![]() In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center said that “more than a few function as dog whistles to the extreme right.” ![]() Reporting by Buzzfeed in 2019 found that PragerU’s videos do not focus on the news cycle, rather addressing “almost every divisive national issue in the United States today: racism, sexism, income inequality, gun ownership, Islam, immigration, Israel, police brutality,” and free speech. Presenters for each video are given an honorarium of $1000. Other individuals who serve as hosts in the videos include the who’s who of “ internet and media personalities,” described by Buzzfeed reporter Joe Bernstein as individuals who’ve “made their bones in the Trump era antagonizing the campus left.” They include Jordan Peterson, Dinesh D’Souza, Alan Dershowitz, Christina Sommers, Charlie Kirk. PragerU’s “faculty” includes a variety of conservative and right-wing political commentators, including Ben Shapiro, the current editor of The Daily Wire, who has a history of making derogatory and inflammatory comments about Muslims, Arabs, African-Americans, and transgender people. Additionally, the organization runs PragerFORCE, a student ambassador program for university students in America and around the world who represent PragerU on campus. ![]() PragerU also has a second YouTube channel, PragerU International, that offers videos in various languages including Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and Spanish. In addition, the organization produces weekly shows including a live “Fireside Chat with Dennis Prager” and “The Candace Owens Show. As of February 2020, PragerU’s YouTube channel had 888 videos with a total of over 900 million views and almost 2.5 million subscribers. In a June 2017 interview with The Times of Israel, Prager described his digital empire, including PragerU, as a “ growing alternative to the moral and intellectual wasteland known as the Western university.”įrancesca Tripodi, a sociologist at the Data & Society Research Institute, has argued that “sites like PragerU create an opportunity to dabble in content that seems extremely innocuous, yet makes connections to the same kinds of ‘revelations’ pushed out by the alt-right.”Īccording to the tracker on its website, PragerU videos have received over 3 billion views and counting. Keith Ellison, Prager argued that Ellison should not be allowed to take the oath on the Qur’an, “ because the act undermines American civilization.” Prager went on to claim that allowing Ellison to take the oath on the Qur’an would “embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones, as Islamists, rightly or wrongly, see the first sign of the realization of their greatest goal - the Islamicization of America.” In 2006, following the election of the first American Muslim to Congress, Rep. The same MotherJones piece quotes Prager stat ing it was his duty to provide a conservative viewpoint “on things that matter-economics, good and evil, America, Israel, religion, God, etc.” because universities had “shut down” and “demonized nonleft ideas,” and the media was not “far behind.” In the 2018 MotherJones piece, writer Mark Oppenheimer describes PragerU’s content as “engineered to sway those in the mushy middle, especially young people trying to figure out what they stand for.” The organization was established in 2010 by conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager and radio producer Allen Estrin in order to present conservative views and combat perceived “liberal bias” in the American education system. Its website states that the organization believes in “economic and religious freedom, a strong military that protects our allies, and in the religious values that inform Western civilization, also known as Judeo-Christian values.” While it uses the word “university” in its name, PragerU is not an accredited academic institution and does not offer degree programs. Prager University is an American conservative non-profit organization that creates five-minute, animated, lecture-style videos and social media content on political, economic, and social topics. A number of PragerU’s videos spread anti-Muslim rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Although it is not an academic institution, by using the word “university” in its title PragerU implies that the right-wing messaging they spread is factually correct and expert-driven. IMPACT : PragerU, short for Prager University, is an American conservative organization that produces content to promote“Judeo-Christian values” to their millions of followers through short, lecture-style videos.
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