By John M. Ellis
New York: Encounter Books, 2020.
Pp. ix, 209. $25.99 paperback.
Since by now nearly everyone who cares about American universities knows that leftists have taken over most of them, why do we need another book on the subject? For several good reasons. Few people realize quite how bad things have become, what caused them to go so wrong, how bad the consequences are, and, most important of all, what might be done. The distinguished literary historian John M. Ellis has now provided an impressive analysis in this concise and readable volume. Retired from the University of California’s “experimental” campus at Santa Cruz, a veteran of the post-structuralist and deconstructionist wars through his many books and articles, he knows who the murderers are and where the bodies are buried.
Ellis cites the many studies that have demonstrated the preponderance of leftists among American university professors but adds two points that are less well known outside universities. First, the imbalance is growing steadily worse. Along with other evidence, Ellis mentions a study of Stanford and Berkeley professors published in 2004, which found that “[t]he left/right party registration imbalance was 8 to 1 for full professors, but
