Immigrants Dream Of Sending Their Children To College, Only To Have Them Indoctrinated

I sat in a small, stuffy waiting room as an editor asked me questions. He spoke slowly and kind of quietly — he could tell I was nervous. I was being interviewed because I had just won a piano competition, and I was preparing for a performance with the Savannah Symphony Orchestra in front of thousands of guests, so there was a lot of interest as to what my future would look like. 

A couple of weeks later we opened up the newspaper to see a picture of myself, smiling big for the world to see my braces, and just under my photo was the excerpt where I announced to my hometown that I had plans to go to Yale one day. I don’t exactly know why I chose Yale at such a young age. I just knew that I wanted to go to an Ivy League school, and I suppose Yale was the best-sounding option to my middle-school mind. 

My Immigrant Parents Achieved the American Dream

I grew up in a small town in southern Georgia. My Korean mom was much, much more Americanized than the other Asian moms I saw during my childhood, yet she still carried a lot of the traditional Asian mother traits. My mother wanted me to go to a great university one day, and of course, she prayed every day for my security and success. Both my parents sacrificed anything to make sure I had whatever I needed to study for tests, practice piano at all hours of the day, and participate in all sorts of extracurricular activities.

I happened to also be one of those kids who naturally worked hard in school and enjoyed classes. I didn’t get into much trouble, I never needed to be told to study, and I always turned in my homework on time. Combine that with my mom’s high expectations of me, and it’s no surprise that I was babbling about an Ivy League school at such a young age. 

Both my parents sacrificed anything to make sure I had whatever I needed to study and to succeed.

I ended up going to Harvard University for graduate school, and the day I received the acceptance letter I called my mom in tears. It felt like we had made it! Considering the fact that both of my parents earned their GED and didn’t go to college, this was a huge accomplishment for our family.

My mother emigrated to the United States when she was in her mid-20s. To say she hustled doesn’t even begin to describe how hard she worked to make it in this country. She and my father (an Italian born in the United States) were hard-working members of the working class, and they made the American dream a reality by providing a stable, loving home for me — even though each of them came from broken homes.

Throughout my childhood, I met a lot of different families that were similar to mine. The parents emigrated here in search of a better life, and they dreamed that their children would attend an Ivy League school one day. Back then the top universities were revered and respected. They were known to produce highly successful, intelligent students who later went on to snag high-power jobs and to make an excellent salary.

Harvard Taught Me To Hate America

Although this was the general consensus when I was a kid, that’s not exactly the experience I had by the time I got to Harvard. Today, most of us are well aware of the indoctrination that takes place in universities. But when I was smack dab in the middle of my time in higher education, it hadn’t yet been exposed just how strong the indoctrination was on college campuses. 

Within a couple of years, I was a full-blown atheist who thought capitalism was evil and America was racist.

One of the very first classes I took at Harvard was called “Race, Ethics, and the U.S. Prison System.” We spent the majority of our time sitting in a circle and talking about how racist the United States was on a “systemic” level. The professor openly criticized our criminal justice system and claimed that black people were being used as slaves in the prison industrial complexes.

In fact, almost every single professor I encountered was openly liberal and highly critical of America as a whole. What was particularly odd to me was that even in classes that had nothing whatsoever to do with politics, there was open discussion about how racist, sexist, and oppressive our country was on a broad scale. Within a couple of years, I was a full-blown atheist (for context, I grew up as a devout Christian) who thought capitalism was evil and America was racist.

Universities Have a Disproportionately High Number of Leftist Professors

This is not a unique experience. In fact, the data shows that university students learn from a disproportionately high number of professors who are openly left-leaning. 2014 research showed that colleges and universities had a six-to-one ratio of liberal to conservative professors. In some areas, the ratio was even more substantial. In New England, the ratio was 28 to one. 

Colleges and universities had a six-to-one ratio of liberal to conservative professors in 2014.

In 2017, data showed that 35% of Americans consider themselves conservative, 35% are moderate, and only 26% are liberal. So not only are the universities presenting a very disproportionate number of liberal professors, but the ratio is the complete inverse of what the greater American population looks like. Why is it that universities tend to lean so much more left than America as a whole? 

This is a question that hasn’t been asked until recently. When I was in higher education, we hadn’t started asking this question in mainstream culture yet. There were certainly murmurs from within certain communities that universities were generally attempting to indoctrinate their students, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that we acknowledged this fact on mainstream platforms. 

Colleges Are Telling You What To Think, Not How To Think

When I look at these statistics and think back to all my experiences in higher education, my heart aches for the families (many of them immigrant families like mine) who sent their children to college in good faith, only to find that the young adult who came out on the other side of graduation now hates America and believes that all white people are inherently racist.

Granted, these university experiences are overwhelmingly present in liberal arts, law, political science, etc. and departments like engineering and mathematics are usually exempt from this indoctrination. But even so, it’s disappointing to consider that the very people, like my immigrant mother, who appreciate and adopt the American dream for themselves are the ones who end up with children who despise America to its very core.

The very people who adopt the American dream are the ones who end up with children who despise America.

I’m one of the lucky ones. A few years after my graduation from Harvard I realized just how much I had been influenced by all my liberal professors. The problem wasn’t that they were left-leaning — the problem was that they were telling me what to think, not how to think. When I broke away from the authoritarianism of the left, I was able to think for myself, form my own opinions, and return to my Christian values that had once given me much peace and gratitude.

But many students who go to university aren’t fortunate enough to see the light. They continue down the path of leftist intersectional ideology and critical race theory, hating America more and more every day. 

Closing Thoughts

I do believe we’re seeing a shift in the culture, which will hopefully result in changes on university campuses. More than anything, I hope immigrant parents who come to this country are able to send their children to a school that teaches them how to think for themselves and equips them to do great things in the United States once they graduate. Because if you absolutely despise our country, it will be incredibly difficult to achieve success in our country.