Most
colleges and universities have a summer reading program. A faculty member or high-ranking
administrator typically selects three books (or more) and sends them to every
first-year and transfer student. When
they arrive on campus for orientation week, they discuss the readings with
fellow students, faculty, and sometimes the authors of the books.
The books
that follow are one prominent university’s selections for the past 16 years:
2019:
Tommy Orange, There There; Cary McClelland, Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long
Shadow of the Valley; Multiple authors, edited by Toni L Griffin, Ariella
Cohen, David Maddox, The
Just City Essays: 26 Visions for Urban Equity, Inclusion and Opportunity,
2018: Chang-rae
Lee, Native Speaker; Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I'm Dying; Yuri
Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World
2017: Yaa
Gyasi, Homegoing; Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction:
An Unnatural History; Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones
2016: NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names;
Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell; Justin Torres, We
the Animals
2015: Walter
Isaacson, The Innovators; Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life; Lalita
Tademy, Cane River
2014: Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats; Richard
A. Muller, Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the
Headlines; Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A
Tale of Love and Fallout
2013: Arlie Russell Hochschild, The
Outsourced Self; Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding; Loung
Ung, First They Killed My Father
2012: Michael
Kimmelman, “My Kid Could Paint That” video; Chuck Klosterman, Fargo
Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota; Ge
Wang, Smule app
2011: Geraldine
Brooks, March; Stephen Carter, The Violence of
Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama; Nathaniel Fick, One
Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer
2010: Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You
and You Fall Down; Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remains; Joyce
Carol Oates, The Undesirable Table (From the collection “Will You
Always Love Me?”)
2009: Lan Samantha Chang, Hunger; Malcolm
Gladwell, Outlier; Abraham Verghese, My Own Country: A
Doctor’s Story
2008: Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons; Junot
Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; ZZ Packer, Drinking
Coffee Elsewhere
2007: Lucille Clifton, Good Woman; N.
Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain; Nancy Packer, Jealous
Hearted Me
2006: Tracy
Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains; Julie Orringer, How to
Breathe Underwater; Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
2005: David
Henry Hwang, M Butterfly; Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John; Tobias
Wolff, Old School
2004: Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex; Richard
Rodriguez, Brown; Danzy Senna, Caucasia
Is there a pattern in the
selection of books for summer reading.
To find out, I read the description of each book on Amazon.com. Ten books were a politically or ideologically
neutral presentation of a specific topic.
Four books were an individual or family story bereft of ideology or
politics.
The other 34 books were
politically and/or ideologically left-liberal in outlook. Not a single one of the 34 books was
politically or ideologically right-conservative in outlook.
Let me repeat that. Not a
single book was politically or ideologically conservative in 16 years of summer
reading at this prominent university.
Not one. First-year student
orientation is really student indoctrination.
The highest officials at
this university claim that diversity of political beliefs is as important as
diversity of skin color, gender, sex, religion, etc. in achieving a wide
expression of values and ideas in higher education.
I’m from Missouri, the
“show me” state. It’s easy to talk the
talk of diversity of political belief.
So far, it’s hard to see any.
Sixteen orientations have not included a conservative book for
discussion during orientation week.
PS. I encourage interested readers to examine
reviews and summaries of the 48 books to find one with an explicitly
conservative theme. Please post any you
find in the comments section.
PSS. I did not name the university or its faculty
and administrators that selected the books for reading. An analysis of most elite schools would yield
similar results. Please post in the
comments any conservative books you found in an any elite university’s summer
reading program.