Lewis & Clark University Professor Lyell Asher published a column earlier this month that says professors of education at universities are to blame for the infusion of progressive politics at schools around the country.
Writing for Quillette Magazine this month, Professor Lyell Asher condemned university education professors and departments for the impact they have had on education around the country. Asher contends that education departments have bred a generation of college administrations that are dedicated to spreading progressive values.
Asher recalled an encounter he had with a “baby aspirin” sized swastika on a restroom wall at Lewis & Clark College. Next to the symbol, someone had scribed: “this says a lot about our community.” Asher argues the writer’s decision to lump the small symbol in with the rest of the campus community was a product of the administration’s desire to stir a moral panic.
Though I didn’t realize it at the time, those were my first encounters with an alternate curriculum that was being promoted on many campuses, a curriculum whose guiding principles seemed to be: 1) anything that could be construed as bigotry and hatred should be construed as bigotry and hatred; and 2) any such instance of bigotry and hatred should be considered part of an epidemic. These principles were being advanced primarily, though not exclusively, by college administrators, whose ranks had grown so remarkably since the early 1990s.
Asher contends that the contamination of education departments can be seen in recent education scholarship. Asher points out that the “founding text” of the “microaggressions” movement on campuses was authored by an education professor. The paper has ultimately become a major reference for administrators at colleges around the country.
The weak foundations on which this vision often rests are evident in ed school scholarship. Take the essay generally regarded as the founding text of the recent microaggression movement, “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life,” whose lead author, Derald Wing Sue, is a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College. His six co-authors were also associated with Teachers College when the article was published, in American Psychologist in 2007. Among administrators especially, their essay has achieved canonical status.
You can read Asher’s entire column here.
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