NO GREAT SURPRISE-EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE

Submitted by AN ANONYMOUS SCHOLAR (United States), Sep 16, 2014 at 14:48

As Claude Rains said as the Prefect of Police in the film, "Casablanca," he was "shocked, shocked" to find gambling in Bogart's Cafe Rick. So, too, is it with not only "think tanks, " but, also academic departments. For more than a few decades, oil-rich Arab countries have done quite well financing Middle East departments at a number of prominent American unversities, thus influencing not only who gets to head them but also insuring that the 'party line' is adhered to strictly. Any of us of where students in the '60s and '70s can remember a day when there was a lot more academic freedom on campus for all points of view than today's totalitarian lock by tenured professors on who gets to stay and propagandize the younger set.

It is not by accident that moderate and conservative scholars, locked out of the ivory tower by these putative liberals have instead found their own domestic funding and established their own think tanks. There may come a time when the Academy will be truly Liberal in the traditional meaning of the word, but, for the meantime, it will still be up to places such as MEF, Heritage Institute, Began-Sadat Center in Israel, and similar bodies to carry the flag of unfettered thought

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