Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
After October 7, the public was shocked at what they saw and heard on America’s campuses.
Americans knew previously they were intolerant, leftwing, and increasingly non-meritocratic.
But immediately after October 7 — and even before the response of the Israeli Defense Forces — the sheer student delight on news of the mass murdering of Israeli victims seemed akin more to 1930s Germany than contemporary America.
Indeed, not a day goes by when a university professor or student group has not spouted antisemitic hatred. Often, they threaten and attack Jewish students, or engage in mass demonstrations calling for the extinction of Israel.
Why and how did purportedly enlightened universities become incubators of such primordial hatred?
After the George Floyd riots in 2020, reparatory admissions — the effort to admit diverse students beyond their numbers in the general population — increased.
Elite universities like Stanford and Yale boasted that their so-called “white” incoming student numbers had plunged to between 20 and 40 percent, despite whites making up 68-70% of the general population.
The abolition of the SAT requirement, and often the comparative ranking of high school grade point averages, have ended the ancient and time-proven idea of meritocracy. Brilliant high school transcripts and test scores no longer warrant admissions to so-called elite schools.
One result was that the number of Jews has nosedived from 20-30% of Ivy League student bodies during the 1970s and 1980s to 10-15%.
Jewish students are also currently stereotyped as “white” and “privileged” — and thus considered as fair game on campus.
At the same time, the number of foreign students, especially from the oil-rich Middle East, has soared on campuses. Most are subsidized by their homeland governments. They pay the full, non-discounted tuition rates to cash-hungry universities.
Huge numbers of students have entered universities, who would not have been admitted by the very standards universities until recently claimed were vital to ensure their own competitiveness and prestige.
Consequently, they are no longer the guarantors of topflight undergraduates and professionals from their graduate programs.
Faculty are faced with new lose/lose/lose choices of either diminishing their course requirements, or inflating their grades, or facing charges by Diversity/Equity/Inclusion commissars of systematic bias in their grading — or all three combined.
The net result is that there are now thousands of students from abroad, especially from the Middle East, far fewer Jewish students, and student bodies who demand radical changes in faculty standards and course work to accommodate their unease with past standards of expected student achievement.
And, presto, an epidemic of antisemitism naturally followed.
In such a vacuum, advocacy “-studies” classes proliferated, along with faculty to teach them.
“Gender, Black, Latino, feminist, Asian, Queer, trans, peace, environmental, and green”-studies courses demand far less from students, and arbitrarily select some as “oppressed” and others as “oppressors.” The former “victims” are then given a blank check to engage in racist and antisemitic behavior without consequences.
Proving to be politically correct in these deductive gut-courses rather than pressed to express oneself coherently, inductively, and analytically from a repertoire of fact-based knowledge explains why the public witnesses faculty and students who are simultaneously both arrogant and ignorant.
At some universities “blacklists” circulate warning “marginalized” students which professors they should avoid who still cling to supposedly outdated standards regarding exam-taking, deadlines, and absences.
All these radical changes explain the current spectacle of angry students citing grievances, and poorly educated graduates who have had little course work in traditional history, literature, philosophy, logic, or the traditional sciences.
Universities and students have plenty of money to continue the weaponization of the university, given their enormous tax-free endowment income. Nearly $2-trillion in government-subsidized student loans are issued without accountability or reasonable demands that they be repaid in timely fashion.
Exceptions and exemptions are the bible of terrified and careerist administrators.
Faced with an epidemic of antisemitism, university administrators now claim they can do little to curb the hatred. But privately they know should the targets of similar hatred be instead Blacks, gays, Latinos, or women, then they would expel the haters in a nanosecond.
What is the ultimate result of once elite campuses giving 70-80% of their students As, becoming hotbeds of dangerous antisemitism, and watered-down curricula that cannot turn out educated students?
The Ivy league and their kindred so-called elite campuses may soon go the way of Disney and Bud Light.
They think such a crash in their reputations is impossible given centuries of accustomed stature.
But the erosion is already occurring — and accelerating.
At the present rate, a Stanford law degree, a Harvard political science major, or a Yale social science BA will soon scare off employers and the general public at large.
These certificates will signify not proof of humility, knowledge, and decency, but rather undeserved self-importance, vacuousness, and fanaticism — and all to be avoided rather than courted.
Dave white says
I hope you are right about :”…the erosion is already occurring — and accelerating.”
And the rebellion of donors is good but a rebellion of legislators holding the purse strings is also needed. Trustees are corrupted by the universities just as school boards are run by superintendents and teachers unions. Since legislators are chosen by citizens there is little chance of change in blue states unless people really wake up (become un-woke).
Jeff Bargholz says
He is right. Harvard Alum Bill Ackman withheld 100 million dollars from his scummy alma mater and isn’t shy about saying all three of those cunts need to be fired.
How many more former donors are silent about their discontinued support?
Bruce Burleson says
I think the dry rot in higher education has gone on long before the George Floyd riots. Frankly, I blame conservatives because they sat back and did practically nothing for DECADES as the Left seized control not only of higher ed but also other social institutions. What will it take to reverse this process and rescue our Republic? I shudder to think.
Gordon says
The universities were lost as the result of a coordinated, decades long campaign of leftists as part of their march through the institutions. Stupidity and mayhem naturally followed. Here is what my son learned in business school:
1. Women are treated unfairly in business and not paid as much as men.
2. Black people are murdered in the thousands by police, even when they are just cuddling with cute little kittens on the sofa.
2. Man-made global warming will kill everybody unless we stop using fossil fuels.
3. Having children is a grave financial mistake.
4. Marriage is an outdated and oppressive to women.
5. His parents are brainless automatons and are wrong about everything.
6. Above all else a woman should terminate every pregnancy so they can pursue their career.
7. White people are bad. Jews are white, asians are also white. Because he is part asian and part white he is double white, therefore double bad and must believe in 1-6 if he is to graduate.
Jeff Juel says
Visualize backlash.
teachem2think says
And which ethnic group was ALWAYS in the forefront of mass immigration, minority “civil rights,” and other cultural revolutions? Such are the unforseen consequences of radicalism!
LuzMaria Rodriguez says
And, as we just witnessed, not a few by AA and the push for diversity including feminism over scholarship. Also, degrees that required little rigor helped fill the halls with propagandists.
Lightbringer says
You’ve got your work cut out for you trying to rescue that boy. Good luck! I’m still working on my 33-year-old.
David Ray says
I would add, that there’s a long list of socialist criminal scum that college presidents hired into their faculty.
It’s a too exhaustive a list to post here, but I’ll name Kathy Boudin (pardoned by Slick Willie) who was a member of the Weathermen Underground. She lured two cops to a fatal ambush while robbing a Brinks armory truck.
Columbia U made her an adjunct professor for the Center for Justice.
Her scumbag son became a Soros backed prosecutor. He was such trash, that even S.F voters booted him out.
Jeff Juel says
Before reading your comment I was thinking about the SDS and the
Weather Underground.. Their communist insurrection rooted in American universities is the seed of this rot.
There’s a little known irony in this: Jews were disproportionately over represented in this contingent.
Now Jews are paying the price.
The Trotsky’s make the revolution and the Bronstein’s pay the price. – Moscow’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Jacob Mazeh
teachem2think says
To be a bit more precise, the Boudin-Dohrn-Ayers communists were the product of The Frankfurt School (also “disproportionately over represented”) — in conjunction with Dewey’s “progressivism” — which produced the brainwashing “educators” who, in turn, propagandized and radicalized the misfit pseudo-intellects of the late 50′, 60’s, and beyond. And as someone else once wrote: “Liberal parents produce radical children.”
Sixty years ago, Max Rafferty wrote one of his books — “Suffer, Little Children” — which detailed the encroaching development of progressivism in education. We are now experiencing the end results of that insidious, Marxist encroachment.
Kasandra says
Don’t forget the Brazilian communist Paulo Freire and his theories of “critical pedagogy” that are taught in virtually all U.S. teacher colleges. His basic idea was teaching standard academic subjects simply prepared students to replicate the existing “oppressive” society. Intead, “education” should be used to create in students a critical consciousness to turn them into activists and revolutionaries to destroy that society. So Johnny can’t find Gaza on a blank map but knows that it has been occupied and its residents oppressed..
Lightbringer says
I confess that I have not read any of Freire’s work, but from what little I have read about it (including in your comments), it is something to be concerned about. If I don’t mind holding my nose while I read, perhaps I will learn more about this contemporary alleged paragon on all academic virtues.
Cat says
lovely choice of a site to post your boring worn out anti-Semitism (sarcastic) …..
We all know what these tropes that blame Jews for everything and anything are.
. Plenty of non-Jews were and are socialists. History is complicated. .
And my dear, I’m just fine. Uncle Lev was a raving lunatic. Every family has one.
You uptight non-Jews have your share of nutty uncles.
.
Paul Revere says
The ivy’s especially the Harvards and Yales are producing, ignorant graduates who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time . Their Grads are in the process of destroying the industries where they decided to settle into..
Lightbringer says
Many of those industries deserve to be destroyed.
Steve Chavez says
Started during Vietnam when the CPUSA and KGB teamed up to promote PEACE using the World Peace Council headed by the KGB. Those acid freak hippies became professors then deans and presidents which led to the complete takeover of universities, now used to RECRUIT THE NEXT GENERATION OF COMMUNISTS we see in the streets, led by real Communist groups like ANSWER, The Party for Socialism and Liberation, The Revolutionary Communist Party, and the CPUSA. THEIR SIGNS PROVE IT but on flyers, most of the sponsors have good sounding names who are actually members of these Communist groups!
Onzeur Trante says
Mark Levin mentioned on his program last night Professor Steven Norwood, author of “The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on the American Campus”. The book traces the the rot in higher education in this country back to the 1930s when several colleges actively supported and promoted Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, inviting them as guest speakers, foreign exchange students, etc. to their campuses. Academia has been a hornets’ nest of communists and radical leftists for almost a century now. The recent events and backlash over the Ivy League presidents hopefully represent a long overdue turning point in the moral and intellectual decay that has taken a foothold in higher ed.
Ann R says
Remember when the Obama administration filed lawsuits against and actually SHUT DOWN technical and vocational schools because the U.S. Department of Education falsely claimed that they were not providing adequate training for successful careers? The Dept. of Education was able to insert itself because of federal student loans. And the findings were based entirely on subpar STUDENTS who couldn’t manage to get a job, not because their education and training was inadequate but because THEY were inadequate. Just terrible.
LuzMaria Rodriguez says
The DOE, another bad decision by Pres Carter.
Kasandra says
Well, they had to split up the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) so that its budget would exceed the nation’s defense budget. So they separated it into two agencies each with a lower budget. Also had to give a sop to the teachers’ unions.
John Chittick says
Reform of these post modern nihilist academic septic tanks is close to impossible. I like to think that the path that Jordan Petersen is on will replace them instead, In the humanities, for the last half century, library cards would have been more beneficial for students than exposure to the cultural Marxist rot. Online lectures by the best and brightest for pennies on the dollar could replace the humanities along with other free market options. STEM curricula requiring labs and other facilities could also be established outside the dead hand of the state. In primary and secondary education, vouchers and charter schools should be used in transition to fully free market education systems (Hillsdale, anyone). Professional governing bodies should also be freed from the state by eliminating all “right to practice” monopolies granted by the state. As they stand now they are part of the institutional capture.
Walter Sieruk says
Many universities and colleges throughout the United States have been thoroughly infiltrated and influenced by the insidious stealth jihadists.
There may be little doubt that those stealth jihadists are backed and funded by Iran and Qatar as well as oil rich Saudi Arabia.
Therefore, those universities and colleges as actually inciters of hate for the Jewish people and the States of Israel.
Walter Sieruk says
In reality, those universities and colleges that masquerade Institutions of “higher education” across the United States are ,in essence, very un-American.
As the former President, William Howard Taft, in a speech rightly and wisely, declared, “Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.”
Keith Reese says
Many years ago, and I do mean many, I was under the impression that ‘liberal’ meant being open-minded, accepting other points of view. Then, off to college I went, was I in for a shock. And that really was a long time ago…can’t imagine what it’s like today, judging by the news reports I see.
Dr. Allen Menkin says
Children of the sixties were like like the sorcerers apprentice. We had no idea that a summer of love would lead to a winter of hate. Even in hindsight it is difficult to follow the bouncing ball.
John Blackman says
all the head honchos in charge of the universities that are getting scorched in congress will all survive even the ones that fall on their swords . they will dutifully ride off into the sunset with their bag of gold and their job prospects intact where they will get another high paid position on the lefts gravy train where they will continue their insidious america hating beliefs . considering that america is as bad as they continue to tell everyone while they rake in 6 figure salaries i haven’t heard that any off them are considering relocating . their hypocrisy knows no bounds and their ignorance a slight on america and a blight on humanity of which they have none .
S.P. Smith says
Every parent whose child received a ‘participation trophy’ bought into this nonsense. DEI is participation trophies for adults.
Balzoa says
Without suffering the misfortune of having had to attend classes, I’ve made the acquaintanceship of many, many Ivy League perfessers, and I can state that most (not all) are some of the least well educated people I’ve ever met.
“It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.” — Henry Louis Mencken (1880 – 1956)
Kasandra says
It’s a great column but I take issue with the following: “After the George Floyd riots in 2020, reparatory admissions — the effort to admit diverse students beyond their numbers in the general population — increased.” The destruction of our universities started before Saint George Floyd was a gleam in his father’s eye. It started in the early 1970s with Affirmative Discrimination programs that de-emphasized academic ability and interest. and brought in a cohort of students who cared less about education than agitation. It was supercharged by the failure of the Communist student movements of the 1980s that taught its members that the population did not support its bombing campaigns and that workers were in no mood for revolution. So a lot of them moved into education to accomplish their revolution through taking over the educational institutions. And the rest is history.
The Confused Mind says
In my humble opinion, I believe that we are all missing the target and the real cause o f what is happening in colleges and universities across the western world. $$-Follow the Money-$$.
Many comments are very interesting and might, just might be part of the reasons of todays’ turmoil in higher education C&U.
I will point, directly, to the Billion$$$ donated by Jihadists petrodollar$$$$, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE and Saudi Arabia. My donation of a few 100s of dollars, or even the biggest American donors of 10s or 100s of 1000s and millions of dollars, are NOTHING but a drop of water in the sea, compared to the Jihadists Petrodollars BILLIONS & BILLIONS, that have taken FULL control of C&U, pushing forward deans, professors, presidents and above all STUDENTS. Muslims students who’s only agenda is to indoctrinate, intimidate and use their “Taqiyya” to build friends in campuses against Jews first, since Jews were and are among the biggest philanthropists for education. Once the Jews and Asian (better students and smarter too) are eliminated, THEN and ONLY THEN, they will go for the easy pray… “Gender, Black, Latino, feminist, Asian, Queer, trans, peace, environmental, and green”.
Qatar, the wonderful little country that has become the ‘honest mediator’ of the Israeli hostages? … The supporter of terrorists groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the PLO????
Are we all so blind that we can not see what is coming on?
The AGENDA is clear. World domination and submission to Islam and Sharia laws.
So, you tell me how should we (the Western World) stop or fight this cancerous element that is approaching at a faster speed now?