One in five American college students says the United States deserved the September 11 attacks — and ordinary Americans are footing the bill for the indoctrination that got them there.
The Buckley Institute's annual survey of 803 undergraduates lays bare what decades of campus radicalism have wrought: 22 percent agreed that "America deserved Sept. 11," while 72 percent disagreed and 6 percent were unsure. These students weren't even alive when al Qaeda murdered nearly 3,000 people 25 years ago. They learned to despise their own country in classrooms you pay for.
The rot runs deeper than one question. Asked which economic system they'd prefer, 42 percent chose socialism versus just 28 percent for capitalism — the widest gap in the five years the survey has tracked the question. Nearly half, 47 percent, agreed that socialist countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union "offer a better economic model than capitalist countries like the United States." Only a third disagreed.
On foreign policy, 38 percent said Palestine would be a better U.S. ally than Israel, compared to 25 percent picking Israel — a nine-point shift away from the Jewish state from last year. The students are echoing radical left streamer Hasan Piker, who said in 2019 that America "deserved 9/11" and recently claimed the U.S. military has committed more terrorism than al Qaeda. Piker, as both Breitbart and the New York Post noted, has company.
Half of students surveyed said America is "inextricably linked to white supremacy" and that most minorities remain excluded from equality. And 40 percent said so-called "offensive speech" should be criminally prosecuted — a finding that Buckley Institute founder Lauren Noble called part of a stubbornly censorious campus climate. "Those same students are more likely to support shout downs, violence to stop hate speech, and other tools of censorship," Noble said.
Breitbart noted that the Young America's Foundation is launching a multi-year "Freedom Not Socialism" initiative to counter the trend, bringing together conservative students with figures like former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Whether that effort can reverse what the academy has spent decades building remains an open question.
Not every finding was grim: a majority of students — 53 percent — said transgender athletes competing in women's sports is unfair because "there are biological differences between men and women." Common sense hasn't been entirely extinguished.
But the core finding should alarm every working American who subsidizes these institutions. Follow the money: federal student loans, Pell Grants, and state appropriations flow into universities that employ the departments and programs churning out this worldview. The question isn't whether campus radicalism exists — the numbers are plain. The question is why any American taxpayer should keep funding it.
