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Now that U.S. college enrollment has dropped again for the second time since lockdowns, Americans may be telegraphing they’re losing faith in higher education to provide learning instead of indoctrination.

Common-sense people have been sounding the alarm over the left-wing tilt of colleges and universities for decades. Allan Bloom warned of the rise of relativist truth and the lack of honest discussion in higher education in his 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind.

Now, more than three decades later, the problems Bloom presented have only become more pronounced. The Democratic Party currently has a 13-point advantage with college graduates, and trends show this steep advantage is only growing. How have radical leftist ideologies — including suppression of speech — gained such a foothold in U.S. institutions of higher education?

Some try to calm such worries by citing the recent win at the Supreme Court against promoting students based on skin color, the resignations of leftist Ivy League presidents Claudine Gay and Liz Magill, or the increasing backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and curricula. While these steps are in the right direction, the problem runs much deeper. Ultimately, we need to remove the cancer, not just treat the symptoms.

Affirmative action may be unconstitutional on paper, but left-leaning organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, are already advocating for admissions processes that consider “how race has impacted” applicants and how applicants “contribute to student body diversity.” Gay and Magill may have resigned their Harvard and University of Pennsylvania presidencies, respectively, but both disgraced academics still hold tenured professorships at Ivy League schools.

And while DEI has become political poison, its mission still thrives on university campuses. For example, my school, Ole Miss, abolished its Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, only to replace it with the Division of Access, Opportunity, and Community Engagement, which will be headed by the exact same diversity consultants who will continue to be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money.

The latest wake-up call that something is going terribly wrong in higher education was earlier this month when University of Kansas Professor Phil Lowcock called — in class while being recorded — for the murder of men who don’t vote for Kamala Harris. “There are going to be some males in our society that will refuse to vote for a potential female president because they don’t think females are smart enough to be president. We could line all those guys up and shoot them.”

Lowcock is now out of a job, but only because he was caught. His incendiary rhetoric raises an obvious question: how many other higher education professors have said something this outrageous and just haven’t been caught or have evaded punishment due to college administrators who fear being labeled or canceled, exactly as intended? Lowcock worked in the red state of Kansas. What are professors teaching students in California, New York, and Massachusetts?

We know Lowcock’s radicalization is not unique to him. Pro-Hamas students have taken over college campuses for the last year, canceling classes and chanting “from the river to the sea,” a barely veiled terrorist call for the violent eradication of the only democracy in the Middle East. Calls for violence against Jews were not limited to students, either. Professors joined in too.

At Columbia University, one of the most prestigious schools in the world and former President Barack Obama’s alma mater, professors supported a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” In California, the state with the most enrolled college students, professors from seven different schools complained to the state’s university system for referring to Hamas’s rape and murder of Jewish civilians as “terrorism.” More than 80 faculty members at UPenn blocked access to the main campus building during pro-Hamas protests.

Not only does the United States allow these schools and universities to stifle learning and promote violence, taxpayers fund them with tens of millions of dollars in student loans, grants, and direct funding. Open the Books, a public transparency organization, has tracked government money going to a professor who called the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack against Israel “a stunning victory of Palestinian resistance.” This professor is still employed by Columbia University.

Those examples are just what we know from the past year. The Republican Party is working to reach younger voters, but with more than half of young adults enrolling in college and more college graduates becoming leftists than ever before, this has been a losing battle for more than a century. No matter how much the Right tries to cater to college students, it will never be enough.

The playing field is not equal. In 2020, Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden received five times the amount of donations from college faculty than did Republican candidate Donald Trump. Instead of talking softer on abortion and the nuclear family, Republicans should use the political power voters have given them to raze the corrupt college system before we are left with an America that will never elect conservatives ever again.

What Gov. Ron DeSantis has done with the New College of Florida, which includes abolishing its gender studies program and denying woke professors tenure, is a good start. Other Republican governors should follow suit and go further.

DEI should be completely abolished, not just rebranded. LGBTQ propaganda should not appear on any official university material. Radical leftist professors should be removed from their jobs, and there should be a concerted and deliberate effort to replace them with conservative staff or, at the very least, professors concerned more about common sense, open discussion, and actual subject learning.

These efforts should also not be confined to small colleges. Fifteen out of 16 of the Southeastern Conference schools have Republican governors. It is unconscionable that they allow publicly funded institutions to suppress free speech and push politically extremist ideologies.

Republicans should also work to make colleges and universities less necessary for high-paying careers. Emphasize trade schools, remove scholarships and financial aid for majors that do not directly benefit the economy, encourage businesses to stop requiring college degrees for as many jobs as possible, and tax the endowments. Value success, productivity, and knowledge over destructive Communist theories and multi-letter name suffixes.

When the next conservative presidential administration gets into power, it must give no mercy to colleges and universities that harm students. It is not a coincidence that woke colleges produce faithful Democrat voters; they are breeding grounds for leftism by design.

Many conservatives are, correctly, concerned about the influx of millions of illegal immigrants voting for Democrats and having children who will vote for Democrats. However, there is another threat. The native-born U.S. population is also being coerced and brainwashed into abandoning American values. If our leaders do not take action to stop it, and soon, it might be too late.

Cass Rutledge is a senior attending Ole Miss, where he serves as the Chairman of the Ole Miss College Republicans. Follow him on X @CassRutledge.