Original Purpose Destroyed by Union Control
It was my privilege to chair a Grand Jury for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa that investigated activities at Iowa State University and made several recommendations for changes in higher education.
The Grand Jury members all contributed to the report. There was a considerable amount of material to review. A few campus administrators and members of the faculty met with us to give their perspective. Following each meeting, I wrote a brief of what seemed relevant and presented it to the jury members at the next meeting. The members approved most all of my draft, which later became the Presentment, unanimously approved by the jury.
The original purpose of universities was freedom of competition of ideas in search of truth. What has happened is the advocates of atheistic-secular totalitarianism applied their art and removed competition from the soft sciences. When citizen control of universities, college, and now virtually all lower-level public schools was hijacked by faculty independence (teachers union mechanization and teacher tenure guarantees), tyranny was bound to follow.
At the time of the Grand Jury study, we did not realize the linkage between the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and what appears to be their prosecution arm, the leftist American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU/AAUP version of academic freedom and tenure that enables radicals to reject the public standards for what is taught and not taught is not a legal concept. Without the control of the citizens who established the schools and pay the bills, what is taught is wholly dependent upon the internal culture of the faculty at the universities and the government grade schools. This problem is systemic.
Rev. Charles Finney is quoted as saying, "The time has come that Christians must vote for honest men and take consistent ground in politics… Politics are a part of religion in a country such as this and Christians must do their duty to their country as a part of their duty to God… God will bless or curse this nation according to the course Christians take in politics."*
Arrangements were made for a local print shop to reproduce and handle requests for copies of the Presentment. Later, I received a call from them informing me that the university had purchased the remaining copies, so I instructed them to print five hundred more. Portions of the Presentment will follow in the next blog post.
*http://www.trumpetofheritage.org/
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