The Energy Question Episode 59 Stanley Ridgley, Author of the Best Seller, “Brutal Minds”

 

David Blackmon [00:00:00] And before we go into our interview today, I wanted to let everyone know we have a new sponsor for our Energy Question Podcast. The US Oil and Gas Association, or USOGA  for short. First established in 1970, USOGA has been an effective and creative voice for the industry for more than a century now. USOGA is dedicated to educating the public, policymakers, and legislators at the federal, state, and local levels about the value of the domestic oil and natural gas industry.

David Blackmon [00:00:38] If you’re in the industry and not currently a USOGA member, please consider joining the association as a way of helping it tell your story to the policymakers whose actions impact everything you do each and every day. You can start that process by contacting you, so get it through its website. USOGA.ORG. Thanks so much to you, Soga, for sponsoring the Energy Question podcast, and now on with our show.

David Blackmon [00:01:06] Hey, Welcome to the Energy Question with David Blackmon. I’m your host, David Blackmon. And my guest today is going to be a departure from our normal fare. But I wanted to do this interview because it’s about a subject that I think is just vitally important to everyone in our society today.

David Blackmon [00:01:22] Our guest is Dr. Stanley Ridgley he’s the author of a new book called Brutal Minds, which is an exploration of how our students are, frankly, being brainwashed on most of our university campuses today by people who are completely unqualified to be interacting with these students. And Dr. Stanley Ridgley. Dr. And I’m going to call you Stanley, as you invited me to do. Welcome to the show.

Stanley Ridgley [00:01:47] Well, I appreciate it. Dave is a pleasure to be here and I’m looking forward to speaking and sharing these ideas with your audience. So I think is really anyone concerned with higher education and how it has a cascade effect on our society will be interested, I think in our conversation today.

David Blackmon [00:02:04] And just so everyone knows, I’m not going to spend a lot of time reading Mr. Ridgleys complete bio, but we’ll post it on the show notes.

Stanley Ridgley [00:02:11] And do that. That’s okay. We got to go. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

David Blackmon [00:02:15] Well, let’s do it because I want people to know that you’re not some guy off the street. Okay? You’re incredibly well qualified to be writing this book. Dr. Ridgely is a he’s a former clinical professor of strategic management, holds a doctorate, a master’s in international relations security in the Soviet Union from Duke University, and an international MBA from Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

David Blackmon [00:02:39] He’s also studied at Moscow State University and the Institut de Gestion socio in Paris. Pardon my French. So again, well qualified as a real scholar, a professor currently at Drexel University Thank you again for doing the show.

Stanley Ridgley [00:02:58] I appreciate it we’re I’m broadcasting from my office this is where the Magic happens.

David Blackmon [00:03:03] Exactly. So before we get out of the interview, I want you to just take a couple of minutes and talk about the reasons why you felt really obligated, I think, to write this book based on real experiences you’ve had on campus firsthand observations, correct?

Stanley Ridgley [00:03:24] Oh, correct. And it’s awful. It’s also based not it’s not an autobiographical kind of account it does integrate some of my own perspectives and my own experiences but mainly looks at what the brainwashed thought reformers on the campuses say about themselves. And they what they say that they’re actually doing, why they’re doing it, where they’re doing it, how they do it, and who they are doing it to.

Stanley Ridgley [00:03:46] How did I come to this book? Well, it to really truncate the story is a fact. I was I started out six years ago writing a different book. I was going to write about the effects or the impact of neo-Marxist critical theory on management and business that seems reasonable that this there really used.

David Blackmon [00:04:03] To me it’s happening to do right.

Stanley Ridgley [00:04:05] So yes.

David Blackmon [00:04:06] We’ll talk about this. No, no, no.

Stanley Ridgley [00:04:08] Well, yeah, yeah. And there was a great deal of impact by the critical theorists on management and how it’s infiltrated, how we teach business, and that sort of thing. But as I, as I did the research and I tugged at the bibliographical strings threads that held all of this edifice together, this tapestry of critical pedagogy together, I discovered a bureaucratic mechanism whereby that explains why and how we have this left-of-right incredibly dis disjointed ratio of left to right on the college campuses, and why it matters more now than it ever has in the past.

Stanley Ridgley [00:04:46] There’s a big difference now, and that is the major contribution of brutal minds that this bureaucratic mechanism actually exists. It is producing and reproducing a. I would say, you know, a really off-balance, disjointed, left-to-right ratio, not necessarily in the faculty, but in the bureaucracy.

David Blackmon [00:05:08] Right.

Stanley Ridgley [00:05:09] And I can quote I can cite the actual ratio this is from the research of Samuel Abrahams at Sarah Lawrence College in the last ten years. His research shows that, well, where the ratio of liberal to conservative on the campuses in the faculty is 6 to 1. Now, we can deal with that we’ve always had to deal with that. Right?

Stanley Ridgley [00:05:25] And for the most part, a lot of those folks, most of those folks on the left are reasonable, traditional liberals, you know, that guy, that kind of thing. The problem comes in the bureaucracy and that ratio is 12 to 1. You say, well, my gosh, why would the bureaucracy outweigh it? Aren’t these just functionaries that, you know, make sure that the pizza’s hot and the sound system works and put people in dorm rooms, that kind of thing?

Stanley Ridgley [00:05:52] Why would they necessarily be extremist left and that’s what we’re talking about here. Well, Brutal Minds tells you exactly why and it tells you why it’s important because it is these people with all of their access to students, 24/7 on the college campus, they try to immerse college students in a really extremist left-wing ideology.

Stanley Ridgley [00:06:14] And the, you know, classroom ideology is only a small percentage of the time a student has on the campus. The other 98% of the time is where these bureaucrats who are usually, you know, mediocre, generally speaking, and I’ll tell you where they come from and how they’re trained in a moment but that’s where it’s that’s where the problem is.

Stanley Ridgley [00:06:35]  And the problem is getting worse and I will tell you why the problem’s getting worse because this pure bureaucratic machine is reproducing itself, generating substandard people who believe themselves to be college educators that’s their term college educators who are nonfaculty and pumping them back into the university where they have this almost unfettered access to students that are messaging them. 24/7 in a process that they call milieu management.

David Blackmon [00:07:05] And this is all like basically most if not all, universities run through what we call the Student Affairs Department, correct? Those people are supposed to manage housing and calendars.

Stanley Ridgley [00:07:18] And things like that and so what we have is we have this popular understanding of, well, we have academic affairs over here. That’s Dr. Ridgley. Right. And, you know, physics and chemistry and history, and over here we have student affairs.

Stanley Ridgley [00:07:32] And people tend to think, well, that’s extracurricular stuff you know, the the housing and the orientation and the the fun. Those smiles on her face are playing games, making sure the dining hall works and that everything else, you know, the dorm room assignments are made and that sort of thing.

Stanley Ridgley [00:07:50] So we kind of think it is a benign, benign functionary kind of thing well, that’s far from the truth that is far from the reality. Although they, the student affairs folks would love for people to continue to believe them, to be this benign, kind of anodyne group of people on the campuses, just helping students to grow, helping students to develop. And that’s their terminology, which masks their ideological indoctrination. I know you’ve read you’ve read Brutal Minds. You know what you find that. Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:08:20] Yeah. I’ve mainly listened to it on audiobook version which I have that’s become a habit of mine, but I’ve also read I go back and forth it it’s become my habit for consuming books and it’s an I have to tell you, it it’s a frightening, frightening book.

David Blackmon [00:08:37] I have two granddaughters who will be going into university hopefully within the next 6 to 8 years. And the thought that they’re going to be subjected to this sort of thing is really frightening to me. You point out that the tactics these people are using to brainwash these I mean, spectacle really are brainwashing operators right out of the Maoist Playbook, right?

Stanley Ridgley [00:09:02] Yes, it is. And it is They’re in the Maoist playbook of coercive persuasion. And the salsa was what they called it. The idea of brainwashing or thought reform or reeducation really came from the United States in the work of Kurt Lewin in the 1940s, is an MIT social psychologist, very well-respected. He developed a program that he called Reeducation. If you ever wonder where that word came from?

Stanley Ridgley [00:09:27] It came from Kurt Lewin, and he called it in a kind of a and it was a positive thing for Kurt Lewin because he had developed a program called we call it Now Encounter Groups. He is known as the father of the Encounter group, and this program was designed to help criminals move beyond the belief system that has allowed them or encourage them to be criminals. And he wanted to remedy this so there would be no recidivism in the criminal and criminal class.

Stanley Ridgley [00:09:55] And so he developed a three-stage brainwash program Reeducation program that was unfreezing the belief system, changing it, and then refreezing that belief system with activities designed to prevent backsliding into a life of crime.

Stanley Ridgley [00:10:10] Well, unfortunately, social justice activists have found this very useful, this brainwashing technique, just as the Mao Zedong and the North Koreans found it very useful in, you know, brainwashing of prisoners of war, brainwashing Western intellectuals who became and brainwashing their own people in terms of the University Cordray’s. There had to be reforms or re-educated so that they would become more useful in terms of propagating the Marxist doctrine or the Maoist doctrine.

Stanley Ridgley [00:10:45] Now Social Justice Education in this in this Country is permeated with Marxist Crypto Maoist Theory there is no doubt about it. They say it when they’re talking amongst themselves. They say it in their literature. I’ve got a brainwashing manual right here. This is called teaching for diversity and social justice.

Stanley Ridgley [00:11:04] The brainwashing techniques that I just described to you are actually referenced in chapter four here. Chapter four tells you how to run a brainwashing session. You too David can run a training session. Social justice, which is their terminology for a more equitable society, is basically socialism and a crypto-Maoist theory.

Stanley Ridgley [00:11:24] So where is all this stuff coming from? I mean, you know that that’s what this is all well and good. But can’t you talk about this without mentioning Marx and Mao? No, I can’t, because that’s what they say. Look at education, schools these are the ones who train.

Stanley Ridgley [00:11:38] These Student Affairs persons, education schools were permeated a long time ago with Crypto Maoist theory in the personal personage of Pablo Frere. Mark, the Marxist who really has generated this whole body of thought that has permeated education schools which by the way, are the least respected academic units on the campuses. We kind of hold our noses and put up with them because, you know, they bring in money into in terms of tuition kind of of the really the bottom feeders.

Stanley Ridgley [00:12:09] And then one of the reasons is because of their strange Marxist infatuation with people in their canon of theory. Henry Giroux, Iris Shaw, Michael Appel, and Paulo Fair, were all self-described Marxists. This is not something that someone has to make up.

David Blackmon [00:12:27] A secret, right?

Stanley Ridgley [00:12:28] Yeah. No, it’s no secret. It’s no secret. But they don’t say this. They don’t advertise this when they’re advertising for people to come to. Oh, join us here. We’re going to teach you how how to teach kids. We’re going to teach you how to perhaps join the higher education edifice. And so they needed they needed to be able to talk about the program without talking about Marx.

Stanley Ridgley [00:12:45] So they searched and finally found someone about 25 years ago, this guy, Brazilian educator, by the name of Paolo Freire, and you know, James Lindsay did it a great debunker of critical race theory, talks about Paolo Freire. He was Who was he?

Stanley Ridgley [00:13:01] Well, he was a Brazilian educator, quasi philosopher, never really had any original thoughts of his own, became a Marxist when he was in exile from Brazil, in Peru and Paraguay, places like that. He wrote a famous book called Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in 1970 the third most cited book in the social sciences Pedagogy The Oppressed.

Stanley Ridgley [00:13:24] And of course, a whole succession of books after that, this was the perfect guy like Al Capone had to have some functionary or front man to launder his dirty money. Right? Yet you’ve got these Marxist theorists in the education schools. They needed someone, a frontman, to launder their dirty Marxist theory and this guy is Paolo Freire, the bearded fellow got a nice smile, and kindly visage a like a kindly uncle.

Stanley Ridgley [00:13:51] And this guy becomes, No, it’s not Marxist, it’s not Maoist, it’s Frierian. And so they learn about these people they work with, they revere Paulo Freire, and they market it as a kind of badge of honor. If you have not heard of Paulo Freire, oh, well, you have heard of Paulo Freire. This guy was a schmuck. Okay. He marketed his ill Crypto Maoist education theory in India and retooled it, reworked it, and repurposed it for his own educational theories.

Stanley Ridgley [00:14:22] And the idea we’re going to educate for freedom, that’s one of his major phrases, and educate for freedom and help students are going to create. No will this whole edifice here this is what informs our education schools now, and it certainly informs the advanced degree programs that I talk about.

Stanley Ridgley [00:14:39] These advanced degree programs are in Student Affairs, Higher Education Administration, educational leadership is one of their they’re big ones and they recruit people and train people in this Crypto Maoist Education Theory. It’s called critical pedagogy. That’s got an overarching term for it, which indicates it’s from Critical Theory, which is the Neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, that it’s all.

David Blackmon [00:15:06] It’s all focus now on race the right.

Stanley Ridgley [00:15:08] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

David Blackmon [00:15:10] I mean, The focus is really on Critical Race Theory for the most part

Stanley Ridgley [00:15:14] And the idea that the reason for that. Yeah. And you’re exactly right on that and the reason for that is because this is a very nice wedge. It’s very difficult for people in the wake of the unpleasantness of 2020 to criticize this sort of thing.

David Blackmon [00:15:28] Right.

Stanley Ridgley [00:15:28] This is so the Critical Race Theory is kind of like the lead, the point of the spear and the wedge for a host of other critical pedagogic methodology and crackpot theories to make it into the academy. And so you have these folks graduating, these folks being the Student Affairs people graduating from these programs become faculty.

Stanley Ridgley [00:15:49] They come in through the side door of the University to fill bureaucrat positions that are created just for them. And you’re saying you said, well, you know yeah, but still, don’t they just manage the dorm if they don’t manage the dorms and they don’t manage the dining halls, aren’t they fired or isn’t there some sort? Well, no, that’s not what they that they are those primary duties are just going to get done.

Stanley Ridgley [00:16:11] They believe themselves to be and they say this college educator just like the faculty, just like the faculty, although they’ve not gone through a rigorous selection process as we in the faculty must do, and they want to teach in the curriculum well, they can’t do that for the most part.

Stanley Ridgley [00:16:28] So they created an entire edifice called the Co-Curricular and in this Co-Curriculum, they have fake faculty, fake instructors, fake courses. And some schools even offer fake transcripts, Rutgers and Saint John’s, or universities that offer a fake transcript for what they’ve learned in this Co-Curriculum. And this is where you find these racial caucuses and these co-creator’s conversations, intergroup dialogs, where the brainwashing takes place and utilizes this Kurt Lewin three-stage process.

Stanley Ridgley [00:17:01] And again, I’ll hold up another book called Designing Bold, Transformative Multicultural Initiatives. They don’t use the term reeducation anymore because, you know, and I know it’s kind of got unsavory.

David Blackmon [00:17:13] Yeah. All right.

Stanley Ridgley [00:17:14] Annotation. Right? Even though Kurt Lewin crafted it back in the late forties, early fifties. I’m sorry. He passed away in his forties. Like, he crafted this to describe this process. Well, by the 1990s, they decided they being the educationists can’t use reeducation any longer because too many people were in the reeducation camps. We’re going to call something else we’re going to call it Transformative Education.

Stanley Ridgley [00:17:39] And so this is when it became Trans, so when you hear Transformative Education, you are really hearing a reeducation in a really an ironic twist the Communist Chinese have changed their notion of the re-education or what they call rectification campaigns that’s their terminology. They changed it to education for transformation. And this is right out of the Marxist literature coming out of communist China’s educational transformation in the States it’s called transformative education.

Stanley Ridgley [00:18:08] With the idea is you’re going to bring a student in, you’re going to destabilize that student’s sense of self and sense of identity. You’re going to make, you know, chill soil and make it ready for this transplantation of a belief system. We’re going to replace the belief system you brought from home, and we’re going to replace it with one that is imbued with critical consciousness. And then we’re going to perform a whole bunch of a re-entered of activities, give you work to do, to do the work so that you don’t backslide into your old ways of thinking.

Stanley Ridgley [00:18:42] This is the brainwash that’s going on at every single college campus in America where there is a significant student affairs presence filled with people who have gone through this type of program and that is the danger and this is why I tell people, parents and students in particular, you arm yourself with brutal minds. This will tell you exactly who these people are, how they do it, what the warning signs are when you’re faced with a threat situation, and what you can do about it.

David Blackmon [00:19:12] Well. And so I know you’re aware, I mean, here in the state of Texas and I’m sure in other states, there’s been an effort by our Governor and our Legislature to force publicly funded universities to eliminate their DEI Departments. But that’s not really addressing this problem, is it? I mean, it’s a smart move and it’s a good move, but that’s not really going to solve this particular problem, is it? That’s kind of a tangential thing, isn’t it?

Stanley Ridgley [00:19:39] Well, tangential It’s kind of a tip of the spear kind of thing because this is where this dying process is, where these louts and I call them louts, as I’ve said before, if if if they are indeed engaged in this kind of activity that I’ve just described to you. And they are and they are deceiving people, that this is what they’re doing. And they are.

David Blackmon [00:19:59] They are.

Stanley Ridgley [00:19:59] They are louts, they are lost and they have no place, proper place on the college campus. They need to be at best retrained and the civics lessons and the freedoms that undergird free society and the principles and values that undergird a free society or they need to be fired. There’s no doubt there’s no in-between on this because people are policy. Okay? You can rectify a situation all you want to. But if the people who engineered that policy are still in place and they’re unrepentant, then you’re going to be faced with that same problem the next year and the year after that.

David Blackmon [00:20:34] Yeah, they’ll just change the terminology and say, you know, call it something else and go along.

Stanley Ridgley [00:20:39] You can’t. You can’t argue cancer away, okay? With good feelings and good talking and, you know, hands across the aisle. No, you’ve got to do something else to get rid of the cancer. Well, everything I’ve described to you is pretty much been flying under the radar because the average person’s not aware of student affairs or what they’re doing at the Brainwash. But this DEI has now surfaced. Okay? This way they think themselves to be untouchable because you can’t criticize them. I think there’s been a lot of articles published recently, and certainly, as a fellow in Canada that just met his demise.

David Blackmon [00:21:15] So talk about that. I mean, this man committed suicide after being subjected to a required seminar on this. Right?

Stanley Ridgley [00:21:22] Right. His last name because of the book you can’t the William Kurtz, I believe, I think is his name. He was a Canadian-educated, well-respected liberal gay man who was progressive in every sense of the term and someone who has always had always, you know, pushed the liberal line in education not he was not an ally of mine at all probably I’m just guessing here I’ve just read a story just this morning which was published on the Free Press.

Stanley Ridgley [00:21:50] And what happened was he went to a dry session and he merely said, look, the situation, as you’ve described it here in Canada has been all white supremacist. I had like a life is as however, you want to describe it is certainly not as bad as you’re making it out, certainly not in comparison to what they have in the States.

Stanley Ridgley [00:22:09] Well, he was crucified for saying that he was for all for just questioning and saying, hey, well, maybe it’s not as bad as you’re making it out. He didn’t disagree with the person, just said maybe it’s a matter of degree.

Stanley Ridgley [00:22:22] Well, he was put on display and not a single person in the Zoom session spoke up in an agreement or even spoke up to say, hey, why don’t you let this guy speak? Nothing, not even that. And he became the butt and point of attack, the target.

David Blackmon [00:22:42] And he was bullied of an arrest for weeks.

Stanley Ridgley [00:22:44] Several several sessions when it came to if I was on like I’m like a group he launched a lawsuit for harassment finally apparently whatever was inside him broke and he committed suicide by jumping off a sixteen story building and he did this quite recently, middle of July.

Stanley Ridgley [00:23:01] And I think that exemplifies the type of, you know, psychological manipulation, behavior modification. And for my part, this person never would have survived past saying what this person said to this man right here.

Stanley Ridgley [00:23:16] You’re going to hire a lawyer Defamation is Defamation, Slander, Hate Speech, anything you want to call it. That’s what goes on in many of these sessions where people are concerned or are believed themselves to be invulnerable to this type.

Stanley Ridgley [00:23:33] And what they do is when someone asks a question, they label this rather than answer the question, which would be the simplest thing to do. They label the person who asked the question, Oh, you’re engaging in resistance, you’re engaging in diversity resistance, which really means I can’t answer the question so I’m going to accuse you of doing nothing but resisting what I’m saying by asking a question.

Stanley Ridgley [00:23:56] This is the Achilles heel and once people understand that this is the tactic that they use, that in other words, it’s one of those things like is part of a conspiracy theory that if I question your conspiracy theory, you know, that means I’m part of the conspiracy. And this is the stock in trade that these DEI people are doing.

Stanley Ridgley [00:24:17] I’m delighted that the Governor of Texas and the governor of Florida and that other entities are less state legislatures are making a move in that direction in Iowa and in Virginia. And I hope that the laundry list continues and grows and that these louts are ousted from wherever they have achieved a measure of legitimacy. They need to be delegitimized with their own words and ousted from these positions. I will not one will not put up with anything from that type of person in this type of ideological excoriation.

David Blackmon [00:24:53] So how do we explain the fact that the Administration at these Universities does put up with it? Does sanction it apparently, and allows it to exist on their campuses, knowing they have to be aware of what is happening in these student affairs departments.

Stanley Ridgley [00:25:12] Yes, indeed.

David Blackmon [00:25:13] And why don’t they do anything to root it out and get rid of it?

Stanley Ridgley [00:25:16] Well, addressing the DEI station first. The fact is that many administrations immediately jumped to respond to all this political pressure in the summer of 2020. And with all of the and the fears that this type of thing might erupt on their campuses. And so they wanted to appear, they being presidents and probably some boards of trustees wanted to appear sensitive to this sort of thing.

Stanley Ridgley [00:25:42] I think the term at the time was used was, oh, there’s a racial reckoning well, we never really figured out what that was supposed to mean. And the fact that certainly, universities as far-flung as from Florida to Texas and to California and Oregon were somehow now complicit in what happened between a policeman and a drug felon in Minnesota, that somehow the universities are complicit in this and that suddenly the window is open and all kinds of noxious doctrines are being ushered into the university by mediocre bureaucrats and DEI is primarily to the buzzword that came along with that.

Stanley Ridgley [00:26:23] And university presidents, unfortunately, thought that they would rather than, I’m sure in there went through their minds. Why can’t you see I’m following along I’ve got to get out in front of this parade with the flag and I’ve got to be seen leading this kind of thing.

Stanley Ridgley [00:26:36] Unfortunately, it’s become a big scam, and most everyone who’s involved in this sort of thing and they will say publicly knows that this guy is nothing but a race-hustling scam. These faculty members, faculty members who run they’re own nonprofit off-campus diversity consultants, DEI consultants, the kind of person who drove this one man to commit suicide is an example of one of them and, you know, the university presidents put their names on it they signed up for this stuff so they cannot very well backtrack now.

Stanley Ridgley [00:27:10] Three years after the fact and say, you know what, my gosh, what a what was I thinking? But my name is now on this and I’ve got to double and triple down on this type of thing. And all the bureaucrats that I appointed and brought into the university, these mediocrities were not real scholars they’re not all they are with people with an agenda and a firm belief in this racial critical racialism and you’ve got to deal with them.

Stanley Ridgley [00:27:32] And the only way we’re going to do anything can do anything about this is for parents of students and perhaps I have no hope for this, but boards of trustees to finally act against presidents that have done this type of, you know, engage in this kind of buffoonery and do something about it.

Stanley Ridgley [00:27:50] But the Student Affairs has been going on concurrently with this and I’m sure that student affairs, as always, they’ve always liked the idea that there are some radical faculty tweeting a Twitter, celebrities, you know, outrageous things so that the public believes it’s the faculty who are driving the brainwash train and it’s really not.

Stanley Ridgley [00:28:08] There’s some faculty. I don’t even think of them as real faculty who are in the schools of education, who are leading this kind of thing, because they’re the people who are training the mediocre bureaucrats who wish a career in leading the charge. Right.

Stanley Ridgely [00:28:20] And I cannot emphasize to you I mean this I’m not simply being pejorative and insulting to someone, but when someone writes in and writes a dissertation from the education school and the dissertation is nothing more than a hundred-page hundreds say 150-page ejaculation of a diary of sorts of their experience in the education program, and that they become a doctor when they write this dissertation, which is simply about how I feel about my program. I’m not making this up.

Stanley Ridgley [00:28:52] have a project of downloading dissertations by these people just so I can if people say, Oh, can you give me an example? Well, yes, I can. I can give you further I can give you lots of examples of this type of, you know, knucklehead in that passes for Jill Biden Doctor.

David Blackmon [00:29:11] Oh, my gosh.

Stanley Ridgley [00:29:12] Yeah. Yeah, that’s. That’s. She kind of exemplifies the type of thing that I’m talking about. And so how do we, you know, how do we deal with that? What’s not? Well, student affairs is not really viewed as a problem on the college campus, primarily because the people who should be monitoring and overseeing student affairs are the student affairs people themselves.

Stanley Ridgley [00:29:31] They have succeeded in the last 20 years in this process of training and hiring training and hiring people to it, to really stock the bureaucracy with the types of people who are mutually supportive. It’s got incestuous hiring, right?

David Blackmon [00:29:47] Yes.

Stanley Ridgley [00:29:47] It’s professional incest. Now, there’s a third element of this bureaucratic machine that I mentioned. I talked about the education schools that train these people to come into the bureaucracy and teach these fake courses. Well, over here we have an off-campus, as in most fields we have off-campus professional organizations.

Stanley Ridgely [00:30:05] And there are two Primary Organizations, one is the ACPA and the other is the NASPA, the NASPA. And these two organizations are basically the crucibles of indoctrination and they are membership organizations they have a total membership of around 25,000, I think, of these student affairs educators who will go to these conferences and who are trained in these institutes and workshops, how to run these co-curricular activities and to imbue the ideology.

Stanley Ridgley [00:30:38] These organizations are 100% completely permeated with crypto Maoist ideology this idea that the university must be, quote, decolonized. This is one of their mantras, right? Decolonize the university, which basically means we’re going to destroy the traditional university and transform it.

Stanley Ridgley [00:30:58] This organization, I even have their mug right here this is a mug that they sent me because I joined them to find out what they were up to is the ACPA. Their motto is, It’s right here in the mug boldly transforming higher education think about that.

Stanley Ridgley [00:31:12] As a group of half-baked bureaucrats who are not even in the faculty and they want to boldly transform higher education. This is not a pipe dream because it’s these two organizations, the ACPA and NASPA, that design and impose the standards in schools of education that train people to become bureaucrats who then run the curriculum and who then are members and receive substandard supplementary training in the bureaucracy. Here we have this circle of vice. It’s a bureaucratic structure that constantly reinforces and increases its influence year by year.

David Blackmon [00:31:54] So those two groups are basically the World Economic Forum of the educational system, right? I mean, that’s exactly the process that happens at the WEF, the COP 28 conferences, all that stuff where people go and they get indoctrinated, then they go and get into government and, you know, push the agenda, those organizations all over the world. And yeah.

David Blackmon [00:32:17] And so what do you tell parents what can parents of a lot of people watching this or you know probably have kids get ready to go on to college. What do you tell parents about how to protect their own kids from this, you know, falling prey to this kind of Maoist indoctrination on the campus they’re about to attend?

Stanley Ridgley [00:32:40] Well, I have a lot of students who come to me. I don’t advertise my political proclivities on campus, but I don’t hide them either. I don’t believe that I was hired to propel my political beliefs as law professors who do and who utilize their court, their classrooms, a bully pulpit for their personal political beliefs, irrespective of the course that they’re teaching I don’t do that.

Stanley Ridgley [00:33:03] But when students do come to me, and I am the faculty advisor at Drexel University for Turning Point USA, and so students know that by virtue of that, I probably can give them good advice on how to battle this sort of thing.

Stanley Ridgley [00:33:19] I tell these students the same things I tell all parents and I tell prospective students, and that is number one, you have to understand what’s going on you cannot accept the facade that you find on a website that is the way that they’re going to ask that’s the truth. That is you know, what you’re seeing is transparent and this is the way things operate it’s not that’s not the way things operate.

Stanley Ridgley [00:33:43] And I provide a real-world perspective in brutal minds that shows and tells parents and students, okay, here are the people who are going to be coming after you. Here are the people who can help you. Here are the people who are simply providing you with an education that you paid for. We are concerned we have to be concerned with that small cadre of people, not so small anymore, who are going to utilize their positions and access to students to inculcate their message and I’m going to quote now one of the education.

Stanley Ridgley [00:34:14] So we especially have to get them in their freshman year because they’re frightened they have more of an open mind. And we have to message them and give them our message over and over and over again that’s a quote over and over and over again in dorm rooms and dorm sessions, in workshops and courageous conversations, bulletin boards, anywhere we can find, they have what they call a learning opportunity.

Stanley Ridgley [00:34:39] And remember, these are not faculty these are mediocre bureaucrats who have no brief other than to make sure the pizza’s hot. Okay. And that someone’s not going into the wrong dorm room, whether someone can find a dining hall that’s their job.

Stanley Ridgley [00:34:53] But they’re constantly exceeding that mandate because they are taught to do so. This is what appears in their literature. Exceed your mandate. Go ahead and use these offered to get on hiring committees, expand your influence, and expand our influence so that we can boldly transform higher education. I mean, that doesn’t sound like a kind of benign mantra to me. You know, both.

David Blackmon [00:35:19] Certainly they’re.

Stanley Ridgley [00:35:20] Trying to do we know exactly what they’re trying to do. Let me tell you, I had a conversation with a professor of the other day about Brutal Minds and he was I said, well, you know, there’s this bureaucracy. Oh, well, I find this very interesting as well. I’m sure you do. Is it? But the fact is that they are boldly they’re trying to boldly transform higher education.

Stanley Ridgley [00:35:39] And he says this, Well, you know, these models, these mottoes and these slogans are just that, you know, they can really is subject to a lot of interpretation. I said, you know what? I would agree with you if that was all they said. But there is an entire literature this is exactly what they mean by that.

Stanley Ridgley [00:35:55] And we can look at this literature and unless you’re prepared to say, well, they don’t really mean what they say and they don’t mean what they write, they’re just doing something. I don’t know what it is unless you’re willing to say that. Well, then what? Your response is completely irresponsible. It’s a non-response what do you think about this? Oh, well, it’s very interesting and that’s what he said.

Stanley Ridgley [00:36:14] I said this type of this from a faculty member, a very smart guy, but is unprepared to recognize what has grown up around us, firmly believing that the University of the 1950s and maybe even early sixties is still with us.

Stanley Ridgley [00:36:29] So he asked me, what can parents do? Well, if you understand that this is going on that’s number one. Number two, how they go about doing it. And what are your rights as a student and parent to know what’s going on? What are students’ rights with regard to informed consent? Because much of this activity is quasi-illegal, if not outright illegal. If it’s not if they don’t run these types of programs through the IRB, which is the Institutional Review Board, which is set up to protect students against precisely this kind of psychological manipulation of behavior modification.

Stanley Ridgley [00:37:04] Once you understand that this is what’s going on, once you understand the red flags and I offer a whole host of red flags, the strange vernacular, the eagerness to a smile on their faces. And what are the main things I can say right here is that any time you go into a program and I’m not talking about a classroom, I’m going to program a courageous conver difficult dialog. And they are constantly, the facilitators, constantly urging you to exhibit trust, to trust everyone here this is a safe space to disclose to make yourself vulnerable.

Stanley Ridgley [00:37:39] And they’ll say, well, you know, I’m good and I’m going to model vulnerability. I’m going to reveal something here, and then you reveal something inconsequential and then you well know, can everyone else reveal something?

Stanley Ridgley [00:37:48] These people are soliciting information they’re trying to gain information about your personal life, about your parents, and about your friends. And this is the first stage in brainwashing where they try to destabilize your sense of self. And they will even try to train you on identity theory.

Stanley Ridgley [00:38:07] Now, who are these people training you on identity theory? I’m speaking to you from personal knowledge. Now, who are these people? Are they usually bureaucrats on campus? These are not faculty members. This is usually someone armed with a cheat degree and here it is, the Master in Higher Education the Master in Student Affairs that’s a key indicator that you are in a threat situation.

Stanley Ridgley [00:38:30] Don’t tell these people anything you don’t have to they’re engaging in an interrogation that they could do no other way. It may be hands-off but just handed the interrogation sheet. Have you filled out the form you were so on? That’s asking because we’re playing a game and we’re modeling trust. Forget that. There’s no reason for you to give that person trust there’s no reason trust has to be earned over a period of time, not by virtue of stepping into a classroom, saying, hey, let’s let’s trust each other. No.

Stanley Ridgley [00:39:00] When people ask for your trust, that’s a con immediately asking for your trust. Don’t do it. That’s my advice to parents and students. And parents need to put pressure on the administration. Ask board the of trustees. And Lord, I hope that the Board of Trustees finally wakes up and starts asking the president, you know, lots of questions about what’s going on on your campus, because I think that the university presidents have a wonderful, wonderful job, easy job.

Stanley Ridgley [00:39:26] And the fact is that, okay, how are you evaluating? Well, all the people who evaluate me come here twice a year and I put on a show for them and I have incredible staff and budget to put together PowerPoint presentations to show how well I managing the organization, how well I am managing this university, and I need to raise let’s put up a new building. I need a raise let’s put up a new building.

Stanley Ridgley [00:39:50] And that’s okay. Everything sounds good to me as there are no independent sources of information that go toward it boards of trustees. And Lord knows, if they ever wake up and start asking questions and exhibit and exert that oversight on the folks who are running what are becoming increasingly out of control institutions that are financially unstable, we’ll see a reckoning here, a true a tour de force, I think.

Stanley Ridgley [00:40:18] And I encourage states to continue with their efforts to hold universities accountable. I’m a faculty member. I don’t fear these state legislators are holding faculty accountable. I fear the folks who are behind us on the campus already.

Stanley Ridgely [00:40:34] These bureaucrats were trying to seize power. Let me rephrase that. I don’t fear them. I’m eager to expose them and get them off the campus. Okay. I do fear for our students who are unaware of the measures that they can take to emasculate these folks. And you.

David Blackmon [00:40:54] Lay that all out in your book. I mean, folks, you have to pick up this book and read it. It’s one of the most important books you will read. I promise you it will scare you as much as it scares me.

David Blackmon [00:41:07] But he lays all of this out in very, very straightforward and unambiguous language and in great detail, all of it sourced, footnoted. It’s a brilliant piece of work Everyone needs to get at least half an hour. Goes so fast. I’m afraid we’re out of time here. But, you know, thank you for doing it. It’s a very important work and I really appreciate your taking the time to be with us today.

Stanley Ridgley [00:41:32] Well, I do appreciate it, David. It’s wonderful to be here and as my wife can tell you, I’m willing to talk about this for hours, hours on end. You experience hours on end when you got the audible version. Yeah, of my book. I appreciate you.

David Blackmon [00:41:45] It goes fast though I have to tell you, it goes very quick it really does. You know, it’s a very excellent, excellent piece of work and very easy to absorb so I really appreciate it. And thanks to the Sandstone Group for hosting our podcast for the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, for sponsoring our Podcast, and our Extraordinary Producer, Eric Parel I’m David Blackmon, and that’s all for now.

Please subscribe and give us a like wherever you watch or listen to the podcast.

Positive reviews are also welcome and appreciated!

Our Sponsors:

Sponsorships are available or get your own corporate brand produced by Sandstone Media.

David Blackmon LinkedIn

USOGA

DB Energy Questions 

The Crude Truth with Rey Trevino

Rey Trevino LinkedIn

Energy Transition Weekly Conversation

David Blackmon LinkedIn

Irina Slav LinkedIn

Armando Cavanha LinkedIn

ENB Top News

ENB

Energy Dashboard

ENB Podcast

ENB Substack

We would like to thank our sponsors and fellow traveling industry thought leaders.