John Leo: ‘Brainwashing 101’

Check out another great column by John Leo about the University of Delaware’s reeducation program.  John writes:

Among the questions now being debated: why did President Harker merely suspend the program for the rest of the academic year, instead of quashing it entirely? And more basically, why should dormitories have their own curriculum? Possible answer: highly ideological freshman orientation programs are now widespread and meet so little resistance, the temptation to extend the brainwashing to all four years of college may seem irresistible to eager ideologues.

And he concludes:

In addition to its indoctrination, the residence program has its own speech code. The university’s “residence life escalation procedures” divides emergencies into three levels of seriousness. The A) level, the most dire, includes life-threatening situations, sexual assault or rape, drug busts, serious injury and this: “Any instance that is perceived by those involved as being racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic or otherwise oppressive.” All A) emergencies are to be reported immediately, at any hour of the night or day to the residential life professional on duty (parents are not to be notified). If the “instances” of oppressive behavior are comments or beliefs, the provision is clearly unconstitutional. But then, what goes better with an illegal indoctrination program than an equally illegal speech code?

You can see the speech code for yourself on our University of Delaware Spotlight page  (and University of Delaware students, don’t forget about FIRE’s Speech Code Widget!  The more people know about your school’s abuses, the more likely we are to be able to stop them).  Thank you again, John, for helping shed light on the anemic commitment to individual liberty on so many of America’s campuses.