It used to be that incoming college freshmen had to wait until the first day of class to be indoctrinated with left wing thought. No more. A recent national study of university summer reading programs by the National Association of Scholars found that 70 percent of books assigned to incoming freshmen are biased toward liberal ideas. To the honest observer of higher education this is no surprise; universities have long embraced ideas that sound good on a chalkboard, but don’t work in practice (hey, it’s just a theory!).
A study of several prominent North Carolina public institutions’ summer reading programs reveals a similar trend:
UNC-Chapel Hill: Picking Cotton, authored by a fervent anti-death penalty activist, the book not-so-subtly preaches an anti-death penalty message.
Appalachian State: Mudbound, which paints the people of the southern United States as intolerant, bigoted and racist.
UNC-Greensboro: Absolutely American, penned by a Rolling Stone reporter–that fact in itself is enough to impeach the credibility of UNC-Greensboro’s summer reading program.
Here’s an idea for North Carolina universities: instead of selecting work that fits a political agenda, focus on the classics. They’ve withstood the test of time for a reason and will benefit incoming students far more than a book which only suits the political cause of the week.
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