“Academic freedom” is a favorite slogan of the liberal intellectuals. We’ve been told for several decades that professors and lecturers in universities must have the freedom to express themselves no matter how non-conformist, radical, or un-American.
Objecting to tax funds being used to pay the salaries of leftwing, anti-religious, or Marxist professors is usually treated as something akin to spitting on the First Amendment. But the liberals’ claim that they want freedom of thought and speech to flower on college campuses is as phony as the Maoist slogan “let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend.”
The only flowers allowed to bloom are those that support leftwing/liberal ideologies. The recent treatment accorded to Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick is witness to the fact that conservative flowers are ruthlessly weeded out on prestigious campuses.
Stanford University this year proved that academic freedom does not cover the freedom to tell the truth about Red China. Stanford arbitrarily expelled one of its brilliant researchers, Steven Mosher, a candidate for a Ph.D. in anthropology.
Mosher was expelled because he dared to tell the truth about Red China’s inhumane policy of forcing abortions on women who are seven, eight, and even nine months pregnant. He knew what he was talking about because he had lived in a Red Chinese village since 1979, courtesy of a research grant, and speaks Chinese fluently.
Mosher published an article in Taiwan which was illustrated with photographs of the women who were receiving mandatory late-term abortions. As the old Chinese saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and Mosher’s pictures provided conclusive evidence of the hideous nature of Red China’s tyranny. It’s no wonder that Peking issued a statement warning Stanford to “deal with this matter sternly” or else there would be “negative consequences” for future scholarly exchanges.
Stanford says that Mosher was expelled for “behavior inappropriate for an anthropologist.” But the spring of 1983 is a singularly inappropriate time to bring up the ethical question of what kind of behavior is appropriate for an anthropologist.
Are only those who toe the liberal line in morals and politics allowed to build a reputation in anthropology? That’s the question being asked since the ruination of the reputation of the most fawned-over anthropologist of the twentieth century.
It is now generally admitted that the most famous anthropologist of half a century ago, Franz Boas of Columbia University, would tailor his research to promote his leftwing ideological predilections. He was a leader of the cultural determinists who taught that humans are totally shaped by their environment rather than by their heredity.
In 1923, Boas sent his young 23-year-old protege, Margaret Mead, to Samoa in the South Seas to prove some of his liberal theories. She had no experience with life in general or with the Samoan culture or language but, as she later said of her mentor Boas, “He told us what to look for and we went and found it.”
After a nine-month stay in Samoa, Mead came home with a book on adolescent girls called “Coming of Age in Samoa.” Because her thesis said what the liberals wanted to hear, they made her famous and made her book the first anthropological best-seller.
Mead’s attack on conventional sexual mores had a profound effect on American culture. The point of Mead’s book was that Samoa was free from the problem of teenage turmoil because the Samoans condoned free love among adolescents, and that attitude produced a utopian society without guilt or conflict.
Mead’s book became the so-called “scientific” basis for the liberals who promoted permissive treatment of children and sexual liberation. Lord Bertrand Russell, author of the book “Why I Am Not a Christian” and the slogan “rather Red than dead,” was one of the many famous people who promoted Mead’s notions on sex, marriage, and child-rearing.
An authentic scholar and authority on Samoa from New Zealand named Derek Freeman has just published a book which completely destroys Margaret Mead’s professional reputation and so-called research. He proves that her book simply falsified the facts about Samoan life in order to promote her ideology.
Steven Mosher was accused of “behavior inappropriate for an anthropologist.” Stanford’s action proves anew that academic freedom, fame, and fortune are available only to anthropologists who conform their research to the biases of the leftwing liberals.
