Colleges used to encourage the exchange of challenging ideas. Now faculty members who challenge students’ beliefs are being forced to leave the profession.
The students - the ones that forced these professors out out for views - are the future lawyers, judges, DAs, public defenders, political aides writing bills, and corporate legal counsels.
When restaurants decide to charge people based on skin color (already happening in New York), they will be the people arguing the legality of this. When lawyers are arrested for merely defending a politician, they will be the ones finding legal loopholes to let that happen. When protesters are arrested for being in the same area as a riot, given multi-year sentences for waving a flag, or detained for 2 years without a trial, they will be the lawyers making that case. When the new censorship bills roll out (see: online safety bill), they will be the people drafting the language and figuring our how to enforce it. And when the forced re-education camps are introduced (still hopefully theoretical), they will be the people deciding the constitutionality of it.
Law is always about 10-15 years downstream of culture. But make no mistake; they will take over most law firms, judiciaries, and positions of power. Even if culture shifts again in a different direction (and it won't for a long time, barring some major tragedy), the legal system will have people in it for a long time who believe the constitution is old-fashioned, and that free speech/ideas are wrongthink that needs to be punished.
>>The students - the ones that forced these professors out out for views - are the future lawyers, judges, DAs, public defenders, political aides writing bills, and corporate legal counsels.<<
Well. They'd LIKE to be the future lawyers, judges, DAs etc.
The mass murder of children and brutal gang raping of young women next to the bodies of their friends is a bit much for some - *some*, a few - campus administrators and corporate leaders (normally cowardly moral relativists). So there is a little pushback now, though most campus leaders - the ones who issued sentimental statements when a black person was killed by a cop - remain silent in the face of evil.
So it would be nice to see this as the beginning of a course correction, but it’s depressing to think it requires horror and evil at this level, and how small the correction seems to be. One can hope, but I remain pessimistic. But then I’m a glass half empty kind of guy.
That was certainly encouraging - but it was one case. I remain skeptical that we're going to see large-scale pushback at major corporations. But one can hope, and I do!
Unlikely. The WEF drives this rot, here's how and why. Leading the way, is the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), part of the WEF. If you're a university president, or chancellor, of course you want to be part of this group. OK, but what can they do? The university president/chancellor will only allow corporations with sufficiently high DEI scores to recruit on their campus. If you didn't pony up to all the DEI goals, and have a low DEI score, you're not recruiting at the top universities. This is lifeblood for corporations to have a steady supply of candidates from the top schools.
If “this is the lifeblood for corporations” then corporations need a transfusion. It’s time to unravel all of it; time to rethink our definition of “top schools” and “top universities”. Does selling out to foreign money & trading on illiberal group think entitle these institutions to “top” status? Indefinitely? What you describe is a house of cards built on ideological rot & rigged pipelines. Let. It. Fall.
It should be a public list. And students should have a path towards public renunciation of their callow ways later in life. (I’m glad I’m not permanently on-record for my early bad behavior.)
But there must be consequences for siding with evil.
When presented with a matter of personal advantage that would require abandoning principles, the human mind goes to work overtime to rationalize taking that advantage. Every participant must make an implicit or explicit decision with respect to whether he prefers winning ignobly over losing honorably. “For,” as famous sports writer Grantland Rice wrote, “when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, he marks—not that you won or lost—but how you played the game.”
Practically speaking, the best that those members not devoted to advancement by any means can do—those who decline to capitulate to those in circles of power and are willing to pay the price—is to defend themselves when their integrity requires it. In refusing to sacrifice a higher value to a lower one, and in doing so often ineluctably furthering the ends of the self-indulgent “winner” at a personal cost, the moral act of the defiant “loser” nevertheless has this beneficent attribute: it does more to advance the general welfare.
Historian David McCullough, in his Landon Lecture, Kansas State University, February 2002, cited a statement by John Adams that speaks to these divergent attitudes.
“In a letter to his wife, Abigail, written by Adams at Philadelphia in what seemed one of the darkest moments of the whole story (the American Revolution), and he knew how worried she was, how frightened she was of what the outcome of all this might be. And he said to her, ‘We can't guarantee success, but we can deserve it.’
“And when I read that I thought how different that is from our time, when all that matters is success, being number one, being at the top, irrespective of how you got there, what devices, what elbows and knees and the rest you used to get there. They're saying something exactly the reverse. And when I read that sentence, I thought what a mind he had and what a moral lesson that is.”
And in reading that sentence today, and recognizing the boundaries that have been opened to the enquiring mind since John Adams penned those word, I have to wonder how our nation has been able to squander hundreds of trillions of dollars in a public education system that continues to turn out graduates unable to read, write, do simple arithmetic, or to reason from A to B to C.
My last kid graduated from a very liberal campus in May. At the ceremony, we were lectured by the class speaker about the rot of capitalism and at the end of her speech she gave out her venmo and begged for money. We fled the campus and celebrated our end to a collective 12 years of college. We also celebrated our 3 conservative kids who'd survived in tact.
Perfect. Just WHO, exactly, is “all about the Benjamins” (to paraphrase Ilan Omar’s anti Semitic statement)? This was my first thought yesterday when Ackman suggested a Wall Street blacklist of the Harvard letter signatories. When it’s about virtue signaling, they’re “all in” with the terrorists...but when their own careers $$$$$ could be threatened, they’re like rats from a sinking ship! What strong principles they have; so admirable! <sarcasm>. But it’s the Jews who are obsessed with money? Look in the mirror, Harvard.
"Today, Winston & Strawn learned that a former summer associate published certain inflammatory comments regarding Hamas' recent terrorist attack on Israel and distributed it to the NYU Student Bar Association," the firm wrote in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.
"These recent comments are profoundly in conflict with Winston & Strawn's values as a firm. Accordingly, the Firm has rescinded the law student's offer of employment," Winston & Strawn added.
When our law firms and corporate law departments summon the same courage to stand up for decency and humanity as did Winston & Strawn, I'll take note and be impressed. Each and every one of these campus lunatics needs to pay a price for their depravity.
One of the few benefits of the censorship regimes and dogmatic intellectual regimes freezing the college's is that those who choose to escape are part of a new Wild West of ideas This can be exciting and different as new arguments are made, old ones reevaluated and new forces begin to grow and affect change. I would make a strong case that sub stack is a perfect example of this.
That is the dream. However, I don't see it playing out that way. For a "Wild West of ideas" to exist, there needs to be a significant number of educated/intellectual people willing to have discussions, open forums for those discussions (online or offline), and the ability to have those discussions without the discussions affecting your present and future life.
There are some issues with all of these -- educated people with enough of a perspective on history/philosophy/economics/linguistics/etc are often VERY indoctrinated because the institutions themselves are so captured. Therefore, very few young people (<30 are willing to have these discussions).
For those who *are* willing to think outside the box, the second layer kicks in. The scarcity of spaces in which to discuss those ideas, especially offline. One of the great benefits of the university system was that it provided such a forum for academic discourse and open conversation. It's not the only such space; eg during the enlightenment coffee houses and social clubs often provided such fora. But try going into Starbucks now and discussing the negative effects of DEI-based government contracts on monetary policy and inflation. Yeaaahhh...
As you point out, the internet is a place where such discussions can - and often do - happen. However, the internet is increasingly locked down and censored (see: EU and UK online safety bill, Canada podcast crackdown, etc). It's also a hotbed for misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda campaigns, by government and non-governmental actors. And finally, academia once prided itself on peer review and research, which is something that's easily bypassed online.
The final hurdle is that if you do not self-censor, you may experience harm to your social life or career. A controversial tweet can cost you a job. In our increasingly polarized world, a "Wrong" opinion could lose you friends or family members. In most places outside the US (and likely soon within the US), expressing a bad idea can get you arrested or de-banked. Speech and ideas have consequences. And 30 years ago, if you said something at a bar or among friends, it would stay there. That's not true in our world of digital surveillance.
Instead of increasing diversity of ideas and intellectual discussions, we've seen a very rapid decline in open-mindedness. Yes, there are still spaces where some open discussion happens - this substack is certainly one of them. There are also occasionally some philosophical frameworks being developed and re-evaluated in our new world (Lotus Eaters is a prime example of a few lads who are working to build up a set of discussions and philosophies with a new perspective on classical ideas). But these are few and far between (and so easily either ideologically captured or taken out of existence). Just look at what's happening to Elon Musk by SEC, investors, ADL, and even his own employees, for daring to make Twitter an open forum again.
I) In my review of my life history I credit what I think of as the Starbucks mindset as the beginning of this foolishness. 2) Academic peer review is captured.
I believe in the right of nations to defend their history, culture, traditions, and borders -- as much so for Israel as for England. But I understand that's a controversial statement.
That's uncontroversial to me. But several Lotus Eaters hosts go a bit beyond that. They insinuate that certain citizens' views may have more legitimacy than others based on ancestry.
Squishy rightist that I am that is a place I will not, ever, go to.
These are the thoughts I have as I have been following the decline of academia in the last several years. I cheer quietly that my kids are still young and there is hope for me that the Wild West of thought that you are talking about will shape into something by the time they reach college age. Or at least i will figure out what is the best next step for them.
I hate to imagine my course of action if my kids would have been college age now.
Hard to believe, but my brother, who teaches in post-secondary education himself, is not sending his college-aged kids to college. I have a PhD and have taught a few college courses on the side. But I’m not opposing his decision.
Despite having gone back to college to finish our own degrees in our 30s (which ended up not actually helping our income much, and saddled us with student loan debt we will never be able to pay off), we ended up discouraging our kids from going to college unless they had a clear career path that required college.
Our oldest son managed to use his experience at a local rubber parts factory to get a high-paying job at a tire factory. Our middle son used dual enrollment in high school to get his Associate's Degree from our local community college. He used his job experience as a First Aid attendant at that same local rubber parts factory to get a high-paying job in human resources. Both sons are married and buying their own homes, despite being only 31 and 28 years old.
Our youngest daughter, an artist, started taking classes at the community college as part of a feeder program for an area animation studio. Despite being fairly "woke," she could not stomach some of the material she was required to consume in her gen ed classes and decided against college. She has managed to support herself away from home by choosing decently-paying full-time jobs.
My two kids followed unusual paths but via the college route: full-ride ROTC scholarship with a successful goal of ranger battalion, but now in business, after bailing out of the tailspin that is the army. And a BFA in interior design, in which every course was designed for that career.
But both have been out for more than a decade now and things are SO much worse.
A lot of these schools are in-state schools, so they have the right price tag: NC State, Cal state Longbeach, U Mass (School of nursing), University of Virginia, UCLA. Also, in several of these cases, we are talking about law schools, so it’s possible it’s not the parent sending the child: University of San Diego. Private schools like Hillsdale and public schools like University of Florida have seen a huge increase in the number of students applying. Perhaps this is something to discuss with our representative: the need to affirm freedom of speech on campuses for both students and professors, and to make sure our classrooms and university leadership are both diverse and balanced in terms of ideological perspectives. Perhaps diversity, equity and inclusion programs in our state should be required to include as many conservative voices as liberal voices as well as the same proportion of independents.
There's a pretty simple answer: These schools are riding on their former prestige. I went to grad school in a clinical program at Columbia in 2015, just when things were (unbeknownst to me) starting to turn. I was told by trusted life-long New Yorkers that Columbia had an exceptional program so I took their word for it. In my naiveté it didn't occur to me that radical changes had taken place in the last decade or two and that the school they spoke of no longer existed. And, surprise, Columbia didn't exactly announce the real social atmosphere in their marketing materials. ("Come to our school where you'll learn to self-censor based on the terror we'll instill in you and where we'll be openly racist towards white men!") To be honest, I think students should be bringing class action lawsuits because the product is radically different from advertised and demonstrably racist. I really mean this, it's a massive massive consumer protection issue that a functioning government would be all over, not to mention the civil rights issue around flagrant racism. But when I was at Columbia I was struck by how unable the graduate students (even in 2015) were able to understand what was going on so it made organizing impossible. It's more like Stockholm Syndrome than "education" at this point. Personally, I had to decision to bear the "sunk costs" and just finish rather than starting all over again. Had I started even 1-2 years later I wouldn't have been able to bear finishing the program.
I’ve been a professor at a big 10 university in the Midwest for over 20 years now. I can honestly say that the university has changed so much since I first started that it’s almost unrecognizable.
One major way it’s changed is that the university did not have a collective politics when I first began my career. I knew that most faculty were on the left (as was I at that time), but it wasn’t explicitly baked into the institution like it is now. And the politics are no longer to the left of center—it’s to the far left. There are few conservative faculty on campus and those that are there are mostly closeted, like myself (frankly, I’m not particularly proud of this).
Another way it has changed is the quality of the students. To see how uneducated students are coming out of high school is astonishing. These students don’t know basic things, have poor critical thinking skills, don’t study, and do not read. And grade inflation is so rampant that grades have become meaningless. The grade inflation is especially bad among junior faculty, who often give A’s to entire classes.
The universities are, indeed, rotting from within. At this point, the only way it can be saved is by administrators who are willing to stand against the progressive faculty and parents refusing to send their children to these ideologically captured institutions. Sadly, I don’t see either one of these things happening anytime soon.
To say that I can hardly wait to retire is an understatement. On the positive side, I’m at least grateful to be in the Midwest. I imagine that the situation is much worse for heterodox faculty at universities on the west and east coast.
Enlightening comment. The kids are coming into university uneducated since our public schools are largely deficient, underfunded - and leave university equally so because of grade inflation and rampant progressive bias (and I say this as a liberal). So in the end, after having spent a hundred and fifty to two hundred grand on an education at an elite institution, a graduating student has a diploma not worth the paper it's printed on. And has the lack of verbal, writing and critical thinking skills to prove it. This is our next leadership generation.
One of the many lessons learned over the last ten years that really blossomed during the pandemic was the fact that a huge number of college students are rats. Where once universities were a haven for critical thinking, the academe has become one big schoolyard with plenty of bullies.
The "Why?" factor has troubled me. I'm 69 years old and, as a child, the news of the day was discussed every night at the dinner table. My father's eighth grade education never stopped him from reading the papers, watching the news and asking us questions about what we thought regarding the Vietnam War, local politics, etc. He would voice a position he didn't really hold in order for us to figure out why we felt the way we did.
Have you ever seen a family in a restaurant actually talking to each other? Usually everyone is slouching as they look at their phone or exhibiting horrible table manners. Do we actually expect these surly specimens to break down an issue and defend a position that the mob opposes? I don't!
Yesterday, CEO, Bill Ackman not only demanded Harvard hand over a list of students who signed a letter blaming Israel for the attack but got 12 other CEOs to follow suit. THIS list will cancel these dangerous lemmings; they will not be hired by these companies. There's been a move to fire the President of NYU's law school after the many anti-semitic remarks she's made over time.
Perhaps, these rats and lemmings will learn something from this horrible time. Perhaps their parents need to get acquainted with their children and find out how they feel about important and yes, even trivial issues.
In the meantime, we pray, mourn, donate what we can and stay alert.
Hi - yes, this was my upbringing too. I had a British father and an Australian mother and my dad spent over 25 years traveling the world as a merchant marine. He sadly passed away (way too young) ten years ago, but his interest in world affairs, discussions, and always wanting to learn more are the life lessons that stayed with me and the ones my husband and I try to impart (in an age appropriate way at the moment) with our 8 year old daughter. Growing up the news would be on in the background and as my brother and I went through high school those discussions became more detailed and informative. My parents are what I would describe as Centre Left. They were always supporting us to figure out our positions on things, but some issues (such as racism, genocide) were not tolerated. They and my American in laws (I would called them slightly right of centre right) could sit down at the table and have an honest and open discussion about many topics without it devolving into claims of hurt feelings and my way or the high way. Maybe it's a generational thing? Regardless, we're doing our best to encourage discussion, debate, and learning within our small family unit.
It is a generational thing, in that for a couple of generations now, we have taught young people not to solve their own issues and instead turn to an authority figure to solve it for them. As such, they have no coping mechanisms for stress or conflict. This is why they need safe spaces and think words are violence. They have built up no resistance to anything actually painful or difficult, so even the smallest things seem like disasters to them. Including disagreements.
Students have been handed way too much power by these spineless universities. The children are given free rein to scream, bully & disrupt speakers & aggressively attack wrong-thinking faculty, all the while having no understanding of the consequences of their tantrums. It is up to the adults - the trustees & administrator - to right their sinking ship.
Very important point. Tuition fees are SO OUTRAGEOUS now, and include so much “chaff” (counseling, coddling, DEI, more coddling...) that they can really afford to max out on the support of “luxury beliefs”... and all this is supported by taxpayer dollars via the (oft-forgiven) government backed student loans program! Thanks, Joe Biden! <sarcasm>
One way to forge a better system might be to slash tuition fees (like the system in Canada -- McGill costs only $1,746 per year for in-“state” tuition!). Each dollar has to be more wisely spent when you have so few of them, yet these schools are high quality institutions. And yes, the students are still woke as hell (because that’s the fashion, and we can’t go against fashion, can we?)😉
Excellent article! Please keep investigating and writing about this..the future of our country depends on the continual exposure of the ROT that has become our education system. Great job!
The Nazi movement in Germany in 1930's to a large extent came out of German Universities, like Heidelberg - one of the most famous Universities within the system considered to be best in the world at the time. Led by students and young faculty, the Nazis ideas took over, Jewish and liberal professors were chased out and the centuries-old legacy of German Universities was lost. It has not recovered since. American schools - then far inferior - were the main beneficiaries, picking up famous faculty from Einstein down. I guess the lesson was not learned - the elite academic reputation is no protection against being taken over by extremist ideas, which can only lead down one path: destruction.
I tell my kids they can go to whatever college they choose...but there are only some mom and dad will pony up for. Let your money do the talking. Parents need to find the courage to do this.
This is basically full conservative surrender, but who can blame these people? I would do the same. These universities are a lost cause, un-reformable, and the classical liberals are indeed a dying breed. How long will people keep paying out for low grade ideological indoctrination from zealots?
On the law students, they are assuming the Supreme Court will be "fixed" by the Democrats so there never is a conservative court again, thus no reason to learn to argue in front of one.
I think what is starting to happen, and will be accelerating in the future, will be two separate and distinct eco systems within the U.S. You will have the far left, radical authoritarians, like those in this story who run universities, and you will have the rest of the U.S. (and world) who finally say ‘screw you’, I am no longer going to even try to play by your increasingly ‘my way or the highway’ rules.
Entire economies within the economy will be geared towards the far left or the common sense rest of us. That will include universities, stores, school accreditation, banking and finance, etc. Its already happening now but on a small scale. One example is a theme park being planned for Oklahoma, and it’s not a Disney park, geared towards family fun minus the woke garbage. Another is the state of Florida takeover of a liberal university and appointment of a non far left administration.
The radical left is and should be scared to death of this. That’s why they fight every single instance of this happening because they know it will be popular and the radicals will lose control of the narrative. And nothing scares the radical left more than losing control of the narrative. It’s their entire motivation for censorship and labeling everything mis-information. Their only m.o. is to implement their agenda through force, bullying and intimidation.
A new, unwoke Federal Administration, vis Executive Order, could suspend funding for any college or university that is embroiled in a "woke" battle of opinions until that battle is resolved equitably. Of course, places like Harvard have piles of money and really do not need the Federal hand-out, so why give it to them?
Given Harvard's endowment and problematic place in our society why give it to them in any event? Or is it to just to reinforce the path from academia to government policy makers that is followed by a very small and very homogenous group of our citizens?
The students - the ones that forced these professors out out for views - are the future lawyers, judges, DAs, public defenders, political aides writing bills, and corporate legal counsels.
When restaurants decide to charge people based on skin color (already happening in New York), they will be the people arguing the legality of this. When lawyers are arrested for merely defending a politician, they will be the ones finding legal loopholes to let that happen. When protesters are arrested for being in the same area as a riot, given multi-year sentences for waving a flag, or detained for 2 years without a trial, they will be the lawyers making that case. When the new censorship bills roll out (see: online safety bill), they will be the people drafting the language and figuring our how to enforce it. And when the forced re-education camps are introduced (still hopefully theoretical), they will be the people deciding the constitutionality of it.
Law is always about 10-15 years downstream of culture. But make no mistake; they will take over most law firms, judiciaries, and positions of power. Even if culture shifts again in a different direction (and it won't for a long time, barring some major tragedy), the legal system will have people in it for a long time who believe the constitution is old-fashioned, and that free speech/ideas are wrongthink that needs to be punished.
>>The students - the ones that forced these professors out out for views - are the future lawyers, judges, DAs, public defenders, political aides writing bills, and corporate legal counsels.<<
Well. They'd LIKE to be the future lawyers, judges, DAs etc.
I'm not sure they will be. There IS a movement to find out their names and blacklist them. See https://www.axios.com/2023/10/12/israel-palestine-letter-ceos-blacklist-harvard-students
The mass murder of children and brutal gang raping of young women next to the bodies of their friends is a bit much for some - *some*, a few - campus administrators and corporate leaders (normally cowardly moral relativists). So there is a little pushback now, though most campus leaders - the ones who issued sentimental statements when a black person was killed by a cop - remain silent in the face of evil.
So it would be nice to see this as the beginning of a course correction, but it’s depressing to think it requires horror and evil at this level, and how small the correction seems to be. One can hope, but I remain pessimistic. But then I’m a glass half empty kind of guy.
Pushback is at the corporate level, actually. Prospective employers!
That was certainly encouraging - but it was one case. I remain skeptical that we're going to see large-scale pushback at major corporations. But one can hope, and I do!
Are the corporations breaking from the WEF goals?
Unlikely. The WEF drives this rot, here's how and why. Leading the way, is the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), part of the WEF. If you're a university president, or chancellor, of course you want to be part of this group. OK, but what can they do? The university president/chancellor will only allow corporations with sufficiently high DEI scores to recruit on their campus. If you didn't pony up to all the DEI goals, and have a low DEI score, you're not recruiting at the top universities. This is lifeblood for corporations to have a steady supply of candidates from the top schools.
If “this is the lifeblood for corporations” then corporations need a transfusion. It’s time to unravel all of it; time to rethink our definition of “top schools” and “top universities”. Does selling out to foreign money & trading on illiberal group think entitle these institutions to “top” status? Indefinitely? What you describe is a house of cards built on ideological rot & rigged pipelines. Let. It. Fall.
I wish, but I’m skeptical.
This is necessary.
It should be a public list. And students should have a path towards public renunciation of their callow ways later in life. (I’m glad I’m not permanently on-record for my early bad behavior.)
But there must be consequences for siding with evil.
See my post re Winston & Strawn for the appropriate response to these little Maoists.
These students are terrorists ruining lives.
painfully true!
yup, you're very right about this..
My thoughts exactly.
When presented with a matter of personal advantage that would require abandoning principles, the human mind goes to work overtime to rationalize taking that advantage. Every participant must make an implicit or explicit decision with respect to whether he prefers winning ignobly over losing honorably. “For,” as famous sports writer Grantland Rice wrote, “when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, he marks—not that you won or lost—but how you played the game.”
Practically speaking, the best that those members not devoted to advancement by any means can do—those who decline to capitulate to those in circles of power and are willing to pay the price—is to defend themselves when their integrity requires it. In refusing to sacrifice a higher value to a lower one, and in doing so often ineluctably furthering the ends of the self-indulgent “winner” at a personal cost, the moral act of the defiant “loser” nevertheless has this beneficent attribute: it does more to advance the general welfare.
Historian David McCullough, in his Landon Lecture, Kansas State University, February 2002, cited a statement by John Adams that speaks to these divergent attitudes.
“In a letter to his wife, Abigail, written by Adams at Philadelphia in what seemed one of the darkest moments of the whole story (the American Revolution), and he knew how worried she was, how frightened she was of what the outcome of all this might be. And he said to her, ‘We can't guarantee success, but we can deserve it.’
“And when I read that I thought how different that is from our time, when all that matters is success, being number one, being at the top, irrespective of how you got there, what devices, what elbows and knees and the rest you used to get there. They're saying something exactly the reverse. And when I read that sentence, I thought what a mind he had and what a moral lesson that is.”
Very well said.
And in reading that sentence today, and recognizing the boundaries that have been opened to the enquiring mind since John Adams penned those word, I have to wonder how our nation has been able to squander hundreds of trillions of dollars in a public education system that continues to turn out graduates unable to read, write, do simple arithmetic, or to reason from A to B to C.
And we allow these people to vote?
My last kid graduated from a very liberal campus in May. At the ceremony, we were lectured by the class speaker about the rot of capitalism and at the end of her speech she gave out her venmo and begged for money. We fled the campus and celebrated our end to a collective 12 years of college. We also celebrated our 3 conservative kids who'd survived in tact.
Perfect. Just WHO, exactly, is “all about the Benjamins” (to paraphrase Ilan Omar’s anti Semitic statement)? This was my first thought yesterday when Ackman suggested a Wall Street blacklist of the Harvard letter signatories. When it’s about virtue signaling, they’re “all in” with the terrorists...but when their own careers $$$$$ could be threatened, they’re like rats from a sinking ship! What strong principles they have; so admirable! <sarcasm>. But it’s the Jews who are obsessed with money? Look in the mirror, Harvard.
"Today, Winston & Strawn learned that a former summer associate published certain inflammatory comments regarding Hamas' recent terrorist attack on Israel and distributed it to the NYU Student Bar Association," the firm wrote in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.
"These recent comments are profoundly in conflict with Winston & Strawn's values as a firm. Accordingly, the Firm has rescinded the law student's offer of employment," Winston & Strawn added.
When our law firms and corporate law departments summon the same courage to stand up for decency and humanity as did Winston & Strawn, I'll take note and be impressed. Each and every one of these campus lunatics needs to pay a price for their depravity.
One of the few benefits of the censorship regimes and dogmatic intellectual regimes freezing the college's is that those who choose to escape are part of a new Wild West of ideas This can be exciting and different as new arguments are made, old ones reevaluated and new forces begin to grow and affect change. I would make a strong case that sub stack is a perfect example of this.
That is the dream. However, I don't see it playing out that way. For a "Wild West of ideas" to exist, there needs to be a significant number of educated/intellectual people willing to have discussions, open forums for those discussions (online or offline), and the ability to have those discussions without the discussions affecting your present and future life.
There are some issues with all of these -- educated people with enough of a perspective on history/philosophy/economics/linguistics/etc are often VERY indoctrinated because the institutions themselves are so captured. Therefore, very few young people (<30 are willing to have these discussions).
For those who *are* willing to think outside the box, the second layer kicks in. The scarcity of spaces in which to discuss those ideas, especially offline. One of the great benefits of the university system was that it provided such a forum for academic discourse and open conversation. It's not the only such space; eg during the enlightenment coffee houses and social clubs often provided such fora. But try going into Starbucks now and discussing the negative effects of DEI-based government contracts on monetary policy and inflation. Yeaaahhh...
As you point out, the internet is a place where such discussions can - and often do - happen. However, the internet is increasingly locked down and censored (see: EU and UK online safety bill, Canada podcast crackdown, etc). It's also a hotbed for misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda campaigns, by government and non-governmental actors. And finally, academia once prided itself on peer review and research, which is something that's easily bypassed online.
The final hurdle is that if you do not self-censor, you may experience harm to your social life or career. A controversial tweet can cost you a job. In our increasingly polarized world, a "Wrong" opinion could lose you friends or family members. In most places outside the US (and likely soon within the US), expressing a bad idea can get you arrested or de-banked. Speech and ideas have consequences. And 30 years ago, if you said something at a bar or among friends, it would stay there. That's not true in our world of digital surveillance.
Instead of increasing diversity of ideas and intellectual discussions, we've seen a very rapid decline in open-mindedness. Yes, there are still spaces where some open discussion happens - this substack is certainly one of them. There are also occasionally some philosophical frameworks being developed and re-evaluated in our new world (Lotus Eaters is a prime example of a few lads who are working to build up a set of discussions and philosophies with a new perspective on classical ideas). But these are few and far between (and so easily either ideologically captured or taken out of existence). Just look at what's happening to Elon Musk by SEC, investors, ADL, and even his own employees, for daring to make Twitter an open forum again.
I) In my review of my life history I credit what I think of as the Starbucks mindset as the beginning of this foolishness. 2) Academic peer review is captured.
Careful with the Lotus Eaters. Although Carl seems solid a few of the talking heads stroll a little close to the ethnic nationalism line for my taste.
I believe in the right of nations to defend their history, culture, traditions, and borders -- as much so for Israel as for England. But I understand that's a controversial statement.
That's uncontroversial to me. But several Lotus Eaters hosts go a bit beyond that. They insinuate that certain citizens' views may have more legitimacy than others based on ancestry.
Squishy rightist that I am that is a place I will not, ever, go to.
These are the thoughts I have as I have been following the decline of academia in the last several years. I cheer quietly that my kids are still young and there is hope for me that the Wild West of thought that you are talking about will shape into something by the time they reach college age. Or at least i will figure out what is the best next step for them.
I hate to imagine my course of action if my kids would have been college age now.
Plan now.
Hard to believe, but my brother, who teaches in post-secondary education himself, is not sending his college-aged kids to college. I have a PhD and have taught a few college courses on the side. But I’m not opposing his decision.
Despite having gone back to college to finish our own degrees in our 30s (which ended up not actually helping our income much, and saddled us with student loan debt we will never be able to pay off), we ended up discouraging our kids from going to college unless they had a clear career path that required college.
Our oldest son managed to use his experience at a local rubber parts factory to get a high-paying job at a tire factory. Our middle son used dual enrollment in high school to get his Associate's Degree from our local community college. He used his job experience as a First Aid attendant at that same local rubber parts factory to get a high-paying job in human resources. Both sons are married and buying their own homes, despite being only 31 and 28 years old.
Our youngest daughter, an artist, started taking classes at the community college as part of a feeder program for an area animation studio. Despite being fairly "woke," she could not stomach some of the material she was required to consume in her gen ed classes and decided against college. She has managed to support herself away from home by choosing decently-paying full-time jobs.
My two kids followed unusual paths but via the college route: full-ride ROTC scholarship with a successful goal of ranger battalion, but now in business, after bailing out of the tailspin that is the army. And a BFA in interior design, in which every course was designed for that career.
But both have been out for more than a decade now and things are SO much worse.
I already did. Removed them from the US as of this August.
Why on earth would anyone send their child to one of these so-called elite universities?!
A lot of these schools are in-state schools, so they have the right price tag: NC State, Cal state Longbeach, U Mass (School of nursing), University of Virginia, UCLA. Also, in several of these cases, we are talking about law schools, so it’s possible it’s not the parent sending the child: University of San Diego. Private schools like Hillsdale and public schools like University of Florida have seen a huge increase in the number of students applying. Perhaps this is something to discuss with our representative: the need to affirm freedom of speech on campuses for both students and professors, and to make sure our classrooms and university leadership are both diverse and balanced in terms of ideological perspectives. Perhaps diversity, equity and inclusion programs in our state should be required to include as many conservative voices as liberal voices as well as the same proportion of independents.
Signaling. Sporting the right college affiliation signals to the tribe “I’m one of you”.
There's a pretty simple answer: These schools are riding on their former prestige. I went to grad school in a clinical program at Columbia in 2015, just when things were (unbeknownst to me) starting to turn. I was told by trusted life-long New Yorkers that Columbia had an exceptional program so I took their word for it. In my naiveté it didn't occur to me that radical changes had taken place in the last decade or two and that the school they spoke of no longer existed. And, surprise, Columbia didn't exactly announce the real social atmosphere in their marketing materials. ("Come to our school where you'll learn to self-censor based on the terror we'll instill in you and where we'll be openly racist towards white men!") To be honest, I think students should be bringing class action lawsuits because the product is radically different from advertised and demonstrably racist. I really mean this, it's a massive massive consumer protection issue that a functioning government would be all over, not to mention the civil rights issue around flagrant racism. But when I was at Columbia I was struck by how unable the graduate students (even in 2015) were able to understand what was going on so it made organizing impossible. It's more like Stockholm Syndrome than "education" at this point. Personally, I had to decision to bear the "sunk costs" and just finish rather than starting all over again. Had I started even 1-2 years later I wouldn't have been able to bear finishing the program.
For the decal on their back car window?????
I’ve been a professor at a big 10 university in the Midwest for over 20 years now. I can honestly say that the university has changed so much since I first started that it’s almost unrecognizable.
One major way it’s changed is that the university did not have a collective politics when I first began my career. I knew that most faculty were on the left (as was I at that time), but it wasn’t explicitly baked into the institution like it is now. And the politics are no longer to the left of center—it’s to the far left. There are few conservative faculty on campus and those that are there are mostly closeted, like myself (frankly, I’m not particularly proud of this).
Another way it has changed is the quality of the students. To see how uneducated students are coming out of high school is astonishing. These students don’t know basic things, have poor critical thinking skills, don’t study, and do not read. And grade inflation is so rampant that grades have become meaningless. The grade inflation is especially bad among junior faculty, who often give A’s to entire classes.
The universities are, indeed, rotting from within. At this point, the only way it can be saved is by administrators who are willing to stand against the progressive faculty and parents refusing to send their children to these ideologically captured institutions. Sadly, I don’t see either one of these things happening anytime soon.
To say that I can hardly wait to retire is an understatement. On the positive side, I’m at least grateful to be in the Midwest. I imagine that the situation is much worse for heterodox faculty at universities on the west and east coast.
Enlightening comment. The kids are coming into university uneducated since our public schools are largely deficient, underfunded - and leave university equally so because of grade inflation and rampant progressive bias (and I say this as a liberal). So in the end, after having spent a hundred and fifty to two hundred grand on an education at an elite institution, a graduating student has a diploma not worth the paper it's printed on. And has the lack of verbal, writing and critical thinking skills to prove it. This is our next leadership generation.
Hang in there, BP.
One of the many lessons learned over the last ten years that really blossomed during the pandemic was the fact that a huge number of college students are rats. Where once universities were a haven for critical thinking, the academe has become one big schoolyard with plenty of bullies.
The "Why?" factor has troubled me. I'm 69 years old and, as a child, the news of the day was discussed every night at the dinner table. My father's eighth grade education never stopped him from reading the papers, watching the news and asking us questions about what we thought regarding the Vietnam War, local politics, etc. He would voice a position he didn't really hold in order for us to figure out why we felt the way we did.
Have you ever seen a family in a restaurant actually talking to each other? Usually everyone is slouching as they look at their phone or exhibiting horrible table manners. Do we actually expect these surly specimens to break down an issue and defend a position that the mob opposes? I don't!
Yesterday, CEO, Bill Ackman not only demanded Harvard hand over a list of students who signed a letter blaming Israel for the attack but got 12 other CEOs to follow suit. THIS list will cancel these dangerous lemmings; they will not be hired by these companies. There's been a move to fire the President of NYU's law school after the many anti-semitic remarks she's made over time.
Perhaps, these rats and lemmings will learn something from this horrible time. Perhaps their parents need to get acquainted with their children and find out how they feel about important and yes, even trivial issues.
In the meantime, we pray, mourn, donate what we can and stay alert.
Hi - yes, this was my upbringing too. I had a British father and an Australian mother and my dad spent over 25 years traveling the world as a merchant marine. He sadly passed away (way too young) ten years ago, but his interest in world affairs, discussions, and always wanting to learn more are the life lessons that stayed with me and the ones my husband and I try to impart (in an age appropriate way at the moment) with our 8 year old daughter. Growing up the news would be on in the background and as my brother and I went through high school those discussions became more detailed and informative. My parents are what I would describe as Centre Left. They were always supporting us to figure out our positions on things, but some issues (such as racism, genocide) were not tolerated. They and my American in laws (I would called them slightly right of centre right) could sit down at the table and have an honest and open discussion about many topics without it devolving into claims of hurt feelings and my way or the high way. Maybe it's a generational thing? Regardless, we're doing our best to encourage discussion, debate, and learning within our small family unit.
It is a generational thing, in that for a couple of generations now, we have taught young people not to solve their own issues and instead turn to an authority figure to solve it for them. As such, they have no coping mechanisms for stress or conflict. This is why they need safe spaces and think words are violence. They have built up no resistance to anything actually painful or difficult, so even the smallest things seem like disasters to them. Including disagreements.
hit the nail on the head!
The world needs more parents like you and your husband. God bless.
Students have been handed way too much power by these spineless universities. The children are given free rein to scream, bully & disrupt speakers & aggressively attack wrong-thinking faculty, all the while having no understanding of the consequences of their tantrums. It is up to the adults - the trustees & administrator - to right their sinking ship.
These students are doing exactly what the trustees and administrators want them to be doing.
If you view them as customers rather than students it all makes sense.
Very important point. Tuition fees are SO OUTRAGEOUS now, and include so much “chaff” (counseling, coddling, DEI, more coddling...) that they can really afford to max out on the support of “luxury beliefs”... and all this is supported by taxpayer dollars via the (oft-forgiven) government backed student loans program! Thanks, Joe Biden! <sarcasm>
One way to forge a better system might be to slash tuition fees (like the system in Canada -- McGill costs only $1,746 per year for in-“state” tuition!). Each dollar has to be more wisely spent when you have so few of them, yet these schools are high quality institutions. And yes, the students are still woke as hell (because that’s the fashion, and we can’t go against fashion, can we?)😉
Excellent article! Please keep investigating and writing about this..the future of our country depends on the continual exposure of the ROT that has become our education system. Great job!
Why bother learning to evaluate different points of view when you can win through coercion.
The Nazi movement in Germany in 1930's to a large extent came out of German Universities, like Heidelberg - one of the most famous Universities within the system considered to be best in the world at the time. Led by students and young faculty, the Nazis ideas took over, Jewish and liberal professors were chased out and the centuries-old legacy of German Universities was lost. It has not recovered since. American schools - then far inferior - were the main beneficiaries, picking up famous faculty from Einstein down. I guess the lesson was not learned - the elite academic reputation is no protection against being taken over by extremist ideas, which can only lead down one path: destruction.
I tell my kids they can go to whatever college they choose...but there are only some mom and dad will pony up for. Let your money do the talking. Parents need to find the courage to do this.
This is basically full conservative surrender, but who can blame these people? I would do the same. These universities are a lost cause, un-reformable, and the classical liberals are indeed a dying breed. How long will people keep paying out for low grade ideological indoctrination from zealots?
On the law students, they are assuming the Supreme Court will be "fixed" by the Democrats so there never is a conservative court again, thus no reason to learn to argue in front of one.
I think what is starting to happen, and will be accelerating in the future, will be two separate and distinct eco systems within the U.S. You will have the far left, radical authoritarians, like those in this story who run universities, and you will have the rest of the U.S. (and world) who finally say ‘screw you’, I am no longer going to even try to play by your increasingly ‘my way or the highway’ rules.
Entire economies within the economy will be geared towards the far left or the common sense rest of us. That will include universities, stores, school accreditation, banking and finance, etc. Its already happening now but on a small scale. One example is a theme park being planned for Oklahoma, and it’s not a Disney park, geared towards family fun minus the woke garbage. Another is the state of Florida takeover of a liberal university and appointment of a non far left administration.
The radical left is and should be scared to death of this. That’s why they fight every single instance of this happening because they know it will be popular and the radicals will lose control of the narrative. And nothing scares the radical left more than losing control of the narrative. It’s their entire motivation for censorship and labeling everything mis-information. Their only m.o. is to implement their agenda through force, bullying and intimidation.
A new, unwoke Federal Administration, vis Executive Order, could suspend funding for any college or university that is embroiled in a "woke" battle of opinions until that battle is resolved equitably. Of course, places like Harvard have piles of money and really do not need the Federal hand-out, so why give it to them?
Given Harvard's endowment and problematic place in our society why give it to them in any event? Or is it to just to reinforce the path from academia to government policy makers that is followed by a very small and very homogenous group of our citizens?
You are wrong about Harvard not needing Federal money, they received $650M in 2022; 10th on the list.
Oh, Dave. Getting it and needing it are two very different things.
(Maybe you were being sarcastic? I hope so.)
Harvard's endowments are larger than a few nations' GDP!