Ben Domenech Quotes
It is no accident that the place that lends itself to creating conflicts between the dominant order of thought and people who want to speak their minds freely is the college campus, where conservatives feel outnumbered and crushed by a system of higher education that believes in academic freedom for me, not for thee.
Domenech, Ben. "The Transom." The Federalist, 2017.
At the time, one of the favorite right wing accusations that the media were all biased in favor of liberal points of view. Any time a news story was covered that implied or showed that right wing ideology might be wrong, the conservatives would cry “liberal bias” without addressing whether the objection was sound or not. Often the most extreme right wing views are ideological and flaunt reality. Colbert turned this into a very funny phrase.
He was announcing that a lecturer Kevin Barrett would not be fired from the University. Barrett had taken the position with his students that the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center could not have been done by a handful of terrorists and it must have done by or with the complicity and help of forces inside the United States government. There had been outrage throughout the country with demands by many politicians for his ouster. The University did not bend to the political pressure even in the case where there was such an outrageous and incorrect view.
This quotation is important because in the early 21st century a few conservatives accused American universities of discriminating against conservatives and people with conservative views. They found a few egregious instances and generalized from those, however universities are among the most tolerant environments in American life. Previous surveys showed that the discrimination was minimal like this one, but the survey included liberal professors who might have been insensitive to the effect. But this study, surveyed only the professors who described themselves as Republicans.
Ben Domenech is an American writer, blogger, editor and television commentator. He is the co-founder and the publisher of The Federalist, host of The Federalist Radio Hour, and writes The Transom, a daily subscription newsletter for political insiders. He also co-founded the RedState group blog.
