Save for “Old Glory” swaying majestically in a balmy breeze, virtually nothing evokes “Americana” more than reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

But now, as the country grows more divided and political correctness runs amok on college campuses, Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) Board of Trustees president Robert Miller wants to do away with the recitation of the pledge at board meetings altogether, according to emails that Campus Reform examined.

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“I decided to discontinue use of the Pledge of Allegiance for reasons related to its history and symbolism,” Miller said in a recent email to Celeste Barber, a former adjunct instructor at SBCC, noted the outlet.

“I have discovered that the Pledge of Allegiance has a history steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism,” added Miller.

“Nativism” is defined as “a policy of favoring native inhabitants as opposed to immigrants,” according to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary.

Miller’s claims didn’t stop there.

“I also object to the phrase ‘one nation under God,’” Miller said in the same emailed letter. “The First Amendment not only protects freedom of speech and religion [but] it also expressly prohibits laws that establish a religion. The U.S. Supreme Court has expressly extended those rights to those who express no belief in God. Thus, I disagree with the 1955 act of Congress to add this phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Barber, the former adjunct instructor, had some issues.

“You are an elected body at a public institution at a public institution serving a community college,” Barber told Miller during a board meeting last week, as student protesters shouted her down time and again. “When you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you are recommitting your oath to uphold and defend this country’s Constitution,” said Barber.

She was rudely interrupted so many times she asked that “the record reflect” she was not being allowed to speak.

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Ironically, rampant disrespect and even hostility for a diversity of viewpoints expressed on college campuses are now the norm.

“There’s a reason for the religious bigotry we see rife in our culture,” Dr. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, told LifeZette on Tuesday morning. “There’s a reason for the Christophobia pervasive in our Congress and our courts. There’s a reason for the infatuation millennials have for big government and socialism. There’s a reason our progeny smirks at American exceptionalism.”

“The reason is our schools,” he said. “[Richard M.] Weaver told us ideas have consequences. [Abraham] Lincoln told us the philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will become the philosophy of the government in the next. We are bearing the consequences of terrible ideas, broken philosophy, bad teaching and lousy schools. The chickens are coming home to roost,”  added Piper, the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth.”

“The entire sector is now the main staging arena for the Left’s takeover of American culture.”

Heather Mac Donald, the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a bestselling author as well, also weighed in.

“The trashing of the Pledge of Allegiance at Santa Barbara City College illustrates several truths about higher education: Anyone who had held out hope that community colleges would remain impervious to political posturing was naïve,” she told LifeZette by email on Tuesday.

“There is no part of higher education that has not been colonized by victimology and identity politics,” she noted. She’s the author of “The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.”

“The entire sector is now the main staging arena for the Left’s takeover of American culture. Mira Costa Community College in San Diego is another example of [a place displaying] blatant politicization. Second, boards of trustees are either feckless in preventing the corruption of their universities or complicit in that corruption.”

Update: The president of the Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees has reinstated the Pledge of Allegiance at board meetings following fierce public backlash, Campus Reform reported on Wednesday morning, Jan. 30, 2019.

Elizabeth Economou is a former CNBC staff writer and adjunct professor. Follow her on Twitter.