HIGHER EDUCATION AS RELIGIOUS INDOCTRINATION: “The religion in question is not Methodism or Catholicism but an extreme version of the belief system of the liberal elite: the liberal professional, managerial, and creative classes, which provide a large majority of students enrolled at such places and an even larger majority of faculty and administrators who work at them. To attend those institutions is to be socialized, and not infrequently, indoctrinated into that religion.”

Plus, “Lower-income whites belong disproportionately to precisely those groups whom it is acceptable and even desirable, in the religion of the colleges, to demonize: conservatives, Christians, people from red states. . . . Taken together, Salam’s and Deresiewicz’s view can be interpreted as this: anti-white rhetoric functions as a way for upper-class and upwardly mobile whites and select people of colour to distinguish themselves from less cosmopolitan whites, who also tend to be lower-income. Furthermore, many progressive environments encourage it, especially universities, and it conveniently helps obscure or rationalise their elitism—in part by shifting the focus away from class and in part by painting lower-income whites as immoral and thus unworthy.”