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'American Academia Is, By And Large, Idiotic'

This article is more than 8 years old.

One of my favorite newspaper columnists is Bret Stephens, the top foreign affairs writer for the Wall Street Journal.  Yet in the midst of high levels of international turmoil and tension, Mr. Stephens has just written a column of magisterial beauty and anger on America’s colleges and universities. Aside from the quotation above, Stephens opines, “whether the disease of the academy becomes the disease of the American mind depends on how far we are willing to let this go.” ISIS is bad, but maybe even worse is the enemy within – the people poisoning and polluting our youth and threatening the very exceptional uniqueness that has made the United States the greatest nation ever occupying this space called Earth.

The Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which I direct, fights the three big economic ills of higher education: it is outrageously inefficient and expensive, the students are learning little of importance, and graduates increasingly are not finding jobs. But there are more fundamental problems. American universities increasingly try to suppress free expression, the open discussion of diverse ideas – the hallmark of the Enlightenment and modernity. Blabbering, infantile, sometimes racist, always intolerant crybullies are demanding that university presidents make radical changes (take names of honored Americans like Woodrow Wilson or John Calhoun off buildings, create politically correct majors or mandatory indoctrination sessions filled with radical left ideology but devoid of intellectual content). Some of them attack religious groups (e.g., Jews). Others attack unfashionable but legitimate ideas, wanting to forbid such ideas as,  “global warming is overstated as a problem, and proposed solutions are ineffective and will lower living standards” (an idea I believe, by the way).

A fair amount of recent attention on campuses such as Missouri, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth has been race-based: groups of self-appointed African-American arbitrators of campus behavior making demands – new majors, sensitivity training for students – getting rid of buildings named after slave owners and Southern advocates of state rights. Stuart Taylor rightly recently argued that much of this indirectly is an unintended consequence of flawed affirmative action policies that set up some quite competent blacks to fail by pushing them into institutions where they are not adequately prepared to do the work, leading them to feel like they have failed. Students put into the intense environment of, say, Yale who then flounder may well have flourished in the slightly less intense, but still highly academically respectable, environment of the universities of North Carolina or Michigan. These persons are well treated (often getting admissions and financial assistance denied to comparably qualified whites of similar economic circumstance), but feel aggrieved because they have been victimized by affirmative action.

But it goes beyond race. At several schools, Jewish students have been treated in a derogatory fashion. A Jewish student running for a seat on a judicial council at UCLA was questioned about how she would vote in matters involving Jewish students; at a sister University of California campus (Santa Cruz), a Jewish student was denied a vote on a proposal to divest investments in companies with Israeli associations on the grounds she was no doubt pro-Israel.  Faculty are no better. Academic groups have been voting to deny Israeli scholars membership, for example. The Israeli treatment of Palestinians warrants vicious condemnation, while ISIS beheading of Christians merits not a peep.

And then there are the infantile concerns over Halloween costumes that may offend someone. We need to have “safe spaces” on campus. Many of the most coddled, spoiled, and underworked generation in American collegiate history are worried that that their fragile largely unutilized brains might hear something causing displeasure.

As bad as some students have behaved, as reprehensible is the behavior of some of the enabling faculty, nothing compares with the outrageous behavior of college administrators who do not put an end to this foolishness. The president of Princeton not only allows students to practically hold him hostage in his office, but grants them a new major of dubious academic value – apparently without the usual discussion with faculty who should control such matters. No one is punished –indeed apologies are granted, and assurances given that Princeton will seriously considering taking Woodrow Wilson’s name off buildings. After students complain, a president resigns at Missouri and a dean at Claremont McKenna College steps down. Students interfere with others studying for exams at Dartmouth – but are not punished but rather praised for their shenanigans.

To be sure, on many campuses, we have not had much turmoil. No one has chastised me at Ohio University for my non mainstream views, for example. That is true at many mid-quality state and private institutions that one does not read about in the news.

Still the move to repeal the Bill of Rights and the freedom of expression that was the Enlightenment is spreading like ISIS. It must be stopped. The universities are ultimately controlled by society. It is time for some of them to be put under adult supervision. Students breaking rules should be punished – period – no matter what their race or grievance. Free speech needs to be resoundingly supported by trustees adopting the University of Chicago/Purdue statement on free speech. In some cases where violence and infantile idiocy persists, it may be necessary for legislators to withdraw financial support and perhaps consider taxing tuition fees. As Milton Friedman told me more than a decade ago, higher education today has some negative externalities, ones that seemingly exceed the positive spillover effects, suggesting maybe we should be taxing rather than subsidizing universities in the United States.

Richard Vedder directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, teaches at Ohio University, and is an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.