“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana tells us.
The philosopher’s statement poses a unique problem for many top U.S. colleges, where students and faculty have pressed for some time to ensure that they never learn about their past in the first place.
The latest example is Stanford University, where an attempt is underway to suppress the recognition of Western civilization. Students at Stanford want to reinstate the subject as a core curriculum course. Some students are fighting it. The proposal is in the form of a ballot initiative that would require the faculty senate to debate whether the study of Western civilization should be reinstated.
The school eliminated the required class in 1988, a year after the Rev. Jesse Jackson led a march in which participants – undoubtedly inspired by the works of Yeats and Tennyson – chanted: “Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture’s got to go.”
The undergraduate student body will have the ability to vote on the ballot initiative this week.
Despite its non-binding nature, efforts to smother it and smear its supporters began soon after the petition’s launch, which should surprise no one. Many college campuses have become “safe spaces” for bullying and intimidation to silence the free speech of conservatives, a tactic to which we are not immune.
Such efforts are unfortunate. Religious freedom is a cornerstone of Western civilization and has served as an overwhelming force for good in the world.
In other parts of the globe, ISIS is destroying pre-Islamic artifacts and committing genocide against religious minorities in the Middle East. Jamat-ul-Ahrar, a faction of the hardcore Islamist Pakistani Taliban, murdered 74 people and injured 362 in an Easter Sunday assault on Christians in Lahore. The name of the murderous ISIS-affiliate Boko Haram in Nigeria loosely translates to “Western education is a sin.”