Perhaps we need to fund a study abroad program that sends professors to socialist countries.
The College Fix reports.
Professor rejects Marxism after traveling the globe: ‘Socialism doesn’t work’
At least one professor in America does not feel the Bern.
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Professor Jack Stauder says his political and ideological conversion away from socialism and Marxism occurred when he actually witnessed these systems in action.
After traveling to more than 110 countries to pursue various forms of research, notably cultural anthropology, Stauder described his conversion from Marxism as a process of disillusionment.
“I gradually became disenchanted with Marxism by visiting many of the countries that had tried to shape their societies to conform to its doctrines. I was disillusioned by the realities I saw in … socialist countries – the USSR, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, etc,” Stauder told The College Fix via email.
“I came to recognize that socialism doesn’t work, and that its ‘revolutionary’ imposition inevitably leads to cruelty, injustice and the loss of freedom,” the professor continued.
“I could see the same pattern in the many failed left-wing revolutions of Latin America and elsewhere. By combining actual travel with the historical study of socialism and revolution, I succeeded in disabusing myself of the utopian notions that fatally attract people to leftist ideas.”
Re-embracing his Western farming and ranching homes of Colorado and New Mexico also helped solidify Stauder’s rejection of leftist ideals, he said.
“Returning to my roots also helped my transition away from the leftist ideology that exists in the intellectual atmosphere of university life,” Stauder noted. “By spending my summers in the Southwest in the company of rural working people, farmers and ranchers, I developed perspectives on the real world very different from those that prevail in the academic world.”
Academic institutions are breeding grounds for leftist ideals, according to Stauder, as “academics in general are intellectuals, and hence susceptible to ideologies.”
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