Texas Public Policy Foundation

Most American historians say our revolution could not have happened without Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty.

American colonists were angry that the British Parliament failed to uphold their rights as Englishmen, but very few considered the answer was severing ties from the mother country. That thought was not in anyone’s head—until Samuel Adams put it there.

In 1740, Adams graduated from Harvard after defending his thesis, entitled “Whether It Be Lawful to Resist the Supreme Magistrate if the Commonwealth Cannot Otherwise Be Preserved.” Most people at the time would have considered it ludicrous to challenge the King of England, but Adams had launched his ideas at Harvard, the most respected university in the country, and his thinking was not viewed as ludicrous there.

Building on his master’s thesis and collaborating with other Harvard thinkers, Adams wrote and published constantly, creating a new narrative that changed how American colonists thought about themselves and England. He and the Sons of Liberty also created an intricate information network that spread his ideas to the other colonies.

Adams was playing the long game, writing for decades and embedding the principles of his Harvard thesis into a feasible path toward independence. His Harvard allies fortified his work at every step.

James Otis, the first lawyer to challenge the British in court for the practice of unimpeded search and seizure in colonists’ homes, and later the quartering of soldiers, was a Harvard graduate. So was Samuel’s cousin John Adams, as were John Hancock, Joseph Warren and seven other signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Changing the worldview of British colonists in a single generation and rallying them behind the principle of independence was essential to the creation of the United States. The intellectual clarity and selfless commitment of Adams and the Sons of Liberty places them in the pantheon of patriots for all time, but the impact of Harvard University also can’t be understated.

We should not forget that one single academic institution was a critical force in the founding of our country. Samuel Adams knew how a powerful university could expand worldviews and open minds and he used that power for good.

Harvard still understands that power, but the ideas have changed. Now, 250 years later, American universities have been used for a darker purpose: closing minds, stifling individual achievement and creating hatred and divisions specifically designed to destroy the country that Adams and the founding patriots created.

It is a cruel irony that leftist academics chose an acronym that sometimes seems to echo the sentiments of the Declaration of Independence. “Diversity, equity and inclusion,” sounds like something early American patriots would support—until they learned the details about what is known as DEI.

We are still trying to determine both the depth and breadth of the Marxist-based DEI programs that have nearly destroyed free thought and open inquiry at American universities, but it is likely much broader than the 200 academic institutions that admit to being members of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, where the stated mission is to incorporate “alternative narratives” about America “focused on the history of racism, colonization, and conquest.”

Advocates of DEI are also playing a long game, resisting higher education reform efforts and clinging to curriculum control, litmus tests in hiring, vast administrative expansion and a K-12 pipeline of DEI indoctrinated teachers that has produced a generation of Americans who have been taught to revile their country, the founders and ultimately themselves.

By hijacking the curriculum and dramatically expanding administrative programs, leftist DEI forces in academic institutions have created a new normal—a generation that believes the truth that is self-evident is that America is a colonizing, racist and patriarchal country built on systemic oppression.

Samuel Adams understood that universities are one of the primary forces that shape civilizations. Sadly, he could never have imagined his beloved Harvard would one day focus on dividing Americans between oppressed and oppressors, while teaching students to question whether America even deserves to exist.