Americans are a giving people. In 2016, they donated nearly $400 billion to charity.
For some institutions, such as churches and non-profit organizations, donations are key to financial stability. It’s the same for higher education.
But while colleges and universities rely on fundraising, one prominent conservative argues “it’s time” for conservatives and moderates to close their wallets to higher education.
In an op-ed published by Fox News, PragerU CEO Marissa Streit writes conservatives and moderates should stop donating to their respective alma mater in an attempt to curb and fight back against campus leftism.
Streit opens her piece by noting that “many of our country’s most cherished institutions of higher learning are shadows of what they once were” because of a swift liberal tilt that has occurred in recent decades:
A survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA found that a staggering 60 percent of university professors identified as “liberal” or “far-left” in 2014 – up from 42 percent in 1990. But interviews conducted in 17 separate Gallup polls in 2016 that found that 70 percent of Americans consider themselves either conservative (36 percent) or moderate (34 percent).
In colleges across the country, far-left professors now dominate disciplines like English literature, sociology, and history. Few have anything positive to say about capitalism, the Constitution or the United States in general.
Streit describes America’s colleges as “ground zero for propagating every extreme idea the far left can imagine.”
“And they want your money to help them do it. Lots of it,” she adds.
When alumni send checks to their alma mater, Streit argues they are helping fund the rampant liberalism found on today’s college campuses. Citing a litany of examples of campus craziness, Streit calls on moderates and conservatives to instead give their money to organizations that “promote and preserve the American ideals of free speech, limited government, and free market”:
If you’re one of the 70 percent of moderate and conservative Americans and are asked for money by your alma mater, I hope you’ll reconsider.
We all should want to give back. We all should want to help the next generation. But do it with institutions that believe what you believe and advance what you want to see advanced. There are dozens of worthwhile organizations that are helping level the ideological playing field. These groups promote and preserve the American ideals of free speech, limited government, and free markets – ideas that made America the most successful society in world history.
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