Retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North visited Newsmax on Thursday to talk about a new book he co-authored that details how U.S. colleges are indoctrinating students on Marxist ideology.
North told "Rob Schmitt Tonight" the book, "American Gulags: Marxist Tyranny in Higher Education and What to Do About It," published May 24, describes how students are being taught what to think, not how to think, on college campuses.
"It's the beginning of June," North said. "We've got kids going off to college, kids are finishing the last year of high school thinking about the future. Here's the warning: Woke doesn't stand for what you think it is. Woke stands for 'warning, our kids endangered' because indoctrination is happening on college campuses.
"It's not the kind of thing that you expect. It's not teaching kids how to think, it's teaching kids what to think, and this book is an opportunity for parents to think twice about where their kids are going and ... for the courses that they're going to take because if you signed up for one of these gender-type classes, analyzed gender issues, you're not going to have a job that has that."
North, 79, said two of his 18 grandchildren are college graduates, including one who is commissioned with the U.S. Air Force.
"He's going to have a job," North said. "Be thinking about what you're going to do when you get to school, and most of it is not being taught in these gulags. And I say gulags because, really, what this is, is Marxism. It's Marxism writ large to separate people based on their color, based on the language that they speak and the last names that they've got. Just because you and I are white does not make us racists.
"That's what they're trying to teach you in college, among other things, that aren't going to help you a single bit once you get out in the community and you want a real job and want to get paid for it."
North said his book is "a handbook for parents and kids who are going to go off to college." He said the college system is now this way because the people running academic institutions "were burning their draft cards while I was getting shot at a place called Vietnam."
"It all began with doing away with prayer in public schools," North said. "I was in the last class of high school in 1961 in New York where you could actually pray in public schools, and it's been going downhill ever since we did away with that opportunity to pray in schools."
He said he would encourage students who don't know where they want to go to seek a Christian college, such as the College of the Ozarks in Missouri, or an institution such as Hillsdale College in Michigan "where they actually teach the real history of this country without being embarrassed about the fact that there was some difficult times in this country.
"But we've gotten over it, and we've done it because of people who have gotten a successful education."
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