The academic world’s corruption is far advanced
The contrast now with its original purposes is massive
Nothing today has brought greater attention to the state of our colleges and universities than the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel demonstrations on multiple campuses that began almost from the moment of the barbaric killing of 1,400 Israeli citizens near the Gaza Strip border on October 7. Millions of Americans are clearly shocked at the open support shown for the equivalent of the Jewish holocaust at the hands of the Nazi regime during World War II, giving rise to wonder as to just how corrupt are the denizens of academia, particularly those in our most prestigious schools.
While it is true that most of the mobs in question are undoubtedly foreigners, studying in our country on visas, still the developing story soon made it evident that a goodly number of American professors, administrators and students are caught up in this web of evil enough to give cause for alarm. In previous columns, I have reviewed in broad terms the recent history of our academic institutions that point to the “long march” that leftist academics saw as the path to fulfillment of their task to turn what are supposed to places of free inquiry and serious scholarship over to political causes antithetical to both republican government and Western civilization.
So outraged—rightly—are numerous generous donors to various Ivy League schools that they have stopped contributing millions of dollars to institutions that have become at least as antisemitic as they were a century ago when administrators were determined to keep the Jewish enrollments low, like they do now for Caucasian and Asian students. (The U.S. Supreme Court may have struck down racial quotas as unconstitutional, but you can be sure that Harvard and the University of North Carolina, defendants in the recent case, along with many other schools, will find ways around the unfavorable ruling.)
But one wonders how leftists successfully converted so much of academia into subservient propaganda centers and, no less, why they believed they could get away with it. Part of the answer is political, and part of it is philosophical. At the time the “long march” commenced, liberals had long since taken over most schools and colleges. But the New Left that led opposition to the Vietnam War and radicalized the civil rights movement from protest to violence moved to the extreme position that American was in need of radical transformation and not merely gradual reform, the object of the old liberals. The New Left chafed under the principle that the university should be open to investigating all questions and officially embracing no doctrine or ideology. Rather, they were convinced of the righteousness of their cause and could not tolerate anything more than token opposition.
More, decades of constitutional litigation over the limits of freedom of speech and press had culminated in the idea that the advocacy of even the most anti-American doctrines such as communism and fascism was protected speech. But rather than leaving matters at that shaky position, those evil doctrines actually became legitimate ones, shutting out conservatives and the old liberals, and pre-empting any opening for fascism by pinning that noxious label on anyone to the Right who was opposed to communism, the favored doctrine of the Left. The fact that the Soviet empire had collapsed, no less from its internal contradictions than from Western military, political and economic pressure, made no difference to those who embrace “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” with the fervor of a religious fanatic.
This ideological war against our republican government that may tolerate expressions of support for totalitarian doctrines but must draw the line before it is too late to defeat them, is rooted in a philosophical cause. I cannot rehearse the history of modern philosophy here except to point out that the academic world largely lost its attachment to the “self-evident” truths of liberty, equality and government by consent of the governed and moved on to more “scientific” doctrines which culminate in the rule of “experts” in rigid bureaucracies impervious to popular control.
But no less powerful, if not more so, as a cause is the idea that human nature is malleable, even perfectible, sweeping away all traditional forms of society and government to a “new age” of passionate commitment to selfish desires, at first among the citizens but ultimately among the rulers when the people grow tired of anarchy and crave despotism as the cure. It seems that the scientific and the passionate waves have united in the destructive drive to remake human bodies from one sex to another.
The first universities remarkably were founded during the Middle Ages in Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, dedicated to scholarly inquiry as well as to preparing students for careers in law and medicine, and later architecture and engineering. Despite the epithet of “monkish ignorance” being hurled at them, the medieval universities took considerable inspiration from the ancient Greek academies (think of Plato and Aristotle) where philosophy first arose, including political philosophy. All such inquiry proceeded from the well-founded proposition that the natural world, including mankind, was open to investigation.
But given the medieval religious origins of the modern university, it is clear that it was intertwined with the propagation of the Christian faith. That is, wedded to the inquiry into all things was the faith that upheld humble service to God and man as the highest thing. America’s earliest colleges followed their European predecessors in this respect, as Harvard and Yale were religious no less than philosophical in their bearings. Today that religious tie is tenuous, if not non-existent, buttressed by the rise of a multitude of state-funded schools that are secular. No one made this break clearer than William F. Buckley Jr., a Yale graduate, in his work “God and Man at Yale,” which documented that school’s turning away from its religious origins, not to mention its fondness for socialism.
It is critical that our universities are free to pursue the truth in all matters and to avoid political domination. But both in the Middle Ages and in our modern age, those institutions have needed friendly governments to protect their sacred trust. Until recently, republican governments were the best hope, but their corruption into bureaucratic rule and support of utopian dogmas has made that tie increasingly untenable. More than this, academia is as vulnerable to tyranny from within as it is from without its walls.
There are organizations dedicated to returning our universities to their proper role, especially the National Association of Scholars (https://www.nas.org/). Its leaders and members monitor the activities of our schools and colleges and sometimes actually make some headway, more often in conservative states than in liberal ones. Your prayers and tangible support are always welcome.