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Going viral on X isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It happened to me this week, and I think I’d rather it hadn’t. Let me explain. 

My daughter started her first year of college in September. Her father and I had a lot of conversations with her about starting small—somewhere inexpensive to be fiscally sound, living at home, getting an associate’s degree, and then moving on to the college of her choice. Being our eldest and most responsible child, she agreed not to kill our finances right out of the gate. We were happy with this decision. 

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When she signed up for classes and I saw the reading list for her English and Sociology classes, I told her she was going to have trouble with those due to the far-left nuttery evident in the material listed. But we all lived through it. 

I dropped out of college after having to pay for it myself and realizing I was throwing money at an institution that was hellbent on turning me into a Marxist. I just didn’t see the upside for me. I had honed my writing skills in the year and a half I stuck it out, learned news writing, was getting As, and just decided… I’m done paying these lunatics, and I think I can go to work now.

And that’s what I did. But if you’re in college because you eventually want a law degree or some other specialized degree, you can’t just walk out like I did. You have to get through it. But considering how the country overwhelmingly voted for massive change, shouldn’t we expect our colleges and universities to catch up to the times? I think so. 

So, I posted what I thought was an innocuous statement about the current debacle my daughter is going through with an obnoxious assignment in her Sociology class. And before you ask, yes, it’s required. And then all hell broke loose.

I had no idea this would take off. Over six million people would read it, and over 9,000 would comment on it. If you thought going viral was a fun experience, let me assure you that it wasn’t. Immediately, calls to expose the professor and the school began from the Right, and calls to expose me as a liar began on the Left. 

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My intention in posting about this assignment that my daughter had discussed with me wasn’t to destroy the life of her professor or embarrass the school. After all, she just started there and must remain there for the next two years. Switching schools now would be expensive and disruptive to her life. 

My goals for my children are to help them navigate reality. Colleges and universities are all left-wing dominated spaces, and we have to help them thrive there unless we can pay big bucks to send them to private colleges run by sane people. I don’t have that kind of budget with two more kids behind her on their way to higher education.

But I’d like to put both sides of the debate I started to rest.

  1. I am not a liar. I have the entire assignment and plenty of evidence that this happened. I have decided to post parts of the assignment without identifying information so the public can see that this stuff is happening and that professors do, indeed, try to direct the topics students can use, contrary to the naysayers who claim this is impossible. 

  2. Exposing the professor and the school is the wrong thing to do for several reasons.

Let’s deal with the assignment first. 

The Social Inequality Project asks you to use your sociological imagination and understanding of course concepts to explore an aspect of social inequality related to class, gender, or race.  The project is a short series of papers, culminating in a combined portfolio. Part 1 requires you to do the following:

Identify and describe the inequality you are investigating (class, race, gender).

Identify two sources of social structures you believe are the cause or are perpetuating forces in the inequality and explain your choices considering factors such as power, privilege, oppression, and opportunity.  Describe how the social institution contributes to the inequality.  One paragraph each.  List your sources (make sure we can access them!).

Describe each of the following theories generally and how they would specifically address your inequality:

Functionalism

Conflict Theory

Symbolic Interactionism

This might seem like a balanced assignment because it offers three sociological theories to analyze the “inequality” chosen to study. Functionalism, where most conservatives fall, sees inequality as necessary and unavoidable in a free society where individuals are expected to pull their own weight or fall behind. It is a merit-based philosophy of social order. The best example I can think of to illustrate functionalism is Rush Limbaugh’s retelling of the true Thanksgiving story, where the Pilgrims initially set up a communal system in the New World, where all resources were shared equally, reflecting a socialist approach.

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However, this led to inefficiency, inequality, and lack of motivation. Gov. William Bradford eventually shifted to a private property system, assigning plots of land to each family, which spurred productivity and prosperity. The people who failed to work failed to eat. This change from collective to individual ownership showcased the failure of a Marxist mindset and the success of capitalism and self-reliance, leading to an economic boom that attracted more settlers to the New World and saved a failing colony. While this story is used to discuss economics, it also relates very closely to sociology and conflict theory. 

 

Conflict theory is Marxist theory. Groups of “oppressed” people identified by their sex, race, and any other victimhood category they can think of have every excuse in the book not to succeed, while the “oppressors” (always white people) reap all the rewards. If you’ve been to college, you’re very aware of this theory, which has been accepted as a fact in America (it is mind-boggling to those of us who watched actual Marxism fail spectacularly behind the Iron Curtain). 

Symbolic interactionism, from my reading of it, seems like another form of Marxism or conflict theory that focuses on race, gender, and other victim groups. So right off the bat in this assignment, you have two almost identical theories competing against the other, which is opposite both.

The assignment’s premise is to take something “unequal” and observe it through the lenses offered. Part two of the assignment is more concerning.

Part 2 requires you to write essays for each of the items below:

Identify the groups that have been impacted by the inequality you chose to explore.  Be thoughtful and consider the possibility of how the inequality may affect multiple identities (address intersectionality).

Describe how the inequality impacts the groups’ social experience, because of both past and present social structures.  Cite your sources.

Describe how the inequality impacts the groups’ economic experience, because of both past and present social structures.  Cite your sources.

Describe how the inequality impacts the groups’ ability to thrive, because of both past and present social structures.  Cite your sources.

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As you read through this, you can see how the kids in this class would be led to cover a left-leaning topic using words like “intersectionality,” which is an exclusively politically left concept requiring you to view the world through the lens of exclusively left-wing thinkers. 

“Intersectionality is an analytical framework used to study how societies treat people based on their various social and political identities, such as their gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. Depending on those identities, a person may be privileged or oppressed.” This is just another word for Marxism. So now the professor has elevated Marxism or conflict theory above the others by forcing the students to use the lens of “intersectionality” to write their papers. 

Conservative thinkers reject this premise. We reject the idea that people must be segregated into groups based on these identifiers. The right, contrarily, looks at humanity as a group of individuals with equal inherent rights, and the way we treat people is based on their character and behavior. Forcing students to use only one lens that sees everyone as a victim group—except white, straight people—is racist and un-American. It is absurd. This is why I left college. I was sick of it. 

Part 3 requires you to write a multiple-paragraph essay that contains the following information for a research article. 

This article must be published in a peer-review journal and contain original research (not summaries, not chapters, not letters to the editor, etc.).

The writing must be in your own words.

Purpose of Research

Methodology/Research Approach

Major Findings

Limitations of Research

How is the research linked to the past and present social structures that cause/perpetuate the inequality?   (You identified/discussed these social structures in Parts 1 and 2).

Full citation of the research article in APA format.

This is where my daughter ran into a problem with the professor. She chose the topic of men participating in women’s sports by claiming to be women as an example of “inequality.” Her professor rejected the study she found, claiming that it wasn’t “published,” even though the British Journal of Sports Medicine had written about its findings. 

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Instead, the professor suggested she use a study on “cis-gendered attitudes toward transgender athletes.” You can imagine what that one said. But it was “peer-reviewed and published.” She was told she could not write about women getting the shaft in sports because of male invaders, but she could write about women’s poor attitudes toward men in their sports and spaces. 

Those of us on the right know why professors rely so heavily on “peer-reviewed and published” studies. The real studies on important topics can’t get peer-reviewed or published if they don’t toe the leftist line. If you need an example, check out the New York Times article that just dropped, showing that the researcher purposefully hid a study on hormone blockers in children because the outcome wasn’t good for the political narrative.

A fair and unbiased professor would have helped my daughter find an acceptable study that involved the same topic that she wanted to use instead of steering her to the opposite and contrary view. Luckily, when I posted the viral tweet, many people provided excellent studies that did meet the professor’s requirements, and one was accepted.

But the assignment itself enforces a worldview on students that they are living in a fundamentally flawed and bad country full of inherently evil and racist, sexist, and otherwise “ist” countrymen (or countrypeople for the feminists out there). This assignment has deeply embedded leftist tropes that are NOT part of a conservative worldview. 

This, by design, cuts off an entire way of thinking that does not include these racial and sex-based baited concepts. It erases the conservative-minded student from existence. It excludes half (more than half now) of the country’s point of view. It is wrong, and it needs to stop. Our educators should teach from a classical model that is open to all theories and points of view and does not set Marxist dialectic boundaries as the basis of their assignments. 

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As to the criticism from the right that I owe the internet the name of the professor and the school my daughter attends, so they can feel a sense of relief by mean-tweeting her and the school, I object. The safety of my child will always come first. I have kept my children out of the spotlight and will continue to do so until they choose whether they want it. My 18-year-old is not shy about what she believes, but I have a large platform that can do a lot of damage if I don’t use it wisely. 

What would happen to my child if I did expose her professor and her school? We live in New York. Do you think it would be more or less difficult for her to make friends in a new school after becoming the catalyst for a cancel mob that got a professor fired (or more likely promoted) after a social media campaign launched by conservatives? Do you think it would help heal the divide between MAGA kids and far-left professors? Or do you think that other avenues would be more helpful to both goals? 

I reject cancel mobs. There was a time when I felt the way some of you do and wanted to inflict as much pain on the left as they have inflicted on some of us, but I have changed my mind. It is far better to try to change hearts and minds through rational, thoughtful dialogue. And if that doesn’t work, there is the dean of the school. So far, all my daughter needed was a little help finding the right study that her professor would accept. She will write her topic as planned, and if she receives an unfair grade, we will take it to the next level. But that level isn’t X.

America is not as divided as it seems. The election should have shown us that we are winning. We are bringing a huge group of people to our side, but we are not doing it by behaving like the left. We are doing it by pointing out the failures of the left and offering new ways forward. 

The professor is just a person who has been scared and terrified by the media about MAGA monsters. I refuse to justify that belief by turning her life into a nightmare with the push of a button. I could do it, but that would be wrong. And if you can’t see that, then do some soul searching and learn to seek peace when peace is possible. 

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If you want to win hearts and minds, you can’t do it with the nuclear option. That doesn’t mean I would never expose this professor, but she certainly doesn’t deserve that now when negotiations are possible. 

If you want unity, you must fight to Make Americans Friends Again, and that starts with making every effort to be a friend and offer kindness instead of a slap in the face. Sometimes that kindness is rejected and all offers of peace fail. Wait for that moment before declaring war. 

American education must change, but so must our attitudes toward the people who are simply victims of the system we must tear down.