It’s about fear of critical thinking, not indoctrination
First of all, imagine quoting Richard Nixon for his wisdom.
J.D. Vance just got up at the National Conservatism Conference and literally said these words: “The professors are the enemy.”
There’s something bigger happening here that people need to understand.
People love to say that college makes you more liberal. And you know what? The data actually shows they’re right, but not for the reasons they think. It’s not some grand conspiracy of professors indoctrinating students. It’s way simpler than that.
For a lot of people, college is the first time they’ve ever left their hometown. Suddenly, you’re living with people from different backgrounds, different cultures, and different beliefs. Your roommate might be from halfway across the world. The person sitting next to you in class might have grown up in circumstances completely unlike your own.
And then something happens. You start to realize that all those people you were taught to fear or judge are just people. Just like you. Trying to figure out life, stressed about exams, missing their mom’s cooking.
But it’s not only about exposure to different people. College teaches you how to think critically. Not what to think, but how to think. How to evaluate information. How to ask questions. How to challenge your own beliefs. How to back up an argument with evidence.
And yes, you learn about history. Real history. Not the sanitized version many of us were fed in high school. You learn about social movements, economic systems, and how power actually works. You start noticing systems and structures that were always there but invisible to you before.
So when people say “college makes you liberal,” what they’re really saying is that understanding different perspectives and learning to think critically often leads to more progressive views. And maybe that should tell us something.
When Vance calls professors “the enemy,” he isn’t really attacking professors. He’s attacking the idea of critical thinking itself. He’s attacking exposure to different perspectives. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: if your political ideology can’t survive people learning how to think critically and encountering viewpoints outside their bubble, maybe the problem isn’t the education.
Getting mad at college for this is like getting mad at a mirror for showing you what you actually look like.
College isn’t perfect. There are real criticisms worth making: cost, accessibility, and the way certain types of intelligence are valued over others. But attacking it because it teaches people to think critically and exposes them to difference? That’s not a flaw. That’s the point.
And if you’re wondering why some people are so afraid of higher education, it might be because they know their ideas don’t hold up very well once they’re examined.
I see this every day when I criticize what’s happening right now. Conservatives can’t make coherent arguments defending this administration’s decisions. They don’t try. They just treat politics like a scoreboard. Their side is “winning,” so they cheer from the bleachers like they’re at Yankee Stadium, heckling the other team.
The irony is that they’re too busy applauding to notice that their feet are chained to the same sinking ship.