The Dartmouth Observer

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Sunday, January 18, 2004
 
Jim Wright = Stalin??

Some elements of the left like to make comparisons between the various members of the Bush administration and Hitler.

Some elements of the right like to make comparisons between university administrations and Stalin. The opening sentence of this Review piece on the Intercollegiate Studies Institute reads: "The Stalinist atmosphere that pervades today's American universities is a sickening fact."

Stalin was a monster, and Stalinist Russia was hell on earth. To state that a "Stalinist atmosphere" pervades university campuses today is absurd. Students are not being hauled from their dorms at night to be sent to the gulag; no one's being killed for not toeing the official line. Universities today are left-leaning, for reasons that I've mentioned before, but they are not Stalinist. If you don't know your history, don't make such sloppy historical analogies.