The Oklahoma Legislature appropriated $1.1 billion to Oklahoma colleges this year. Parents and students will pay at least $80,000 for a four-year college experience and degree, and I strongly believe that the best investment you can make in yourself and in your kids is a high-quality education.
But at the University of Oklahoma, parents should take stock in what they are paying for and start demanding some changes. Our flagship university reeks of radical leftism that is quite dangerous for our kids and grandkids.
The book How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Mal is required reading for ENGL 5703, a graduate-level seminar on “Special Topics in American Literature.” It is shocking that this is allowed, let alone required, in the English Literature program of all places!
“For an institution of higher education in America to be promoting a book that talks about blowing up pipelines is problematic, but for an institution in Oklahoma…is off the charts,” said a dismayed long-time Ada oilman, Mike Cantrell, to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.
The seminar is taught by Associate Professor James Zeigler, who holds a PhD in English with an emphasis in Critical Theory from the University of California, Irvine. “Critical Theory” is the nuanced phrase that radical leftists came up with for their socialist political orthodoxy. Advocates of “critical theory” believe in a new modern version of Marxism, which replaces the pursuit of truth with the pursuit of revolution.
The ultimate goal of these radical leftists that have pervaded higher education institutions across America, and yes, deep into the fabric of the University of Oklahoma, is to replace individual rights with group-identity-based rights, enact a scheme of race-based wealth distribution and suppress speech. Their worldview is anti-God, anti-free markets, and anti-fossil fuels.
State leaders should not increase appropriations at all to higher education in Oklahoma until higher education regents, university trustees and college presidents get rid of professors like Zeigler and clean out the rot of socialism now embedded in our colleges. Our kids and grandkids are not worth the risk.