It is impossible to deny how far left all of America’s institutions have shifted in the past few years. Corporate board rooms, the media, sports teams and even the military all chant the same dogma and insist that you comply.
How did that happen? As Ernest Hemingway wrote on how one goes bankrupt, “gradually, then suddenly.” Indeed, our leading institutions face a moral bankruptcy unprecedented in American history.
This could not have happened without the left’s successful “long march through the institutions.” This term, made famous by radical academics in the 1960s, refers to the strategy used by “New Left” students of that era. They aimed to achieve long-term social and and political change by infiltrating and subverting key institutions, particularly the elite universities they often attended.
These radicals were the progenitors of the critical theories that plague our offices and our children’s schools today. They knew these ideas could never be sold democratically to the American public, so they instead sought to disrupt disciplines — sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and cultural studies — that were more amenable to their critical perspectives. (RELATED: Here’s The New Left-Wing Theory Parents Are Fighting In Schools)
Through their research, teaching, and activism, they eventually came to dominate entire departments or even university leadership. This power was then used to launder their ideology to a new generation of students who would unquestioningly carry it with them into the “real world.”
A new Harvard survey on faculty political leanings reveals that the left’s long march was more successful than they likely ever dreamed. A whopping 75% of Harvard faculty identifies as “liberal” or “very liberal,” while only 2.5% identifies as conservative. A minuscule 0.4 percent identifies as “very conservative.”
Nationally, less than a third of American identify as “liberal” but Harvard and other schools show over 75% professors identify as liberal. That does not happen randomly. It takes a consistent culture of intolerance for opposing viewpoints… https://t.co/6bwWivEFKG
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 1, 2023
As law professor Jonathon Turley points out, these figures massively overrepresent liberals compared to society overall. Roughly equal portions of Americans identify as conservative or moderate, while only 26% identify as liberal. More Harvard faculty identify as “very liberal” (32%) than Americans overall identify as “liberal.” (RELATED: Harvard University Is Hosting A Race-Based Music Program, Civil Rights Complaint Alleges)
The figure is representative across large swathes of American academia. In 1969, one in four college professors was at least moderately conservative. Now, liberals outweigh conservatives on campus by roughly 12 to one.
Yet Harvard’s stark disparity stands out more than the rest because it is the best that American education has to offer — or at least it used to be.
Nevertheless, its name is still intrinsically associated with excellence and prestige that few other universities are accorded. If you are a Harvard graduate, you are likely to impact the highest levels of American power in whichever field you choose to pursue.
That is precisely the point. By capturing the Harvard banner, radical activists then got to decide what constituted excellence and prestige. Their radical ideologies gained the legitimacy associated with the Harvard name and serve as an example for lesser universities to follow. Molded by these new definitions, Harvard graduates carry them out to the world where they shape the halls of power in business, government, and media.
Harvard boasts the most alumni who later became CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. With 41 alumni CEOs, Harvard dwarfs the nearest runner up, the University of Pennsylvania, by almost double.
Harvard also has the largest number of Nobel Prize winners at 161. It boasts the largest number of Supreme Court justices in history, with four Harvard graduates currently on the bench. (RELATED: ‘Inquisitions And Purges’: Star Harvard Professors Form Group To Counter Attacks On Academic Freedom)
Harvard also has the largest number of U.S. military Medal of Honor recipients (18) for any non-military school. This included 8 generals throughout history.
Given this legacy, Harvard will continue to recruit America’s brightest and most ambitious young minds. Many of them are likely pre-existing liberals, but many of them will not be. Blinded by the allure of the Harvard name, they will make themselves vulnerable to the ubiquitous leftism of their professors.
Even those who see what’s happening will likely go along to get along. If they do not bend the knee, all their hard work will be for naught, and their aspirations will crumble beneath them.
Conservatives must accept that the purpose of academia — to foster intellectual curiosity and challenge rigid ways of thinking — no longer exists as we all once imagined. The long march, which occurred gradually over decades, hit suddenly in the Trump era. There is no sign the radicals will allow dissent within Harvard or any other university any time soon.
