Table Of ContentAdvance Praise for
BRAINWASHED
“Ben Shapiro’s courage and insight should provide inspiration not only for
other young conservatives on campus, but also for their parents. His book is a
welcome sign that all is not lost for this new generation.”
—MICHAEL MEDVED,
nationally syndicated radio host and author of Hollywood vs. America
“Don’t tell me a book this brilliant was written by a college kid barely out of
his teens. It’s got to have been written by a gutsy old sage who somehow got
himself embedded into UCLA and whose piercing observations have the power
to save the oncoming generation from tyrants with tenure.”
—BARRY FARBER,
nationally syndicated radio host
“With wit and verve, Ben Shapiro—America’s youngest national columnist
— provides a firsthand account of how liberal pieties masquerade as the only
truth in today’s corrupted universities. With luck, his critique will help others
begin to the take those steps needed to fix the campus and return it to its
esteemed place in our national life.”
—DANIEL PIPES,
founder of Campus Watch and columnist for the New York Sun
“Been there. Done that (Tulane, A&S, ’91). Ben gets it exactly right about
the modern collegiate brainwash. Thankfully, beer and Mardi Gras saved me
from full indoctrination. But Shapiro’s unassailable book, most assuredly, is the
healthier blueprint to avoiding Marx and Engel’s witting accomplices.”
—ANDREW BREITBART,
co-author of Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon— The Case
Against Celebrity
“A brilliant new voice for a new generation of activists: Don’t miss Ben
Shapiro’s new book!”
—HUGH HEWITT,
nationally syndicated radio host and author of In, But Not Of
“This book reveals how deeply entrenched a noxious culture of hatred for
America and Western values has become among those who teach our nation’s
young men and women. Shapiro delivers a sobering wake-up call for all
Americans, detailing the pressing need to—as the Left might put it—take back
our colleges and universities.”
—ROBERT SPENCER,
director of Jihad Watch and author of Onward Muslim Soldiers and Islam
Unveiled
“In Brainwashed, Ben Shapiro rips the liberal university system to shreds.
With an arch wit and insider’s perspective, Shapiro exposes how liberal
group-think has spread bacteria-like through our education system and is
threatening to squash genuine debate in our schools.”
—ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS
nationally syndicated columnist
“Shapiro has a razor-sharp pen. His pointed criticism is directed at the
overwhelming percentage of college professors who believe Islam is good and
Christianity is bad, who don’t accept that capitalism beat socialism because
capitalism is ending centuries of destitution, and who worship skin-color
diversity but who blithely create strict campus rules against diversity of speech.”
—JILL STEWART
“Capitol Punishment” syndicated columnist, radio and television political
commentator
BRAINWASHED
HOW UNIVERSITIES
INDOCTRINATE
AMERICA’S YOUTH
BEN SHAPIRO
Copyright © 2004 by Ben Shapiro
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for
brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by WND Books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shapiro, Ben.
Brainwashed : how universities indoctrinate America’s youth / Ben Shapiro.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-7852-6148-6
1. Education, Higher—Political aspects—United States. 2. Education, Higher—Social aspects—United
States. 3. College teachers—United States—Attitudes. 4. College students—United States—Attitudes. I.
Title: How universities indoctrinate America's youth. II. Title.
LC89.S484 2004
378.73—dc22
2004001945
Printed in the United States of America
04 05 06 07 08 BVG 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents,
who taught me the difference between right and wrong and gave me the
strength to confront falsehood.
CONTENTS
Publisher’s Note
Foreword
Introduction
1. No Moral Absolutes
2. Partisan Politics
3. Workers of the World, Unite!
4. “Not Just for the Rich and White!”
5. Sex in the Classroom
6. Saving the Earth
7. The War on God
8. Burning the Flag
9. Teaching for Saddam
10. “Zionist Pigs”
11. The Bruin, the Bad, and the Ugly
12. College Cliques
13. Solutions
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
T
hese are strange times on America’s university campuses. While
professors use their position to indoctrinate their students, the classical liberal
view of higher learning has given way to the modern liberal view of lower
living.
Reporting on this decline has posed a bit of a problem for WND Books
because to paint the full picture has required author Ben Shapiro to quote some
fairly crude material and deal with offensive subject matter. Publishing material
of this sort is not something we as a publisher do; it’s against our corporate
policy. But in this instance we have done so for one simple and vital reason: To
know what students are really getting themselves into requires they know what’s
really going on.
We do not publish this material to appeal to prurient interests but to more fully
advise and inform students, parents, and those concerned about the university
system and what they can expect from it.
DAVID DUNHAM
Publisher, WND Books
FOREWORD
BY DAVID LIMBAUGH
I
can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people—including myself—
muse how interesting it would be if they could relive their lives as teenagers or
college students with the knowledge, savvy, and experience they have acquired
through their additional years. Of course it’s idle fantasy, but as I’ve come to
know Ben Shapiro over the past few years, I’ve been reminded of that very
thought.
I’ve met my share of precocious young adults who were talented in their own
way but never one with the intellectual maturity and insight of Ben. To borrow
the cliché, he has wisdom well beyond his years. Which is what makes his book,
examining the university culture, unique.
It seems that most of these types of books are written either by professors or
those outside the system. By contrast, this book is an insider’s look at academic
indoctrination from one currently being victimized by it. But Ben’s perspective
is not limited to that of a university student with blinders to everything but his
studies. He is also an astute political analyst and cultural critic, already writing a
nationally syndicated column. So with Brainwashed we get a sophisticated and
firsthand critique of the university as an institution of ideological propaganda for
the leftwing, secular worldview. And the book delivers—confirming our worst
fears about modern academia.
It covers, topic by topic, all the major issues on college campuses and all the
major aspects of college life, convincingly documenting the overt liberal bias
among professors and shattering the conventional wisdom that their bias is
irrelevant to their teaching. The bias has deep historical roots in this country and
is growing in intensity. It covers the gamut, from accusing Republicans of
stealing the presidential election in 2000, passing tax cuts for the rich, robbing
seniors of their Social Security benefits, and poisoning our air and water, to
praising the failed system of Marxism and denouncing capitalism. The outrage
doesn’t end there. Shapiro also documents the shocking professorial promotion
of sexual deviancy and even their inexcusable justifications of terrorism.
Shapiro goes beyond merely exposing the bias. Using hard data and reasoned
argument, he also debunks the myths and distortions propagated by a
