American Greatness: Once upon a time, long, long ago—in May 2005, in fact—I wrote an essay for The New Criterion with the optimistic title “Retaking the University: A Battle Plan.” That was back when I believed that the educational establishment in this country could be rescued from its wasting captivity in the arid pandemonium of political correctness.
I know, I know, it all seems so naïve now when the totalitarian, politically correct ideologues ruling most of our distinguished colleges and universities have succumbed utterly, indeed proudly, to The Narrative about race and sex, the putative evils of America, and, oh, so much else, and dissenting opinions, and the persons espousing them, are strictly excluded from the desolate though expensive eyries of insanity that define what we still call, without irony, our institutions of “higher education.”
A couple of years ago, students at Middlebury College (total freight-on-board, some 74,000 of the crispest per annum) covered themselves in shame by loudly protesting the great social scientist Charles Murray, first preventing him from talking, then violently mobbing him and one of his female faculty handlers, sending her to the hospital. I wrote about that disgusting incident in these pages at the time. “What happened at Middlebury,” I wrote, “was a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy.”
Every student who can be identified in that video should be expelled and Laurie Patton [the college’s president] should resign. The former have violated the basic compact of respect upon which liberal education rests and the latter has vividly demonstrated her incompetence.
Neither happened, of course, nor did anyone follow up on my concluding suggestion that “the college should be closed and its facilities repurposed as something useful—a menagerie, perhaps, in homage to the strange, intolerant creatures that cavorted there when it pretended to be an educational institution.”
The Legutko Lashing
Perhaps some intrepid souls will reconsider now that Middlebury has once again soiled itself. A year or so back, I was proud to publish at Encounter Books The Demon in Democracy by the Polish philosopher and politician Ryszard Legutko. The book’s subtitle—“Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies”—announces its major theme, and Middlebury just did the world the favor of illustrating that theme by suddenly and at the last minute disinviting Legutko from giving a talk there because some of his opinions differ from the opinions of certain obnoxious students at Middlebury. (He was allowed to speak, in secret, to a small group of students thanks to a brave professor.) Rod Dreher tells chapter one of the story.
Chapter two, the aftermath, is in some ways even more alarming. In order to forestall future embarrassing episodes, the Student Government Association at Middlebury has issued 13 proposals for “community healing,” at the center of which is a demand that any proposed speaker at Middlebury first be vetted by the “Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion [yes, really] in coordination with the SGA Institutional Diversity Committee.” Why? In order to determine “whether a speaker’s beliefs align with Middlebury’s community standards.” Heaven forfend that someone come to campus expressing an alternative point of view. read more
Once the Civil “altercations” commence, Universities will be the low hanging fruit after the work is done relating to communications and other priority issues. MUGU – Make Universities Great Again!
Do you, really, know people stupid enough to take that question seriously?
Screw it! I say start with plan B.
Begin with dual birth citizenship…get rid of it or make a stand at 18. Stop the feeding at the trough on Pell Grants for bs. I worked at a junior college for 27 years. The youngin’s came from ole Mexico to garner themselves a mate to produce offspring. I kid you not. They were recruited by groups like Job Corps. They made bad grades, spoke no English but eventually married which was the goal in the first place.
You quietly start training and recruiting YOUR people to sneak in, work their way up, and uncorrupt it from within. You weed out radicals, install Conservatives at every level.
Exactly what they did.
I think plan B, tanks, is a terrible idea. I prefer flame throwers – less expensive and more mobile.
Kent State their asses and it will stop.
It’s the only way to be sure.
Cut off the government subsidies and abolish tenure.
Furnish the libtard professors with a new pair of Birkenstock’s and a swift kick in the ass as they walk out the door.
“Cut off the government subsidies and abolish tenure.”
Not the function of the gov’t to “abolish tenure” – just get the taxpayers out of the equation.
No Fed (period) and no State (unless approved by a 3/4 majority of registered voters) subsidies – let the “schools” raise money as best they can. Football is the great earner for a lot of schools – as well as selling degrees (Harvard Kennedy School, for instance) to rich, ignorant maggots.
But the best way to finance “higher” education is subscription – each student pays the “professor” for his (her, zher(?)) time.
No students; no pay. And the “professor” must pay the school for the use of space (see Nietzsche’s scholastic career).
The worst abuses would be put to rest.
Or – just close all the “schools” and issue degrees on the basis of demographics (socialist method) – the results wouldn’t be noticeably different.
izlamo delenda est …