Political correctness controversies show that college is overrated

By Washington Examiner, Washington Examiner

Published December 20, 2015

Why is it that incidents of bias, racial hatred and sexism always seem to cluster around the very institutions where racism and sexism are most vigorously and loudly condemned?

At the University of Missouri, four reported racial incidents — one of which can be confirmed — prompted a hunger strike, a threatened football strike and ultimately the resignation of an already-embattled university president.

At Yale, a lecturer dared question the wisdom of university officials issuing guidelines to adult students regarding potentially offensive Halloween costumes. As a result, some student activists are pushing to remove her.

One possible explanation for perpetual campus outrage is that college campuses really are the most dangerous places in America, filled with the worst kind of people imaginable. As tempting as this sounds, there is a better explanation.

Most colleges are steeped in an intellectually corrupt, censorious left-wing culture that encourages students to assume the worst about their neighbors as a matter of ideoglogical dogma. This accounts not only for the disproportionate number of hate-crime hoaxes that are perpetrated on campuses each year, but also for the fact that campus communities are so credulous about the far-fetched idea that hate groups and hate ideologies secretly thrive in their ultra-politically-correct midst. (Consider the false rumors this week that the KKK made a surprise appearance at Mizzou.)