Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Why Have Professors Intentionally Destroyed the Prestige of Their Own Institutions?
Most kids are idiots. Always have been. I certainly was. There is a reason that those trying to start mass movements for crazy ideology always start in the schools. Kids are emotional, inexperienced, and impulsive. So schools have always been a bit different than the rest of the world. But recently schools have changed from “a little odd” to “dangerously insane.” Why is that? Again, kids are kids. Always have been. What’s different now?
@songwriter wrote a typically insightful comment on another thread recently:
What boggles the mind is the fact that university administrations allow their students to bully them so. When I was in college (a classic start to a Grumpy Old Man rant) – had the students gone to the administration and demanded anything the response would have been, “Go back to class.”
I think he’s right – schools are different now because the teachers and administrators are different, not the kids. So why is that? What has inspired the leadership of schools to change their previously prestigious institutions into insane asylums? It is unusual for those in positions of authority to voluntarily give up their power to someone else. At least, not without a very good reason. So what is that reason?
Published in Education
Could it be they never grew up either?
20 years ago, I was taking classes at UMass. One of my political science professors was a woman with a gold plated Ivy League resume. We were talking about riots, and it was her position that everyone has an innate right to do violence to other people, for whatever reason they see fit. When she stated this, most of us in the class, including me, were so stunned that we had no idea how to respond. One guy, who was an assistant to some democrat politician, balked at what she was saying, but she said to him, “Don’t you think that people have a right to be violent?” And then he just sat there in stunned silence too.
Some of today’s students are a dream come true for professors like her. They aren’t giving in to students; they are egging those students on.
The quick answer is that after the radicalization of the late 1960s and the transformation or masking of Marxism when Marxism was thoroughly discredited by the horrors of the Soviet Union and Maoist China by the Post Modernist intellectuals (particularly in France) in the 1970s that spread and took hold in the academy in America and Canada . Stephen Hicks and Jordan Peterson discuss this at great length in many of their videos and lectures widely available on YouTube.
This. I think a large part of it is that the professors generally agree with the aims of the students.
Brian Watt – great videos. Thanks much!
Note to anyone on this thread – those videos are worth your time…
It’s a great line, but I did not write it. Give credit to @songwriter.
Seawriter
Crap! Sorry about that. I’ll edit the post right away. Thanks for catching my error.
I have a writer’s horror of appearing to have plagiarized someone or something.
Seawriter
This is a replay of the late 60s and early 70s when college administrators caved to radical student demands. Having gone through it myself I thought I remembered how bad it was but recently reading the first volume of Steve Hayward’s Age of Reagan, made me realize it was even worse.
This exactly. Most professors today, on one level or another, we’re supporters of, fans of, or members of groups like SDS. The whole mission of SDS was to to destroy US Institutions because those institutions were seen as part of the bourgeoisie society. Now you have the right numbers, the right atmosphere, and the right kind of parent to realize your dream.
One of the features of Post Modernism as practiced in the academy that Peterson touches on in the previously posted video is the obliteration of the individual’s worth and value that is now replaced by group identity.
I wrote about that six years ago in a Ricochet post when I recognized this disturbing trend during an argument I had with my wife-at-the-time who tried to push the amorphous narrative that the Industrial Revolution was simply a phenomenon of cultural forces that seemed to (magically) coalesce at the same time rather than, as I argued, the result of a group of gifted, insightful and hard-driving men (like Erasmus Darwin, James Watt, Wedgewood, Priestley, and Boulton) who actually brought it about. I was quite happy to find that the very same argument surfaced on Melvin Bragg’s podcast a year or two later. Bragg and at least one other scholar agreed with me I’m happy to say.
http://ricochet.com/archives/revising-history-to-kill-individual-exceptionalism/
The insidiousness of this world view has spread out from the academy into HR departments of corporations and has been embraced by C-level executives – unfortunately – and was most recently displayed in the firing of Apple’s diversity officer when she had the audacity to claim that there was diversity evident in a group of white males. Her heresy resulted in her dismissal from the company.
Here’s what I wrote about the recent Apple firing on Facebook:
You’re thinking of college as a parent or consumer paying to have your child educated and prepared for a productive and good life. Unfortunately, you should think of the overwhelming majority of professors and administrators as ‘drill instructors’, your kids are the recruits and the generals are the Statists. “imagine a war and no one shows up for it”-isn’t that one of the Left’s favorites? Let’s make it one of ours.
The sooner we make them (even more irrelevant) by accrediting online and employer/trade /manufacturer training (hoping Betsy DeVoss has that up her sleeve) the better.
It’s important not to conflate the academic side with the administration. There is a lot of competition for students and their dollars, and retention is a very important component of the bottom line. Once you get a student at your school you don’t want to lose him or her, so there is a certain amount of catering to them that goes on by administration; more at some schools than others.
Also, if anyone has the time, here’s another fascinating interview that delves into the corruption of the academy and attempts to course correct the situation:
The prestige of their institutions is still intact at the moment. I wonder if this will change. I wonder if there will come a time when employers will realize the prestige degree is really just a marker for an ignorant young person with a bad attitude.
It depends on the university in question. Some college presidents are quite sympathetic to the Social Justice Warrior ethos – Evergreen College being perhaps the most notable case. Other universities are waking up (being woke?) that their support for shutting down debate and infantilizing the student body by protecting them from harmful ideas is having a direct impact on enrollment (University of Missouri). Those smaller liberal arts colleges that continue to push the SJW nonsense may at some point need to shut down when the money dries up. The larger institutions may take longer to be woke since they host STEM disciplines, research or business schools. Lawsuits by students who have been discriminated or academically punished by faculty for presenting conservative views may go a long was to upend the Post Modernist/NeoMarxist dominance in the humanities.
If I were in an HR department, I’d be really leery of hiring anyone with an “anger studies” degree.
What I experienced at UMass was that unfortunately, in general, the crazy people were also the smartest people. I have never been one to keep my mouth shut, but much of the time, when the top students were discussing their various theories, I had very little idea what they were talking about. I am not sure how I passed many of my classes; grade inflation was probably my friend. Part of this was the result of a lack of interest on my part: I just didn’t possess the motivation to try to fully understand everything Michel Foucault was trying to say. Part of it, probably, was that I just wasn’t as smart as the top students. I wouldn’t describe those top students as ignorant, but they were very deluded, and totally full of themselves. There was no room in their world for common sense, meaning, there was no room in their world for the vast majority of people. So, yeah, you could argue that they were ignorant and had a bad attitude, but they were also very quick on their feet intellectually. I don’t like saying that, but it is true. However, it does get to a point where if you possess no common sense whatsoever, being quick on your feet intellectually won’t help you. Hopefully, American society is reaching that point.
This thread is an example of why I can’t understand why some on this site refuse to say that the Left is evil. There is zero doubt what is going on. There is a protected elite manipulating a vulnerable mass without the knowledge to understand they are being manipulated all for the purpose of destroying the very society that affords all of these the comfy lifestyles they enjoy. To say they aren’t evil is just a refusal to admit reality.
Either I got through college before Foucault got popular, the school I went to was too conservative to pay attention to him, or I just didn’t study the right (wrong) courses. I never ran into him.
OMG, you would be amazed at the crazy people they made us read. Thankfully, at the time anyway, they also made us read the Founding Fathers. After a year or two of this reading, it was clear to me that 99% of political theorists are maniacs, the Founding Fathers being a blessed exception to that rule.
What were you studying?
If you were in an HR department today (especially if you were running it) you are probably the one with the “anger studies” degree.
Seawriter
Political theory, and admittedly, I turned to that major because I was a slacker. Everyone was telling me that I had to get a degree, and political theory was practically the only thing that didn’t put me totally to sleep. When I was reading the works of crazy political theorists-Michel Foucault, for instance, I had the feeling that I was peering into the mind of a mad man, and it was fascinating in a way. I am glad that I did it. To say that it gave me a renewed appreciation of the Founding Fathers would be the understatement of all time.
This is a very interesting post. I was in college 1969-’73, during the first wave of campus uprisings. By the time I got out, that had abated; Nixon’s tough stance was more effective than many want to remember. The cities were no longer burning by 1973. I didn’t pay much attention to campuses after that until my own kids were ready for college. They’ve been to Occidental College, UCLA, and Loyola Marymount, and I have to report that they actually teach useful things, and by and large the students work hard at learning. As sobering as this post is, I think we should remember that most colleges are not snowflake factories, most professors are not political hacks, and most students are not like the brain dead idiots we find so entertaining in YouTube clips. That there are any at all is a problem, but we should keep that in perspective.
Four dead in Ohio. It’ll happen again, too.
This video is as least as valuable although it is long.
Haidt seems to agree with my theory that academia turned hard left when thousands of leftist students stayed in grad school to avoid the draft. That is one more disaster that Lyndon Johnson left us with. I have read Robert Caro’s biography of him and believe his presidency has left us with fatal pathology in the country. I don’t know if we can recover.
I posted this before reading all the comments and I see I was not the first. Still, consider this as an endorsement.
We have to recover, there isn’t another option, and I think we already are recovering. I understand what @robertmcreynolds is saying about top leftists being evil, but the main thing is, regardless of whether they are actually evil or not, they are crazy. I think we should focus on the crazy part. Americans have always been inclined to reject pointy headed professors. Trump’s victory is one indication of this. The tide is turning in our direction.
Gary McVey (View Comment):
most professors are not political hacks, and most students are not like the brain dead idiots we find so entertaining in YouTube clips.
In STEM departments, at some colleges, you may be right. Maybe.
I’m the humanities & liberal arts departments of nearly every college in the USA, I really think that you are mistaken.
I hope you’re right. I hope I’m wrong.
But I don’t think so.
Oh, for Pete’s sake. This is WAY over the top. Allow me to list all the flaws in your argument:
Um… Well, you see… Uh, I’m sure there must be some…ummm…
Let me get back to you on that.