Propaganda U. (Scan).(left-wing influences on campus)

A student burst excitedly into my office. The school newspaper had assigned her to write about the current North Korean melee--a situation she at first knew nothing about. But she had just spent an illuminating 20 minutes with one of the college's political science professors, and now understood the genesis of it all.

It was like this: The U.S. had instigated the crisis through its "oppressive" and "warlike" policies toward North Korea. Yes, we were the transgressors, and inhumane ones at that--we'd even denied the North Koreans food and aid. "Just as" the student mentioned in passing, "we've been doing in Iraq."

When asked whether she sensed any political overtones in this teacher's narrative, she bristled. I mentioned the decidedly warlike attempt of the North's communist regime to overrun South Korea during the 1950s. She shrugged and said she didn't know about all that. But she had a story to write, and didn't want to waste time on "hair-splitting."

It's no news flash that American college campuses suffer from a woeful lack of political balance. Still, one marvels at the lengths to which left-wing professors go in editing the motion picture of world history. Often, a shamelessly distorted view of the American experience is impressed on young minds that are ill-equipped to evaluate that experience for themselves.

We in academia are fond of upholding the principle of academic freedom. But unless you wish ...