Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (review)

In the words of the author, Brainwashed is meant to "rip the cover off of [sic] a system that for too long has claimed diplomatic immunity while simultaneously feeding students a steady diet of leftism" (p. xviii). Underneath the poorly written substance of the book, much of which seems to be a personal vendetta against UCLA Professor Robert Watson, is a devout hatred of higher education that typifies the arguments of such neo-conservatives as Dinesh D'Souza, Diane Ravitch, and David Horowitz. A recent graduate of UCLA, 20-year old Ben Shapiro is a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate, an international distributor of features to newspapers and internet sites. He is perhaps best known for his conservative and controversial columns in UCLA's Daily Bruin and the social lore surrounding his dismissal from the paper, the focus of Chapter 11.

Shapiro's central thesis is that the academy is overwhelmingly comprised of people who are anti-Republican, anti-Israel, and anti-American, against capitalism, religion, war, and God, while being pro-Democrat, pro-Islam, and pro-Iraq, in favor of socialism and communism, affirmative action and multiculturalism, homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, radical environmentalism, and moral relativism. Despite the book's title, the text is often more an indictment of social policy and liberal ideology than an attack on higher education. Shapiro organizes his discussion of these themes into 12 chapters and concludes by outlining recommendations for conservatives in a brief (six-page) chapter entitled "Solutions."

A critique of his arguments is warranted, at least in part, by the fervor underlying his categorization of the typical American faculty member. The book has serious methodological limitations, as the author consistently provides no, incomplete, or biased support for his assertions. To "document" the ways in which the academy brainwashes students, Shapiro relies on one-sentence quotations from faculty members without providing any additional information, including the extent to which one faculty's view was representative of all faculty, whether the statement was related to the faculty's area of expertise, whether it was based on any research, or whether it had instructional purposes beyond indoctrination. Shapiro also inappropriately generalizes from his experiences at UCLA to the experiences of all students at all institutions. When included, sources supporting his perspective are drawn from conservative organizations, talk radio, and online reactionary media outlets. The irony in Shapiro's presentation is that, while his concluding recommendation to students is, "Please, think for yourselves" (p. 182), his own conservative brainwashing seems little different from the left-wing version he so vigorously opposes.

It is tempting to critique the book line-by-line, not only because of the methodological flaws but also because of the pervasiveness of inflammatory language. Two of the more outrageous examples are: "Many professors excuse and even encourage pedophilia" (p. 62) and "Professors are willing to go out on a limb to kill babies" (p. 95). We stopped counting the number of times that he used the word "idiot."

The general style and structure of the argument may be illustrated by a representative example. In Chapter 2, "Partisan Politics," Shapiro summarizes opposition to legislation that he favors, the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, by stating that professors advocate for a "big, expensive, useless form of welfare that keeps teen pregnancy high, work ethic low, and the upper class paying massive taxes" (p. 13). He then quotes Professor Shelia Kamerman of Columbia University: "There is a fantasy that these changes are going to significantly reduce out-of-wedlock childbirth and teenage pregnancy. But very little attention is being paid to the consequences for the children" (p. 13). Shapiro fails to mention that Dr. Kamerman is the Compton Foundation Centennial Professor of Social Work and a nationally and internationally recognized expert on child and family policy. He also does not critique the basis for her statement but trivializes it: "Kamerman knows the trick: When you have no grounds for a real argument, weep for...