Social Justice Education for the End of Capitalism

In recent conversations with young colleagues and co-workers I have often observed a mentality of entitlement. There is a culture of dependency among youth who seem to think that society owes people a livelihood, a roof over their heads, health care for the ill and everlasting liberty without having to fight for it.

I was having a discussion recently with a bright young student going for her masters at NYU’s Stern School of Business, about corporate fraud and the financial scandals at Enron where the directors Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were indicted for numerous securities and monetary crimes. She mentioned Jack Welsh lumping him together with the crooked CEO’s of Enron and other big time criminals. Her class just completed a study of Jack Welsh alleging that he committed crimes of defrauding employees out of their livelihoods and awarding disproportionate payouts to the top executives. He was demonized as an ignoble corporate shark exploiting the powerless victims of his mammoth empire.

It is astounding how academia can trash the legacy of a revered business leader, Jack Welsh named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine. He engineered the turn around of GE by firing the 10% most unproductive workers and rewarding the top performers. Incompetent employees are a liability to a company. However if one’s outlook is tainted by an entitlement mentality, even the most sensible business policies are construed as unethical and the most highly regarded corporate sage is regarded as a crook.

Nonetheless, my own generation, the baby boomers, were no less guilty of the same flaw. Our parents, who pampered and indulged us and shielded us from life’s hard knocks, called us the ‘sniveling spoiled brat’ generation as we were growing up. Fortunately I have long since matured in my thinking, but it’s no less perplexing how my generation’s spoiled mentality has trickled down into the teacher’s education schools, the academic curriculum and classrooms as “education for social justice.” In fact the fruits of these liberal academic programs are being seen in street level advocacy groups working to shake down small companies and extort businessmen for the ‘progressive’ cause of worker’s rights in order to halt the spread of capitalism. Anything with a ‘progressive’ label is lauded as visionary and trumpeted by the New York media whose writers likewise hail from progressive schools of journalism.

But the New York Post’s Tom Elliot has exposed one of these sniveling advocacy groups, the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) for the fraud that it is, an “angry campaign to end capitalism in N.Y.C. eateries.” Like a band of latter-day Barbary Pirates these self righteous goons prowl the streets of New York targeting fine restaurants with rowdy street demonstrations, loud bullhorns and signs charging them with violations of worker’s rights even in cases where there was not a single violation and the workers had never asked for their representation.

But they have succeeding in putting some restaurants out of business and keeping customers away from others. They have also succeeded in profiting themselves by extorting restaurant owners for large ransoms so they will leave them alone. Smith and Wollensky has paid ROC $164,000 to end the protests at two of its restaurants, Cite and Park Avenue Cafe. Conducting their guerilla operations protected as a tax exempt 501(c)3 charitable foundation they continue to dodge legal loopholes reeking havoc on New York’s fine dining establishments with impunity. Workers whom ROC claims to represent without their consent are fed up with the loss of customers and resulting loss of tips.

Who are the protesters who fill the ranks of ROC? They are the new breed of youthful radicals schooled in social justice advocacy at our most prestigious colleges and universities. The leading radical is a Harvard/Yale trained lawyer named Saru Jayaraman whose objective is to fight for social justice and stated that she “wants to eliminate capitalism from the restaurant industry.” She also teaches a class on immigrant rights at NYU as a professor of Political Science and Labor Studies, where she recruits protesters from her class. She boasted: "Our challenge to capitalism is not simply building alternative institutions, but actually, over time . . . developing new owners . . . who will infiltrate the New York State Restaurant Association and ultimately co-opt it for workers' rights.”

Barbara Lundblad, a professor at Union Theological Seminary who teaches a class in "Preaching for Social Transformation" also encourages her students to participate in the protests. She leads the protesters in “prayer vigils” in front of New York restaurants, which are simply a more pious means of extortion and intimidation of restaurateurs and their customers.

But we can and will fight back. One way is to dine and tip generously at the besieged Cite and Park Avenue Café and other restaurants targeted by NYU professor/activists and their disciples. Another way to end the political indoctrination in the classroom is to cut off funding to NYU. Most of NYU’s support comes from endowments, grants and donations from alumni. A small percentage comes from tuition. All alumni should call up and pledge not to donate another cent to NYU as long as such radical professors are indoctrinating and recruiting students in the classroom. As long as professor Saru Jayaraman is teaching students to fight for social justice in order to end capitalism in the restaurant industry, all alumni and donors should tell the president that they will withhold contributions until that professor is discharged and an academic environment is restored at NYU.

Another way is to lobby our state lawmakers to get them involved when we observe such professors using the classroom for their pet political causes. We should call our representatives and let them know that the abuses of higher education are a troubling phenomenon. Through the efforts of my colleagues Mitchell Langbert, Candace de Russy and I, several state lawmakers are already well informed and involved. The Academic Bill of Rights legislation was recently reintroduced in the 2007 session as bill #S2300 in the State Senate by Senator DeFrancisco, and #A04406 in the Assembly by Assemblyman Seminerio. The purpose of the bill is to promote intellectual diversity on campus and prevent such political abuse of classroom time. A portion of the memo written by the bill’s sponsor states:

Professors and administrators have an obligation to make students aware of a broad range of viewpoints and perspectives. They are not hired to teach only students who share their political or philosophical views, and professors should never force their own views upon their students. The classroom is not and should never be a soapbox for a professor to promote his or her point of view.