El Paso County in Colorado voted mostly “red” in the 2016 presidential election. Donald Trump, in fact, received more than 62 percent of the vote there in a surprising win against Hillary Clinton, as The New York Times and others reported at the time.
Nearly two years later, however, Katherine Mack, the English department chair at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, can’t seem to adjust to reality. And her students are likely suffering the consequences.
With an acceptance rate of over 90 percent, the university is funded by taxpayers — many of whom voted for President Trump — to be exact, 179,228 of them in all, per The Times tally.
Yet Mack has assigned anti-Trump required reading for her rhetoric course, a mandatory offering for students majoring in rhetoric and writing, as Campus Reform noted.
The course, “Topics in Public Rhetorics,” is described as the “advanced study of the rhetoric of a particular public issue.” The course description also says that “issues, theoretical materials, historical moment, and readings” will “shift” as a specific topic is chosen for the course each time it is offered.
The course syllabus states that “the political rhetoric of the 2016 election was particularly vitriolic and uncivil, and, according to many, even less grounded in objective truths than elections past.”
Campus Reform obtained a copy of the syllabus from a concerned student who did not want to be identified. (As a side note, the trend toward self-censoring is gaining traction among conservative and moderate students, in an aim to cope with liberal bias on campus.) And Mack’s course is just one more example of liberal intolerance.
LifeZette reached out to Mack via email, but did not hear back by publication time. Still, the course reading list speaks volumes — particularly one book on that list.
“’Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition’ is a timely exploration of the increasingly widespread and disturbing effect of ‘post-truth’ on public discourse in the United States,” reads a description from the publisher, University Press of Colorado. “Bruce McComiskey analyzes the instances of bulls***, fake news, feigned ethos, hyperbole, and other forms of post-truth rhetoric employed in recent political discourse.”
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The sanctimonious moralizing from those on the Left, especially those in cushy academic roles, shows no signs of abating.
And it must be acknowledged that then-President Obama, known as a gifted orator who used turn of phrase to great effect, would never be subject to this type of academic bashing (see one example of Obama giving a crowd exactly what they want in the video below).
“I believe that we need to confront post-truth rhetoric head-on. Bulls*** must be held to a standard of evidence that it cannot survive,” wrote McComiskey on page 44 of his book. “Fake news must be held to a standard of truth that it cannot withstand. Ethos and pathos at the expense of logos must be held to a standard of reasoning that they cannot endure. And the Trump effect must be countered with ethical rhetorical standards that prevent the future development of bulls***, fake news, and ethos and pathos at the expense of logos.”
This is what taxpayers are funding.
Elizabeth Economou is a former CNBC staff writer and adjunct professor. Follow her on Twitter.
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