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Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus
Is "Political Correctness" chilling freedom of thought and speech on American campuses today? Is multicultural activism splitting the university on moral grounds, creating not a truly diverse community but balkanized tribal enclaves?
Based on extensive research at six major universities, Illiberal Education is a hugely controversial, powerful polemic that examines the most important and divisive questions confronting American education today. Dinesh D'Souza argues that by charging universities with being "structurally" racist, sexist, and class-biased, a coalition of student activists, junior faculty, and compliant administrators have imposed their own political ideals on admissions, hiring, curriculum, and even personal conduct, while eschewing the goals of liberal education.
Based on extensive research at six major universities, Illiberal Education is a hugely controversial, powerful polemic that examines the most important and divisive questions confronting American education today. Dinesh D'Souza argues that by charging universities with being "structurally" racist, sexist, and class-biased, a coalition of student activists, junior faculty, and compliant administrators have imposed their own political ideals on admissions, hiring, curriculum, and even personal conduct, while eschewing the goals of liberal education.
319 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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545 people want to read
About the author
Dinesh D'Souza
54 books905 followersDinesh D’Souza is a political commentator, bestselling author, filmmaker and a former policy analyst in the Reagan White House, Dinesh D'Souza graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1983. He served as John M. Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. D'Souza writes primarily about Christianity, patriotism and American politics.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 16, 2013
This is spot on and tells us a lot about the problems we are experiencing as a society today. Unfortunately, this kind of problem needs to be addressed at the very beginning of education (kindergarten and the early grades). By the time kids get to high school it's really almost too late to try and remediate. Schools need to start having the guts to hold kids back if they haven't mastered skills at their grade level. We have become a society where truth and mastery no longer are of primary importance, feeling good about yourself is. This is why we are rapidly falling behind other societies around the world. My Chinese and Korean students are head and shoulders above my American students. This book helps explain why. Highly recommended.
July 4, 2021
Basically what Lindsay and Pluckrose copied Cynical Theories from. Believe it or not, D'Souza's become even more of a hack in the decades since.
August 29, 2017
I generally believe abridged versions of books are to be avoided at all costs, but I decided to make a rare exception in the case of ILLIBERAL EDUCATION. After all, it was written more than 25 years ago and represents one of Dinesh D'Souza's very first literary offerings. I was curious about it, but figured it probably wouldn't hold up very well in the year 2017. So, I decided to take a shortcut and listen to an abridged version on audio cassette read by Joseph Campanella.
And while the sound quality was crappy, I was nonetheless mesmerized by the information I was hearing. Despite its age, ILLIBERAL EDUCATION deals with the same issues in higher education that America faces today. Published a few years after Allan Bloom's influential THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND, D'Souza's book covers some of the same ground, but from the perspective of a recent graduate rather than a wizened professor nearing his retirement. The book discusses how programs like Affirmative Action ultimately hurt the very minorities they were created to help, and how blind devotion to the concept of "diversity" generally results in self-segregation among students and decreased mutual respect among faculty members. Cultural relativism and a lack of consistent standards further inhibit students from receiving a first-rate education, especially when professors would rather teach politically correct falsehoods than politically incorrect truths.
ILLIBERAL EDUCATION demonstrates that these problems have been around a very long time, and that too great an emphasis on race, gender, and sexual orientation has resulted in an entire generation of self-perceived "victims" competing over perceived marginalization status. It's a commonly debated topic on YouTube, if not on college campuses themselves, but one that D'Souza does a superlative job of exploring--at least in the three hours of audiobook material I heard, which I'm guessing was less than half of the book's total runtime. Don't underestimate this book the way I did; do yourself a favor and read it in full.
And while the sound quality was crappy, I was nonetheless mesmerized by the information I was hearing. Despite its age, ILLIBERAL EDUCATION deals with the same issues in higher education that America faces today. Published a few years after Allan Bloom's influential THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND, D'Souza's book covers some of the same ground, but from the perspective of a recent graduate rather than a wizened professor nearing his retirement. The book discusses how programs like Affirmative Action ultimately hurt the very minorities they were created to help, and how blind devotion to the concept of "diversity" generally results in self-segregation among students and decreased mutual respect among faculty members. Cultural relativism and a lack of consistent standards further inhibit students from receiving a first-rate education, especially when professors would rather teach politically correct falsehoods than politically incorrect truths.
ILLIBERAL EDUCATION demonstrates that these problems have been around a very long time, and that too great an emphasis on race, gender, and sexual orientation has resulted in an entire generation of self-perceived "victims" competing over perceived marginalization status. It's a commonly debated topic on YouTube, if not on college campuses themselves, but one that D'Souza does a superlative job of exploring--at least in the three hours of audiobook material I heard, which I'm guessing was less than half of the book's total runtime. Don't underestimate this book the way I did; do yourself a favor and read it in full.
August 26, 2018
It's worthwhile to read a conservative screed to hone ones arguments in favor of a multicultural education. The author wrote this when he was rather young, so he might be forgiven for the way in which he meanders around a bit. This book propelled D'Souza to celebrity status, perhaps a bit too early, and perhaps prevented him from doing more serious academic work.
A proper response to this text would take a long time, but here are some starting points. Implementing a proper curriculum is not as simple as deciding whether to include works from Western or non-Western authors; perhaps that was how the debate was framed by some in the late 80s but such framing seems simple-minded in 2018. Nowhere in the work does he tout any of the benefits of communities (read student groups) that might benefit from learning about shared experience. It might be more instructive to look at someone like Martha Nussbaum who much more persuasively connects how a liberal arts education rooted in close study of core works from multiple traditions can be applied to a contemporary global society.
A number of inaccuracies populate the book. Just one example: he claims that minority student groups exclude on the basis of race or gender. This is an impossibility, and student groups who discriminate are not eligible for student group funding (nor are they allowed to host events on campus, I believe). For example I am aware of a number of non-Asian American students who were members of Asian American student groups in the mid-90s. These students wanted an extracurricular avenue outside of formalized curriculum that would enrich their collegiate experience. How is this a bad thing?
By the way, there is a huge rabbit hole to be dug when evaluating D'Souza's recent life and work. He did an anti-Obama documentary, dated conservative rabble-rousers Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, and was convicted of campaign finance fraud and then pardoned by President Trump. Woah!
A proper response to this text would take a long time, but here are some starting points. Implementing a proper curriculum is not as simple as deciding whether to include works from Western or non-Western authors; perhaps that was how the debate was framed by some in the late 80s but such framing seems simple-minded in 2018. Nowhere in the work does he tout any of the benefits of communities (read student groups) that might benefit from learning about shared experience. It might be more instructive to look at someone like Martha Nussbaum who much more persuasively connects how a liberal arts education rooted in close study of core works from multiple traditions can be applied to a contemporary global society.
A number of inaccuracies populate the book. Just one example: he claims that minority student groups exclude on the basis of race or gender. This is an impossibility, and student groups who discriminate are not eligible for student group funding (nor are they allowed to host events on campus, I believe). For example I am aware of a number of non-Asian American students who were members of Asian American student groups in the mid-90s. These students wanted an extracurricular avenue outside of formalized curriculum that would enrich their collegiate experience. How is this a bad thing?
By the way, there is a huge rabbit hole to be dug when evaluating D'Souza's recent life and work. He did an anti-Obama documentary, dated conservative rabble-rousers Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, and was convicted of campaign finance fraud and then pardoned by President Trump. Woah!
March 16, 2019
This book has become something of a classic in the literature describing left-wing lunacy on college and university campuses. The author ably describes the problem in all its manifestations, at least as they existed in 1991. His approach is fair and balanced throughout; indeed, he takes great pains to describe opposing arguments on their own terms.
D'Souza aptly diagnoses the disease underlying the symptoms. The contemporary left despises and fears liberal democracy. However, it has failed to identify an alternative vision that can win any measure of support. As a result, leftists have resorted to speech codes, overwrought rhetoric, political demagoguery masquerading as scholarship, intimidation, and sometimes even outright violence to achieve their objectives.
If anything, the problem has only become more extreme since this book was published in 1991. D'Souza offers no solution, and I have none either. The problem is clear; finding its cure is the task that now must be tackled.
D'Souza aptly diagnoses the disease underlying the symptoms. The contemporary left despises and fears liberal democracy. However, it has failed to identify an alternative vision that can win any measure of support. As a result, leftists have resorted to speech codes, overwrought rhetoric, political demagoguery masquerading as scholarship, intimidation, and sometimes even outright violence to achieve their objectives.
If anything, the problem has only become more extreme since this book was published in 1991. D'Souza offers no solution, and I have none either. The problem is clear; finding its cure is the task that now must be tackled.
May 29, 2022
Dinesh D'Souza last night
. Illiberal Education.
3/5because of relevance depreciation.
Review:
This book is good, but for me it doesn't really pay for itself as an investment of time to read it. And that's because there's not really much here that I didn't already know. And there's not really that much that anybody doesn't know who hasn't finished undergraduate several years ago and gotten about the serious business of paying a mortgage and a car note and dealing with adult issues. If you are still living in your parents' basement five years after undergraduate and you have not learned these things, this book will not help you. And likely not much else, either.
The first problem is that the book is almost 30 years old. But then, the things that he observes are the same issues that are going on almost 30 years later and so if you want a demonstration of how the more things change the more they remain the same, then this is it. I could also point out that a lot of these smoldering political issues have probably been going on even since just shortly after the time of the Reconstruction and they have not come to any resolution.
I have read books that have been published by D'Souza 25 years after this one, and I have to say: It sure does seem like black people are his dis-favorite topic. I think that this is the third book that I have read by him, and black people have featured negatively in all three books. In a *big* way. Over the space of 25 years. (It's not that anything that he says is inaccurate. But it's a cautionary tale to that obnoxious person somewhere. You can make an articulate enemy with a publishing house and decades worth of staying power. Yeesh.)
There is another book that has been published more recently than this one, and that is by Heather MacDonald. [[ASIN:1566633370 The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society]]. It details a lot more succinctly how some number of stupid ideas can start at University and how they can spill over into the real world. Her book is probably a little bit better because she goes topic by topic.
There are also sundry writings by Eric Hoffer that talk about the motivations of intellectuals. I think that the most pithy thing that he ever wrote was: "However much the protesting man of words sees himself as the champion of the downtrodden and injured, the grievance which animates him is, with very few exceptions, private and personal." And in that sense, the specific details of these grievance mongers and the times and places are completely irrelevant. After the collapse of these institutions (and this country that supports this banality), the same thing will happen all over again somewhere else.
I'm also not sure for whom this book is. I've already done the undergraduate circuit about 15 years ago, and I never was indoctrinated with their ridiculousness (staying in the hard sciences is a good way to stay away from that foolishness), but even if I had I have had at least a decade for it to wear off. Like almost everybody else who goes through that factory has. Then, probably about 70% of Americans don't go to college. And with the diminishing returns on a university degree, that number is only going to get higher. So, then, does this book serve as inoculation against people who might go to college in the future? And, if someone wants to dissuade somebody from going to college would it be better to just do a simple cost-benefit analysis with them about why college does not pay for itself? (That was done in [[ASIN:1594036659 The Higher Education Bubble (Encounter Broadside)]]) Or is a book like this also necessary as a companion?
Chapter 1. Everybody's a victim. And everybody seems to be out-competing one another to prove victim status.
Chapter 2 is about affirmative action at campuses. That was already taken care of in a book by an author named Sander. [[ASIN:0465029965 Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It]] Been there done that.
Chapter 3 is about people that are angry with Western Civilization. I think that was also covered in the Heather McDonald book. As I skim through here, Black Egypt also makes an appearance. We already read about that in [[ASIN:0801857074 Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science]]
Chapter 4 is an expansion of how blacks are always at the vanguard of these ridiculous movements. But, then, we really don't need to be surprised by this nor have this author under line it for us. First: If somebody wants to foment a mass movement, they need a substrate on which to actually foment it. Second: Of course they would choose people that are less informed, less intelligent, and easier to dupe. Third: We know about this tendency for blacks to try to imagine an idealized past. These situations are self inventing. (That was the thrust of [[ASIN:B01JXOOWSO Chosen People: The Rise of American Black Israelite Religions by Jacob S. Dorman (2013-01-14)]]) I believe the term that the author coined was "ideational rhizomes." So, Egypt was really a black society. Then blacks begin to flirt with Islam in the United States. The Nation of Islam. Then at some point there was a process inventing Hebrew Israelites. Who knows what will be next? Who even cares?
Chapter 5 is something also that we have read in Eric Hoffer ("People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.") but reflective of then-conditions. White academics have poison pens and have so much to say against Western society/ The United States, but capitulate to demands of militant black protesters that even look at them sideways. A lot of these racial incidents are also hoaxes. We've all heard of Tawana Brawley and Duke Lacrosse (among *many* others). This is nothing that people who read a newspaper once in awhile don't know. We also know about the move on campuses to try to set up their own courts, and they are still duking it out now as to whether or not these courts have the legal right to make decisions that could be made by regular courts of law. 26 years on and the problem still has not been sorted out. ( As of the time of this review, the hysteria about which that question was asked was rape trials. It just seems like everyone on university campus has been raped.)
The only thing that hasn't shown up in this book is "intersectionality" (because the term had yet to be invented). So, since these topics are so worn out and occur in such close proximity, somebody had to find a way to link them.
Chapter 6. People would like to have more black faculty on campuses, but the numbers just aren't there. And that is because there are not enough PhDs in the pipeline and so demand far outstrips supply. Not news. This has been taken up by Thomas Sowell in so many of his books that I cannot even bother to find a reference. There are here some strange interactions with post-modernism, with its predictable inanity. Somehow it makes sense. If maintaining objective standards means that there would be fewer black people in one place, then the only thing to do is to rail against objective standards. And what better packaging to rail against objective standards than post-modernism? GRE/ACT/SAT makes it such that there are too few blacks in this one place? Then IQ is "socially constructed" qua [you fill it in].
Chapter 7. Progressives devouring each other. We've seen this before, too. Someone with impressive left-wing credentials being accused of not being left-wing enough. In this case Dinesh D'Souza gives us a couple of names, but they're not really relevant because the same thing happened 20+ years later in the same way. (Larry Summers comes to mind, the but the road is littered with the bodies of many others. ) it's also interesting that a lot of these people that were turned on were Jewish. This was taken up in VanDenHaag's [[ASIN:0440042232 The Jewish Mystique]]. Jews were interested in mass movement to achieve a cause. Blacks were interested in them to achieve something by force. One the movement was over, they were not willing to put a stop to it, and turned on people who had once been their allies. There are also elements of people getting their comeuppance because of the actual experience of dealing with black people (and not just blacks as some abstraction). [[ASIN:0983891028 Face to Face with Race]]. There is a bit of discussion of the way that hostility is created like never existed before as a result of affirmative action policies. That was better done by Thomas Sowell in [[ASIN:0300101996 Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study]]
Chapter 8. The author sums it up and he also will offer some policy prescriptions. None of them happen to have been followed, even nearing 30 years later. So, it was more than anything a testament to the robustness of stupid ideas.
Verdict: This book is very good for somebody, but not for this reviewer. It was too painful to read and it covered too much of what I've already read in other places.
. Illiberal Education.
3/5because of relevance depreciation.
Review:
This book is good, but for me it doesn't really pay for itself as an investment of time to read it. And that's because there's not really much here that I didn't already know. And there's not really that much that anybody doesn't know who hasn't finished undergraduate several years ago and gotten about the serious business of paying a mortgage and a car note and dealing with adult issues. If you are still living in your parents' basement five years after undergraduate and you have not learned these things, this book will not help you. And likely not much else, either.
The first problem is that the book is almost 30 years old. But then, the things that he observes are the same issues that are going on almost 30 years later and so if you want a demonstration of how the more things change the more they remain the same, then this is it. I could also point out that a lot of these smoldering political issues have probably been going on even since just shortly after the time of the Reconstruction and they have not come to any resolution.
I have read books that have been published by D'Souza 25 years after this one, and I have to say: It sure does seem like black people are his dis-favorite topic. I think that this is the third book that I have read by him, and black people have featured negatively in all three books. In a *big* way. Over the space of 25 years. (It's not that anything that he says is inaccurate. But it's a cautionary tale to that obnoxious person somewhere. You can make an articulate enemy with a publishing house and decades worth of staying power. Yeesh.)
There is another book that has been published more recently than this one, and that is by Heather MacDonald. [[ASIN:1566633370 The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society]]. It details a lot more succinctly how some number of stupid ideas can start at University and how they can spill over into the real world. Her book is probably a little bit better because she goes topic by topic.
There are also sundry writings by Eric Hoffer that talk about the motivations of intellectuals. I think that the most pithy thing that he ever wrote was: "However much the protesting man of words sees himself as the champion of the downtrodden and injured, the grievance which animates him is, with very few exceptions, private and personal." And in that sense, the specific details of these grievance mongers and the times and places are completely irrelevant. After the collapse of these institutions (and this country that supports this banality), the same thing will happen all over again somewhere else.
I'm also not sure for whom this book is. I've already done the undergraduate circuit about 15 years ago, and I never was indoctrinated with their ridiculousness (staying in the hard sciences is a good way to stay away from that foolishness), but even if I had I have had at least a decade for it to wear off. Like almost everybody else who goes through that factory has. Then, probably about 70% of Americans don't go to college. And with the diminishing returns on a university degree, that number is only going to get higher. So, then, does this book serve as inoculation against people who might go to college in the future? And, if someone wants to dissuade somebody from going to college would it be better to just do a simple cost-benefit analysis with them about why college does not pay for itself? (That was done in [[ASIN:1594036659 The Higher Education Bubble (Encounter Broadside)]]) Or is a book like this also necessary as a companion?
Chapter 1. Everybody's a victim. And everybody seems to be out-competing one another to prove victim status.
Chapter 2 is about affirmative action at campuses. That was already taken care of in a book by an author named Sander. [[ASIN:0465029965 Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It]] Been there done that.
Chapter 3 is about people that are angry with Western Civilization. I think that was also covered in the Heather McDonald book. As I skim through here, Black Egypt also makes an appearance. We already read about that in [[ASIN:0801857074 Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science]]
Chapter 4 is an expansion of how blacks are always at the vanguard of these ridiculous movements. But, then, we really don't need to be surprised by this nor have this author under line it for us. First: If somebody wants to foment a mass movement, they need a substrate on which to actually foment it. Second: Of course they would choose people that are less informed, less intelligent, and easier to dupe. Third: We know about this tendency for blacks to try to imagine an idealized past. These situations are self inventing. (That was the thrust of [[ASIN:B01JXOOWSO Chosen People: The Rise of American Black Israelite Religions by Jacob S. Dorman (2013-01-14)]]) I believe the term that the author coined was "ideational rhizomes." So, Egypt was really a black society. Then blacks begin to flirt with Islam in the United States. The Nation of Islam. Then at some point there was a process inventing Hebrew Israelites. Who knows what will be next? Who even cares?
Chapter 5 is something also that we have read in Eric Hoffer ("People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.") but reflective of then-conditions. White academics have poison pens and have so much to say against Western society/ The United States, but capitulate to demands of militant black protesters that even look at them sideways. A lot of these racial incidents are also hoaxes. We've all heard of Tawana Brawley and Duke Lacrosse (among *many* others). This is nothing that people who read a newspaper once in awhile don't know. We also know about the move on campuses to try to set up their own courts, and they are still duking it out now as to whether or not these courts have the legal right to make decisions that could be made by regular courts of law. 26 years on and the problem still has not been sorted out. ( As of the time of this review, the hysteria about which that question was asked was rape trials. It just seems like everyone on university campus has been raped.)
The only thing that hasn't shown up in this book is "intersectionality" (because the term had yet to be invented). So, since these topics are so worn out and occur in such close proximity, somebody had to find a way to link them.
Chapter 6. People would like to have more black faculty on campuses, but the numbers just aren't there. And that is because there are not enough PhDs in the pipeline and so demand far outstrips supply. Not news. This has been taken up by Thomas Sowell in so many of his books that I cannot even bother to find a reference. There are here some strange interactions with post-modernism, with its predictable inanity. Somehow it makes sense. If maintaining objective standards means that there would be fewer black people in one place, then the only thing to do is to rail against objective standards. And what better packaging to rail against objective standards than post-modernism? GRE/ACT/SAT makes it such that there are too few blacks in this one place? Then IQ is "socially constructed" qua [you fill it in].
Chapter 7. Progressives devouring each other. We've seen this before, too. Someone with impressive left-wing credentials being accused of not being left-wing enough. In this case Dinesh D'Souza gives us a couple of names, but they're not really relevant because the same thing happened 20+ years later in the same way. (Larry Summers comes to mind, the but the road is littered with the bodies of many others. ) it's also interesting that a lot of these people that were turned on were Jewish. This was taken up in VanDenHaag's [[ASIN:0440042232 The Jewish Mystique]]. Jews were interested in mass movement to achieve a cause. Blacks were interested in them to achieve something by force. One the movement was over, they were not willing to put a stop to it, and turned on people who had once been their allies. There are also elements of people getting their comeuppance because of the actual experience of dealing with black people (and not just blacks as some abstraction). [[ASIN:0983891028 Face to Face with Race]]. There is a bit of discussion of the way that hostility is created like never existed before as a result of affirmative action policies. That was better done by Thomas Sowell in [[ASIN:0300101996 Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study]]
Chapter 8. The author sums it up and he also will offer some policy prescriptions. None of them happen to have been followed, even nearing 30 years later. So, it was more than anything a testament to the robustness of stupid ideas.
Verdict: This book is very good for somebody, but not for this reviewer. It was too painful to read and it covered too much of what I've already read in other places.
February 18, 2024
I was at Harvard when the young Dinesh first realized that a career could be had of converting his outrage into cash. He wrote this book and I purchased a copy. Harvard was in the throes of political correctness, and it was somewhat disheartening to see my entire worldview challenged by what, at times, could seem like trivialities. So I “feel his pain.” Or I did. Before. Now, having been out of the U.S. for nearly twenty years I fail to see what he is so angry about. Or rather, I can still understand what he is angry about, but I think, having gained the perspective of great distance, he is angry about the wrong thing. There are more important issues that need to be addressed, and I cannot understand the blindness, the failure to see them, unless it is the blindness of rage. The antidote to rage induced blindness is distance. So do us all a favor, Dinesh. Count to ten, maybe go visit your relatives overseas for a year or two or five. But at least get some perspective, and a grip.
June 19, 2016
I have read one of Dinesh D'Souza's books and enjoyed it. Now I'll start this one in the midst of the turmoil of our education system in the USA and we will see what he has to say.
Although the book was written some years ago, Dinesh hits the nail on the head as to why our colleges became the way they have become. I have a son that attended 3 different colleges counting a junior college. 2 in Colorado and 1 in Florida. He came out a dedicated Democrat and ended up with a Master's in English and English Literature. He is very bright but I thought then and I know now that he was taught his Socialist ways in University settings. He taught for 6 years in local high schools and was very frustrated as a lot of his students were Hispanic and not at all interested in learning English. Now he teaches in China where all his students K-12 are very interested in learning English. What's with that?
Although the book was written some years ago, Dinesh hits the nail on the head as to why our colleges became the way they have become. I have a son that attended 3 different colleges counting a junior college. 2 in Colorado and 1 in Florida. He came out a dedicated Democrat and ended up with a Master's in English and English Literature. He is very bright but I thought then and I know now that he was taught his Socialist ways in University settings. He taught for 6 years in local high schools and was very frustrated as a lot of his students were Hispanic and not at all interested in learning English. Now he teaches in China where all his students K-12 are very interested in learning English. What's with that?
September 8, 2020
In depth presentation of the effects of affirmative action and critical race theory on university campuses makes this book an eerily forward looking expose from thirty years ago explaining why for decades campuses have been powder kegs of racial tensions, increased self-segregation, and indoctrination centers producing graduates with hyper-racial worldviews.
Read
November 7, 2013Hardback
June 12, 2025
Dinesh D'Souza has been given short shrift by bad press and partisan opinions. I do not know the whole story; this is the first book I have read by him. It was published in 1990, approximately 35 years ago.
I was not expecting this book to be so spot on in explaining the imbalances in our educational systems that I am seeing today.
I live isolated from the maddening crowd. I am over educated and have been working diligently to understand the world as I am experiencing it. ILLIBERAL EDUCATION does a great job in illuminating what is going on.
I was not expecting this book to be so spot on in explaining the imbalances in our educational systems that I am seeing today.
I live isolated from the maddening crowd. I am over educated and have been working diligently to understand the world as I am experiencing it. ILLIBERAL EDUCATION does a great job in illuminating what is going on.
June 26, 2018
Terrible plot. Not engaging at all. Kept waiting for some kind of twist to make it exciting, but it never came.
December 18, 2018
Interesting perspective about our schools.
June 12, 2020
Well-written, lots of good information.
Did not finish
August 19, 2024(stopped on p. xiv)
June 8, 2020
I liked the general promise of the book and the conclusion. It's almost like serendipity that I started this book a couple of days before all of the unrest in this country. I have two thoughts: University education and standards have been outdated for about 20 years. Education needs to be more career focused. The cost of college is so high that students end up deep in debt. Yes, the lofty ideals of Cicero, Plato and others are important. However, their relevance in modern society is questionable. Those lofty ideals could be studied independently. I'm interested in some of that so I make time to read a little over two books a month to learn. Second, the way to solve the racial divide is at the elementary and secondary level. It requires deep thought and an attempt at sociological change. I was a sportscaster for many years. Though I'm white, I understand the minority existence--it's tough in the hood. College is basically too late. We're preparing the inner city students to fail. It won't be easy. I'm too old to be a part of the solution, but it must be done. Demographers tell us the nation will have no majority race by 2050. Thus these challenges must be met by the under 40 crowd.
February 12, 2017
Fascinating look at the changing of American colleges in the late 80's and early 90's.
March 27, 2009
This is an older book by D'Souza but it was excellent. An in-depth, well-researched look into how the very policies developed by liberals to supposedly advance the effort of increasing minority college graduates has done nothing but create angry balkanizations within college student populations, cast doubt on the actual merit of minority achievements (by causing people to assume that all minorities succeed only through the benefit of lower standards), and increase the level of minority dropouts due to feelings of inadequacy when placed in a setting that does not match their skill set, all in the name of diversity. His answer...allow for a percentage of affirmative action-style set-asides, but based not on skin color but on socio-economic need. A thoughtful and well reasoned book.
May 21, 2007
An interesting look into the changes that took place at American universities in the late 80s. The author raises interesting points, though he tends to come off as somewhat dismissive of those he disagrees with and seems to really want to show the reader how much smarter he is than some of the professors he interviews. Despite that the book does a good job of showing the changes that were occuring and suggests some of the dangers that they might lead to.
December 14, 2010
Hasty generalizations plague this book. The premise that some students are discriminated against and passed up for lower scoring students based on race is indeed a problem, if we are to base admissions on test scores alone, but D'Souza is just too manipulative with his politically charged language.
January 31, 2015
Dinesh is a good speaker and has good ideas but this book is not very representative of that. A good idea, a badly organized book. While I understand the author's need to provide factual information a condensation of the facts is a good thing. What I really wanted was an analysis of how those ideas affected the climate of education and this was not it.
January 22, 2008
Interesting analysis of US education. Author's premise is forcefully argued.
Read
November 16, 2010None
April 1, 2011
I read this in college.
March 20, 2013
Older book, but still a lot of good information.
July 6, 2016
I like D'Souza and book is no exception.
August 4, 2016
good content, poor audio quality in recording
August 5, 2016
Dinesh D'Souza talks about racism and sexism and political correctness and censorship on college campuses during the late 80's and early 90's.
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