From Top Conservative Colleges to 'The Dirty Dozen'
A conservative movement for America's youth released its third annual "Top Ten Conservative College" list for students seeking an alternative to the liberal status quo.
Young America's Foundation ranked the best colleges in the United States that allow students to explore conservative ideas through coursework in conservative thought.
The chosen top 10 colleges "avoid trends in academe by continuing to study Western Civilization instead of straying toward the study of Marxism, feminism, sexuality, postmodernism, and other modern distractions," according to the Foundation.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The top 10 conservative colleges in alphabetical order are:
1. Christendom College in Front Royal, Va.
2. College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout; Mo.
3. Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio
4. Grove City College in Grove City, Pa.
5. Harding University in Searcy, Ark.
6. Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Mich.
7. Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Ind.
8. Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.
9. St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa.
10. Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif.
The colleges listed include traditional Catholic campuses, a robust Christian school, and an evangelical Christian university.
Young America's Foundation insists that it is not a college rating organization. The top 10 list was produced in response to a frequently asked question of which colleges the organization recommends to those seeking conservative colleges.
Other schools the conservative organization recommends that are not liberal arts colleges include military colleges such as West Point and Annapolis.
Just prior to the release of the most conservative colleges, Young America's Foundation listed "The Dirty Dozen" - the most bizarre, politically correct college courses in the nation, or what the Foundation called "troubling instances of leftist activism."
Based on research on scores of courses from hundreds of the nation's leading schools, "The Dirty Dozen" are:
1. Occidental College - The Phallus
2. University of California-Los Angeles - Queer Musicology
3. Amherst College in Massachusetts - Taking Marx Seriously: “Should Marx be given another chance?”
4. University of Pennsylvania - Adultery Novel
5. Occidental College - Blackness
6. University of Washington - Border Crossings, Borderlands: Transnational Feminist Perspectives on Immigration
7. Mount Holyoke College - Whiteness: The Other Side of Racism
8. University of Michigan - Native American Feminisms
9. Johns Hopkins University - Mail Order Brides: Understanding the Philippines in Southeast Asian Context
10. Cornell University - Cyberfeminism
11. Duke University - American Dreams/American Realities
12. Swarthmore College - Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism
Other courses that could have easily made the list ("Dishonorable Mentions”) include UC-Berkeley's Sex Change City: Theorizing History in Genderqueer San Francisco; Cornell University's Sex, Rugs, Salt, & Coal; Hollins University's Drag: Theories of Transgenderism and Performance; and Hollins University's Lesbian Pulp Fiction.
"The Dirty Dozen demonstrates that professors still have an obsession with dividing people on the basis of their skin color, sexuality, and gender," Young America's Foundation spokesman, Jason Mattera, said in the report.
The conservative foundation further cited recent studies that found only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment while more than half can name at least two family members of "The Simpsons." Also, only 31 percent of college grads could read and comprehend complex books and 40 percent of college students need remedial work in math and English.
