Smashing 'Left-Wing Scum' on Campus
A new conservative campus watchdog group aims to fight ‘bias’ on campus through online organizing.
By Erin Rosa
October 19, 2009
Screen capture of campusreform.org
Banking on claims of “leftist abuse” in university classrooms, a conservative organization is launching a social networking site called CampusReform.org where students can report and organize against professors that they view as politically biased.
CampusReform was launched on Sept. 15, and according to its founder, Morton Blackwell, the website was created to expose “bias” in universities “completely dominated by the left.”
Just last year Blackwell’s nonprofit organization, the conservative Leadership Institute, spent $4.6 million to conduct training seminars for college students and to assist with launching right-leaning newspapers on campus, Internal Revenue Service records show. But according to a public video shown to Institute supporters in September, CampusReform is the “largest program ever created” in the organization’s history. CampusReform’s staff also consists of 11 regional organizers, all providing services and resources to campuses across the country.
Blackwell is no stranger to conservative politics. He ran the national youth effort for Ronald Reagan’s first successful presidential campaign in 1980, and as the president Institute he has worked for nearly 30 years to train America’s future conservative leaders. Graduates of Blackwell’s curriculum have included Karl Rove, a chief GOP strategist who worked in the George W. Bush administration and Grover Norquist, head of American’s For Tax Reform, a powerful lobbying group that’s currently fighting against health care reform.
But now, apparently, conservative politics are turning their attentions to online training. “People are in droves now turning to the Internet as a new means of communication,” says Bryan Bernys, the national director for CampusReform, about starting the new website. “We just wanted to find the easiest way possible for conservative students to network with each other and share ideas so they can bring about change and reform on their campuses.”
One of CampusReform’s regional organizers, Tony Listi, a graduate of Texas A&M, took an edgier approach. He wrote on the site that he’s active on CampusReform to “smash left-wing scum.”
“I don’t know about that comment,” Bernys says. “I don’t know where that is on the site or anything. Obviously with all Web sites you can post anything. Nobody at CampusReform can go through every single post.” Membership numbers on the social networking site have not been provided by CampusReform, but the community is active.
Currently, the Institute is offering students a chance to win $100 each day in October when they report instances of “leftist abuse.” Bernys cites one recent entry winner at Austin Community College in Texas. “They give preferred parking on campus to students with green cars,” Bernys says. “Obviously that’s for the college to advance their agenda on environmental issues, but a number of students see that as abuse because many college students can’t afford a new car, much less a green car.”
The site also allows users to rate professors anonymously, using a scale ranging from liberal to conservative.
Ken Johnson, a humanities professor at the University of Southern Indiana, was recently listed as a leftist professor on the social network by an anonymous commenter that claimed to be his student. The user wrote that Johnson “continually degrades the Bible,” an allegation the Johnson denies. Johnson says that he lectures on a variety of ancient philosophers, but his only objective is to examine how ideas move and change throughout the ages.
“The university exists in a rather conservative environment in the Midwest,” Johnson says. “Students sometimes confuse the presentation of ideas with me, which is not all that uncommon. Some students, as soon as their thinking is challenged, the challenger becomes the evil one.”
Bernys stresses that because the website a social network, the community well eventually police itself. “It’s like any other social networking site, obviously the content isn’t created by CampusReform; it’s created by the users, and we don’t take any responsibility for that. They post at their own will.” Brenys says, claiming that professors are notified through email that they have been rated by CampusReform.
But the nomination was news to Johnson, who says allowing students open expression is a positive thing. “It doesn’t bother me at all,” Johnson says. “Does it put me in any sort of predicament? No, not at all. In some ways I’m just kind of glad that somebody cares enough to say something.”
Erin Rosa is an associate editor for Campus Progress.
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In my courses, I often refer to Biblical passages, exempli gratia,
— D. Reid Wiseman - Oct 22, 07:52 AM - #Lilies of the Field, I Corinthians 13, Matthew 25;39-46. Since the Y-chromosome is deemed to be a reduced, “degenerate X-chromosome, then the “spare-rib” must have been Eve’s. In the best of all possible world’s, Adam and Eve were both heterozygous but the four alleles of a gene were all different. I will continue to scrape the Spirulina academic scum from the surface of Darwin’s “little, warm ponds.”
“Smash Left Wing Scum” is the motto of Young Americans for Freedom, a college group farther to the right than College Republicans. Tony Lista must be using that phrase to identify his YAF affiliation. The Michigan State chapter was identified as a “hate group” several years ago. Offering cash to spy on professors is nothing new, but I thought ridicule had stopped the practice. Oh well. The unimaginative right generally repeats failed strategies, hoping that they will succeed on the next try.
— R. Wait - Oct 23, 07:18 PM - #“Smash Left Wing Scum” is the motto of Young Americans for Freedom, a college group farther to the right than College Republicans. Tony Lista must be using that phrase to identify his YAF affiliation. The Michigan State chapter was identified as a “hate group” several years ago. Offering cash to spy on professors is nothing new, but I thought ridicule had stopped the practice. Oh well. The unimaginative right generally repeats failed strategies, hoping that they will succeed on the next try.
— R. Wait - Oct 23, 07:19 PM - #Glad people in academia are accepting of this in their midst.
To me turning people in is scary and sounds like Hitler Youth
— Dani - Nov 16, 10:32 PM - #