Right Wing Media Seize on Campus Protests to Thrash “Indoctrination Mills”

By Kevin Howley, December 4, 2023

In the weeks since the Hamas terror attacks in southern Israel on October 7, university campuses across the country have become flashpoints for demonstrations; some in support of Israel’s right to self-defense, others in solidarity with the people of Gaza. These same protests are fresh fodder for the decades-long conservative assault on higher education – the so-called indoctrination mills that the right claims have brought American civilization to the brink.

You’ll get no argument from me that the United States’ noble if deeply flawed experiment in representative democracy is on the ropes. But I take issue with allegations that universities, and the scholars and educators that make them essential resources for an informed and engaged citizenry, are to blame for American decline. Rather, it is the demagoguery of the right that is a clear and present danger to government institutions and the rule of law.

Woke Echo Chambers

In the latest salvo against educators, Blaze Media laments the current state of affairs, claiming that college campuses, once the engine for self-realization and upward mobility, “have become woke indoctrination centers where students are brainwashed into believing harmful ideologies that they then carry into the adult world.”

Blaze’s David Rubin turns to former Portland State University professor Peter Boghossian for insights into what went wrong with U.S. higher education. “Our institutions are so corrupt right now … College campuses are echo chambers; students not only don’t hear the other side of the issue, but they think they’re better people because they don’t, so it’s an indoctrination mill – a social justice factory.”

From Boghossian’s lips to God’s ear. Would that universities championed social justice. The recent campus crackdowns on Palestinian solidarity groups tell another story.

Hypocrisy 101

But allegations that universities are echo chambers are especially rich coming from the likes of Blaze and other right wing outlets who relentlessly repeat and amplify conservative talking points on everything from reproductive rights to Joe Biden’s drinking milkshakes through a straw.

“Educational Colonialism”

Say this for the right wing noise machine: there’s a level of one-upmanship that’s hard to find anywhere else – outside of a WWE SmackDown. Headlined, “American Universities An Existential Threat,” American Thinker’s Eric Utter proclaims: “America’s ‘institutions of higher learning’ could not be of lower character. Nor could they be less effective in preparing young people for the real world. The examples are legion, ubiquitous.” Utter offers anecdotal evidence of everything from antisemitism and secularism to anti-imperialism to arrive at  an all-too familiar conclusion: “Sadly, and ironically, modern day America is guilty of educational colonialism. The nation’s Big Academia is trying to export American colleges’ racial nihilism throughout the West … and anywhere else that will have it. This constitutes a real threat to the world.”

The allusion to “Big Academia” is revealing. The conservative assault on higher education aims squarely at “elite universities” that have been a focal point of campus protests over the Mideast war. Headlined, “Elite Universities That Are Hotbeds For Pro-Hamas Activism Got Billions in Federal Grants, Tax Benefits,” Daily Caller stitches right wing talking points on elitism, tax cheats, and Big Government spending to the false equivalence between Palestinian solidarity groups and Hamas.

It’s Elitism, Stupid

Thanks goodness for community colleges. That’s the takeaway from Hot Air’s recent story, “Community Colleges and Trade Schools Are Largely Void of Israel-Hamas Protests.” Leaning into the radical left professoriate trope that never gets old, despite the rise of the corporatized university, Salena Zito inexplicably turns to TV reporter Mike Rowe for his take on “college students setting fire to the American flag and dancing around a pile of burning flags.”

For right wing outlets, like Hot Air, such anti-American sentiment is commonplace at “elite” universities, as is antisemitism. Zito continues, “It is not lost on Rowe that the two places of higher education where you don’t see campuses erupting in violence and destroying the safety of Jewish students are trade schools and community colleges.”

This warm embrace of community colleges comes as a welcome relief from right wing demagoguery, like this “exclusive” from Daily Caller: “Even Community Colleges Are Going All-In On Diversity, Equity And Inclusion, Report Finds.”

Same Old, Same Old

As with perennial wedge issues, from transgender rights and critical race theory to gas stoves and EVs, conservatives have latched on to campus protests over the latest chapter in the generational conflict in the Holy Land to score political points, fuel intolerance, and divert public attention away from the right’s wanton disregard for representative democracy and the rule of law.

Kevin Howley is a writer and educator whose work has appeared in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Social Movement Studies, and  Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture. He is the author and editor of several books, including Media Interventions and Drones: Media Discourse and the Public Imagination.

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