Having been a student of probably the most famous homegrown Communist in American history – Angela Davis – at UCLA in 1970, I’m smirking at the futility of Gov. Kristi Noem’s fatuous attempt at dividing our state university system into an institution comprised of snitchers and snitch-ees. Why am I so scornful of Noem’s cause? Because it assumes that our university-level students are so intellectually weak that they’re ideologically malleable and incapable of independent thought.

I think South Dakota’s high schools produce graduates who are much, much better than that. Noem vastly underestimates our students’ capacity to make informed judgements and reach their own conclusions.

As was the case in my day, the whole idea of a decent college education is for young people to be exposed to differing views among their instructors. It’s based on the premise that students of that age are capable of thinking for themselves. Noem must believe that South Dakota’s undergraduates are lacking in that capacity.

For my part, I was a committed Republican before I even got to college, having joined the party when I was still a Marine, just after I got back from Vietnam. Studying contrary ideologies in college didn’t shake my political beliefs. Indeed, exposure to Angela Davis only solidified them.

It wasn’t until 2017, when Donald Trump took over and ruined the party, that the GOP said sayonara to me.

Occasionally considering rejoining the GOP since then, I take a what’s-the-use attitude...

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