. Loaning money like any lender. Debt incurred by the student must be dischargeable by common bankruptcy law.
You want a Fine Arts doctorate? It is yours for the taking. Academia is100 % in favor of such areas of study. In fact, lament the fact, so few choose that path. The University is free to loan the money for such an education, with full knowledge the Student will only be able to service that debt, be the salary earned by the student.
no Debt can’t be dischargeable by bankruptcy law…because every amoral graduating Democrat….we would declare bankruptcy 1 day after graduation!
The bankruptcy would be the burden of the college issuing the degree. That’s when we will learn exactly what areas of education the colleges are willing to support.
I predict a day will come when those with an “advocacy” major will have trouble finding gainful employment and might commit crimes to gain what they want. Remember what we saw just a couple of years ago. Might we see more burning, looting and other crimes? I think so. I fear so. Down the road, some will amend their resume omitting their “advocacy” credentials but will still be known via their social media history. Overly strong advocacy divides, just what we need, more division!
you kid yourself. Today’s corporations are JAMMING black activist into position of power. Wall Street is hand in hand with Democrats. Because they offer total centralized power! This is Fascism…where Government controls the purse strings and FORCE business to dance the same tune. Think Germany 1930’s
@guy
I agree completely. HR departments are full of the same activists, and the thing is – it’s been swelling for some time now. Things have had to get this bad for anyone to care. People need to disavow themselves of the notion that there is some nebulous real world these fools will inevitably bump into. Look no further than Disney, Silicon Valley, medicine, government, or education for evidence. Woke indoctrination is a plague that will not cease unless we actively make it cease, and eventually it’ll be too late and the alternatives will not be at all pleasant.
The entire era of ‘unicorns’ was a sign we were already about to be knee deep, and few could be bothered to care. 😐
The latest is diversity hiring for Air Traffic Controllers. Terrifying.
Knowing the percentage of senior tenured faculty who were college activists in the late 60’s early 70’s would be an interesting tell. The pigeons having come home to roost.
“However, the assignments and lectures often reflect a political viewpoint that students are expected to mimic if they want to excel in the class.” (JT)
That is one of the most insidious consequences of propaganda-driven “education.”
A student cites a source that is *not* an approved advocate. The professor responds with a dismissive: “I do not consider [that scholar] a source for anything.”
I have personally witnessed that propaganda tactic countless times. Tragically, the student has no recourse.
It’s in Berkeley’s DNA or in the Water. Univ. of Mich. Ann Arbor, University of Wisconsin, University of Maryland, the University of Cincinnati, and Princeton University …
Some of these Liberal Arts Professors want to re-launch a Student Strike (Student strike of 1970), but they do not want to be the Center of Attention as the ‘Tiktok Influencers’ of the Strike. That’s for someone else [Malcolm X, Gloria Steinem, types]. The Professors just want to get their 15 minutes of Fame, publish their book, and do the interview circuit.
Really – All they have to do is; Go to the Capitol and Pull the Fire Alarm – and BANG your in the News.
Well this has been a problem for 30-40 years or longer. It was certainly there in the 60’s and 70’s when I was in college and postgraduate but it was counteracted by a lot of real world experience, at least in my case. The children of the time were often the first in their families to actually get a college education since prior to to that time most went straight into the workforce. That workforce experience counteracted a lot of what started to be taught in colleges The world in the US was still dominated by the generation who had survived the depression, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. Those experiences were a bulwark against the radicalism of the new left because these people had faced, the depression and economic catastrophe, and then faced the radicalism of Naziism , and then the overt radicalism of left on the battlefields of Korea and Vietnam. That tends to temper one’s activism as well as change its direction.
The college children of today, especially at the elite liberal arts colleges, are totally divorced from those realities and the prosperity of the country has relieved them of the consequences of their actions and decisions. Plus their ignorance is incredibly profound since they see it only from one side and that is all slogans and little to no practical experience. Absolutely profound to me that with the ease of discovery of facts in the digital world that people can be so ignorant.
The best moves I have seen recently is by corporations to de-emphasize college educations and get the kids out of high school, train them correctly and turn them loose in the workforce to be productive. Then aid them in pursuing further education that enhances their productivity.
I would also return to national military service in all branches as mandatory. The all volunteer military is great for efficiency and performance but it also serves to separate it’s people from the country as a whole. I never served but respected those that did, and having been raised in a military family, I very much appreciated the sacrifice and mindset of the military. Real sacrifice is something many people never experience today.
Eventually it will dawn on some of today’s children that spending $140,000 on an education that will get you no job or one the pays $50,000-100,000 is a really bad deal.
Can’t do much about the private colleges but governors and legislatures can certainly do a great deal about public colleges. Might also be time to change tenure to limited terms and obvious and clear requirements of actual performance and accomplishment.
Assaulting students or their projects or exhibits should be a firing offense. First time.
The college children of today, especially at the elite liberal arts colleges, are totally divorced from those realities
This is so 100% spot on.
The people I looked up to and respected (largely because Dad respected them), were veterans of WWII, Korea and Viet Nam. All of course, veterans of the Depression, or children of those that lived through the Depression. The leaders of the local, regional, State and National government were populated with such veterans. Because the experience and wisdom of men that made it home, were forged on the battlefield, tested and solidified their leadership skills.
Today, we get the dilatant Barrack Hussein Obama. An Empty Suite with a fine crease in his pants(that the best a talking head could come up with after on of his performances)
The national government had a lot of liars about their service.
I would settle for people that tell the truth, even if they are ignorant. That can be fixed.
I kept hearing about Reagan, of course, so I used youtube and looked him up to see a video and what I missed.
What came up was Reagan in the, probably the Rose Garden, in front of the press and the topic was the strike of the air traffic controllers.
What I noticed was Reagan answered directly and clearly what the issue was. Air Traffic Controllers had signed a waiver to be in that position, and the waiver said it was not allowed to go on strike, because of the nature and importance of the positions. He explained that clearly and said because of that they had xx hours to get back to work those that did not were officially fired.
The press pulled their usual tricks but Reagan went right to the law and the facts and his position and why he believed in it and what he was doing because of those things.
After he exhausted the complaints, rather quickly and absolutely clearly, he introduced his Transportation Secretary who was right there, he took the mic right after Reagan explained he would know more of the details of law enforcement measure on the ATCs.
I was thoroughly impressed. No garbage, no hemming and hawing, no vague maybes, just flat out facts the law and reasons and reasoning and the consequences laid out one, two, three, done. Follow up with the cabinet expert to take more detailed inquiries.
That’s when one could be proud of the USA and the President, and I’m not going to say the performance, because it wasn’t a performance. It was a public service information and explanation announcement.
He stated what was going on, why, who had done wrong, the punishment for it, and that’s the way it is.
I was an instant fan.
Here it is Reagan responds to the illegal ATC strike. I don’t think that’s the same camera angle I saw but it’s the same pressing.