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The University of Minnesota is a public research university and has the fourth largest student body numbers in America.  This looks like a perfect place for liberal indoctrination, right?

The Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group of the U’s College of Education and Human Development has recommended that race, class and gender politics become the “over-arching framework” of all teacher education courses. Under the group’s proposed plan, future teachers would be required to pass an ideological litmus test — denouncing “white privilege,” “hegemonic masculinity” and “heteronormativity,” and proving their determination to “fight” for “social justice.”

In connection with this initiative, the College of Education intends to redesign its admissions process. It plans to use “predictive criteria” to weed out applicants whose beliefs are judged to render them incapable of developing acceptable levels of “cultural competence.” A university document calls for warning this year’s applicants about the possible changes…..

The debacle at the U of M illustrates the gulf that separates higher-education officials and ordinary citizens on the subject of freedom of speech and thought. University leaders seem clueless about these rights’ crucial importance, while average folks grasp intuitively that thought control is wrong…..

At the U of M, spokesman Dan Wolter told Fox News that the College of Education’s policymaking is still “a dynamic process.” But he added that the college hopes to be ready to admit prospective students into its redesigned program by fall of 2011….

This isn’t anything knew.  It looks like University of Minnesota is actually behind the times in mind control attempts:

(FIRE spokesman) Kissel cites recent events at the University of Delaware as a case in point. Several years ago, the Residence Life staff there launched a crusade to reform the beliefs and behaviors of all 7,000 students in college dormitories. Instead of invoking “cultural competence” to justify its actions — as the U of M has — Delaware declared that students must become world citizens, committed to “justice” and “sustainability.”

As a result, students were subjected to “Diversity Facilitation Training” and were hectored about consumerism, affirmative action, and world distribution of wealth. Nonminority students were chastised about “white privilege” at mandatory floor meetings. Expected “competencies” included such gems as this: “Each student will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression.” As one student put it, “I’m being told it’s wrong to be a middle-class white male.”

FIRE is the Freedom for Individual Rights in Education.  They provided proof that the Delaware plan was unconstitutional and the program has been dropped.

This is the kind of stuff that MK and I have been talking about.  Universities are becoming so PC and liberal these kinds of policies are being suggested and put into place with most people not even knowing about it or giving it a second look.  Last I looked, students were protected under the United States Constitution.

What’s behind campus authorities’ apparent compulsion to dictate what students think and how they live? At both the U of M and Delaware, says Kissel, they “seem to think that sacrificing individual rights and freedom of conscience is a small price to pay for achieving their grand visions of social justice.”

“These programs are so dangerous because they teach the next generation that the authorities get to decide what each person’s values and beliefs must be,” he adds. “That is exactly the opposite of a free society, and the opposite of seeing a university as a true marketplace of ideas.”

Here are some other examples of what is going on in Universities today that FIRE is fighting or has fought.

1.  Bucknell University has been quite successful in forbidding any protest that are against Affirmative Action  or Obama’s Stimulus plan.

2.  California Polytechnic State University suspended a program (their second unconstitutional program to be caught) that encouraged students and teachers to report any “biased” or “not politically correct” speech.  The reports could be done anonymously with very little proof of the offense.

3.  University of Chicago had a student remove a personal face book album that had no connection to the school whatsoever.  The album in question was in poor taste, but not unconstitutional or illegal in any way.

4.  University of Massachusetts Student Government Association attempted to bully a conservative student newspaper called “The Minuteman” for criticizing/mocking a student government official.   It took threat of lawsuit before the school used its veto power to stop the SGA.

FIRE has been working on keeping our constitutional rights in tact since 1998.  Imagine how far the left would have overtaken our colleges if no one was fighting for our constitutional rights.