"You hear a lot about diversity on campuses today, but college faculties tend to look like the United Nations and think like a San Francisco coffee house," said Daniel Flynn, author of the book "Why the Left Hates America", in a lecture yesterday in McCosh 50.
The lecture, the first in The Princeton Tory magazine's spring series, addressed what Flynn claims to be a rise of anti-American sentiment both throughout the nation and, in particular, on college campuses.
Flynn has sparked controversy on college campuses throughout the country, including a book burning at the University of California-Berkeley.
"Conservatives basically have no voice in higher education," Flynn said. "This reflects a degree of hypocrisy since diversity is the watchword on campuses. In fact, universities are the least diverse places in the country."
Flynn, who is also the director of Accuracy in Academia - a nonprofit group that examines university curricula throughout the country - said that college faculty members are disproportionately leftist and tend to support a multiculturalism that is more concerned with debasing America than supporting diversity of thought.
"These people are not concerned with celebrating multiculturalism but instead with pushing an agenda," Flynn said.
Flynn also separated leftists and liberals, defining leftists as the approximately 10 percent of the American public that "hates America" and advocates its destruction. Liberals, on the other hand, he said, advocate reform.
While Flynn emphasized that his stance was not anti-liberal or anti-Democrat, some students thought his distinction between leftists and liberals undermined his argument.
"By redefining the word 'leftist' to mean someone who hates America, he made the point of why the left hates America too easy to prove," Andre Kornell '06 said.
While Flynn's rhetoric has provoked protests throughout the country, The Tory hopes that the lecture will lead to a constructive, positive dialogue on campus, said Duncan Sahner '06, one of the managing editors of the Tory, in an email.
"Flynn is not a hard-line conservative - he openly opposes the war with Iraq and criticizes the Bush administration's handling of it," Sahner added. "By not being too extreme, Flynn's appeal to college students increases, and they are more willing to listen to his arguments."
Though the lecture focused a great deal on leftist influences within universities, Flynn also broadened his argument, claiming the left fails to acknowledge the good that the U.S. has done throughout the world and instead holds it to a higher standard than other countries.
"Since the Second World War the United States has given close to $600 billion in aid to foreign countries, and we have continued to take in a large percentage of the world's immigrants," Flynn said. "However, while the left urges people to refrain from judging other cultures, it reserves the harshest judgment for America. If you compare something to an ideal, it is inevitably going to fall short."
In the end, Flynn emphasized the positive role that Americans have played throughout the world while also calling for increased debate and dialogue about political issues on college campuses.
"I might not agree with all of his points," said Bobbie King '06, "but I say, any man who says let there be intellectual debate, let him speak."
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