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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
The baby boomer lump required schools to expand, the first out were hired, they got tenure and haven’t stoped ruining everything they touch.
This is the thing, though: to just call them evil will backfire. We have to prove that they are evil, because there are lots of people for whom that isn’t immediately apparent. And we have to prove that they are evil to people who aren’t paying attention even half the time. Romney could have made a great deal of headway on this if he had discussed Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, for instance. Even now, a lot of hay could made on that issue that isn’t being made. But to just go around saying “They are evil” doesn’t work. It doesn’t work when liberals do it to us; it won’t work if we do it to them.
You need to pull a Mad Dogs and Englishmen end.
Thank god I went to school when they had us reading the Federalist Papers instead of Foucault.
And another cheer for Steve Hayward’s two-volume history of the Reagan presidency. It is great history and as good an introduction to political science as any I’ve seen. It’s a long read but a good one, and if you don’t read it you’ve really missed something.
tim
Four or five years ago I was walking along the beach on Cape Cod with a friend who started an information software company for banks, etc. years ago. He is very wealthy. His firm competes with Bloomberg. He said he would never hire anyone from an Ivy League school again (at executive level) because they think they know everything, never bother to learn the software (as agreed at hiring), and don’t get the job done.
I’ve heard the same complaints about fresh out of ivy league law school, but they hire them anyway, get non ivy league lawyers to do the actual work. Probably bill clients as if the ivy league lawyers did the work.
Are schools competing for students more than students are competing to get into the schools?
That would be my knee-jerk hypothesis.
Thanks Brian and Dr. Bastiat for the videos and the recommendation.
I had a similar experience with International Affairs and Comparative Politics: it solidified my appreciation for American Exceptionalism, and made the prospect of the United States becoming like Europe (except for Switzerland) utterly terrifying for me.
I sneakily tried to undermine the ideology of my smart but unwise Leftist friends by using Donald Rumsfeld (whom they were calling an idiot) as an example of an incredibly smart person making very stupid decisions due to arrogance and reckless disregard for potential consequences, speculating that he became that way due to a lifetime of using his brains to get ahead in heavily structured, contained, and safe environments, which left him without appreciation for just how inadequate even geniuses are when faced with the infinite combinations of unknown variables inherent to reality.
I don’t know if they ever realized I was also talking about them (I later audited a class they were taking where Road To Serfdom was required reading, so they really should have), or applied the concept beyond a particular (conservative) public figure they hated, but several months later I did overhear them parroting my description of Rumsfeld to other Leftist students).
Nowadays there is more specific selection for liberal professors, as well as more departments that positively require it (anything ending in ‘Studies’ is the general rule). Also, professors don’t want bad press / Internet rage storms / losing their jobs.
Even at BYU, in the Education department at least, there were several lefties. My last education class was supposedly about teaching to diverse populations (not necessarily a bad thing to cover, since 80+% of the ed students were middle-class girls from Utah/Idaho). It turned out to be about teaching using the principles of Social Justice. They even mentioned the Frankfurt School as the originator of the general idea, in an approving way.
I was fortunate enough to spend my university days at a small Catholic school. There was certainly give and take in the classroom, but the priests were not going to let the students run the asylum. During the Vietnam War about one-fourth of the student body was involved in ROTC. It is still that way today.
We were a sister school to Notre Dame, the Holy Cross order, and compared to the behemoth state schools we had about 2,000 undergrads, it is still the the same today. Notre Dame has about 8,624 undergrads. Both schools have about 4 out of 5 students living on campus. God, Country, Notre Dame is the motto. Military service is encouraged and supported. There are bastions of sanity out there.
You’d probably be right.
You educate who you can. You support them, and hopefully they can make their mark and contribute to this country. As the Yoda-esque comments from Diane Feinstein, the dogma is strong in this one, referring to her Catholic beliefs she is a possible contender for the Supreme Court someday. One at a time if that is what it takes.
Except that if you’re in HR, your professional training has been taken over by SJWs. As the Peterson video says, SJWs are interested only in power. At bottom, that’s demonic.
Which is where I pull the .9mm out and ask, “Would you like to find out?”
Why?
Because the prestige was unearned white male privilege
Because you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs: Ideas are merely constructed instruments and they have no loyalty to any principle other than pure power
Mostly, that is the case.
Sea-writer, Song-writer, whatever. I’m just happy to be included. Thx for the quote (and the correction.)
I couldn’t resist:
Sincerely,
Joe Biden, 2020 Presidential Candidate
I saw Haidt speak at ASU earlier this month to a packed house of 500+. He remains a traditional liberal but his critique of what’s happened in academia has grown even sharper over the past couple of years.
According to Haidt, the dominance of progressive academic voices and suppression of dissenting ones, while a long standing problem, has gotten much worse over the past 5 years and the most unbalanced schools in terms of faculty ideology have gotten even more unbalanced.
Haidt said he will not send his children to any school in New England or on the West Coast because those are the geographic areas that are by far the worst in suppressing non-progressive viewpoints. He was scathing in his critique of identity politics.
He observed that the revolution has come full circle, professors are now afraid of their own students, and are now censoring themselves about what they’ll say. He asked how many professors were in the audience and a lot of hands went up. Most stayed up when asked if they agreed with his statement about fearing their own students.
I am a writer. I am not a politician.
Seawriter
Yes they are. Many students go to college for all the wrong reasons, because it’s the next thing to do, to party, it’s leaving home, they think it makes them ‘grown up’, and so on. They are heavily recruited by colleges at all levels. The Ivy League and other prestigious U’s get their pick so you could say they aren’t really recruiting, I suppose.
As to why the leftists are actively tearing down the American System, all revolutions begin by destroying the established order, then building again from the ashes. It usually turns out badly. The American experience wasn’t really a revolution as much as a war for Independence since the Founders mostly didn’t want to tear everything down as much as they wanted to re-establish their Liberties. It did result in a ‘revolutionary’ system being established though.
The leftists hate that system because it doesn’t perfectly provide equally for all regardless of ability and/or effort. They think they can establish a better system that will do that. I think they have rocks in their heads on that score. I don’t think that makes them evil, just wrong. They ignore both the lessons of history and common sense, both of which they disdain.
Yes but not just the professors, parents today are terrified of their kids. Mostly afraid that, “they won’t like me” if the parent disciplines strictly or even speaks harshly about actions/attitudes that need correcting. Parents are afraid to be parents. Kids, however, need parenting. Friendships can come later, after the kids are adults. If the child likes it fine, if not that’s part of the price of being a parent. This has been almost totally lost in our culture today.
I think this is partly due to the unfortunate practice of having few children. When parents had 6,8,10 or more children there was less pressure to make sure they excelled. Now all the eggs are in one basket. The parents are over-anxious to ‘provide’ every advantage and end up both suffocating and over-indulging the kids, to their detriment I think. The most important thing the kids miss out on is being able to just be kids for 10 or 12 years. After that they need to be transitioning to adulthood but are actually being held back from that by the elongated education system, It’s a bad combination.
I am currently reading Haight’s book, “The Righteous Mind”. It is very interesting to get his perspective on what underlies the left/right conflict in terms of what leads us to such different conclusions and solutions. I’m sure he is mostly right about his thesis and it is well researched. I have no quarrel with his conclusions. But it is important to remember that he is writing to help the Democrats understand how they can more effectively reach out to the Middle and thus win the White House more often. He is interesting but not an ally.
I think he’s getting more and more “woked,” @OkieSailor. For one thing, since Righteous Mind came out, he’s had some unpleasant personal experiences with SJWs. Eyes, once opened, tend to go on seeing.
I’d say he’s definitely an ally. Dave Rubin too.
My son tells me that his class in Critical Theory is taught by a professor (tenured, of course) who has never been out of Academia. Ever. So of course, the class is all-Foucault, and stultifying. My son’s favorite professors always turn out to be people who’ve done other things—built houses, served in the military, run a business… staying home with small children for a decade would do it. Some sort of work—any sort of work—in which there is a real cost to being wrong.
I sent him the links to the Peterson and Haidt videos, and also to the academic hoax paper on “The Conceptual Penis” to cheer him up.
I don’t think I want to know.
I think this is right. Although Haidt referenced the concepts of The Righteous Mind, his focus is elsewhere now. When I saw him speak his point was that we underestimate how delicate is the balance needed to maintain the stability of a society like ours (he paid tribute to the insights of the Founders in this regard) and that the 21st century versions of diversity and identity by leading to intolerance and suppression of other views are doing severe damage to that balance, not just in academia but throughout America.