Posted on 11/20/2023 6:16:56 AM PST by MtnClimber
It took the widely reported, repellent, and exempt wave of anti-Semitism and violent pro-Hamas protestors harassing Jews, finally to convince Americans that their own hallmark universities are illiberal centers of mediocrity and intolerance—and increasingly unsafe.
Of course, Americans had long known that something had gone wrong at their colleges. They had increasingly encountered college graduates who were poorly educated in basic skills and lacked general knowledge—and yet highly politicized, and intolerant of different views and opinions. Ignorant but arrogant is a sad way to start an adult life.
College, the public knew, has certainly eroded from our cherished idea of a four-year idealized respite from adult employment. It once was intended to be a place where youth learned to be open-minded, tolerant, skilled, and eager to learn the nature and traditions of Western civilization, art, literature, languages, philosophy, and history.
Instead, all too often “college” has now descended into a six-to-seven-year misadventure that nationwide often results in only half those enrolled ever receiving degrees. Nearly all sink deeply in student debt. And yet for all the borrowed tuition money, few prove capable of writing analytically, speaking articulately, or knowing the general referents, past and present, of their very civilization.
Students, especially at the elite campuses, learn to mouth monotonously accusations of “genocide.” “apartheid,” “colonialism,” or “imperialism.” But they lack the ability to define these nouns. As a result, they so often name drop empty slogans in the context of supposed Western sins.
Again, October 7 brought these sorry facts to national attention. Adolescent screamers on video showed no awareness that dropping leaflets and sending texts to avoid collateral deaths is not “genocide.” Most chant the “river to the sea” with no clue that it resonates the very ethos of mass murdering, mutilation, and dehumanization...
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
Too late.
What happened to our colleges and universities? Democratic/communist party infiltration.
The tUniversities that claim to have the "Best and Brightest" students have no more than a bunch of brainwashed leftist disciples of Marxism and Nazism. And the so-called "professors" at these places should be prosecuted.
Sorry, that was attempted through SAT and ACT screening. This was found to be racist, mysogynist, and white supremist.
VDH has been very active in recent days pointing out the Leftism in our culture. For that I thank him as he is able to so clearly describe what has happened and what is happening.
How about a Build Back Better initiative for our universities? Of course that comes with a healthy amount of destruction first.
I like stone buildings draped with ivy, but cheaper means of educating young people are possible.
I don’t have much use for lazy leftist professors, but perhaps lions do.
It’s time to replace the university system in its entirety. It is also time to end the indentured service required to get a PhD. You’ll spend at least seven years even if all the course work is completed and you’ve passed all the tests and written the paper. That’s because you’re slave labor used to teach your professor’s classes, grade his papers and run his personal errands. This system also has stunted any new science as everything investigated must comply with whatever the older generation thinks is real, like string theory.
Also, there should be entrance standards and elimination courses. You can’t have those if you’re using the education system to achieve some sort of social outcome that has nothing to do with education and degrades the entire experience for those who are qualified.
Can We Save our Universities?
________________________________________
Good question. Can we save our cities? Our entertainment industry? Not just our universities, but our public schools? Can we save our election process? Can we save our culture? How about our government? Can that be saved? And can we save our military?
The bigger question is; can we save our nation?
no, they can’t be saved.
1. The liberals infest themselves by tenure in state and private universities.
2. A small college will have to be an island and be willing to say F#@K you to the liberal insects and have a deep pocketed person willing to start an endowment with clear message. “We will educate citizens for this country to provide thoughtful study and inculcate American culture.” Period.... STEM and a classic liberal studies.... that is a 20 year project that starts at home and allowing ONLY kids that WANT to learn and are willing to get an “F” without crying to mama.
3. Sports is optional and at most D-2.
Read “An Education for Our Time” .. great novel by Josiah Bunting.
4. The service academies are done..... all you have to see is the photos of the “cadets” with raised fists praising Che to know that the lesbian in charge of the Air Force Academy and the communists in charge of the Naval Academy and West Point are disgusting quislings that have done more to destroy our country than most.
Occam’s Razor
No
HE IS TOTALLY CORRECT. When I got my undergraduate degree in 1969, this stuff was beginning to creep onto campuses. At “Red” Rutgers - a State School - we had B.O.S.S. - Black Organization of Students - shutting down classes, the SDS - Students for a Democratic Society - and SOME history professors
attacking western civilization and Christianity and an idiot English teacher spewing off about “poor Alger Hiss”.. In graduate school, in the early 1970s, I saw little if any of this but that was in a science program.
At the time I thought - oh well, its just liberal Rutgers. I had no idea it was so pervasive and dangerous. After all, even THERE, most professors - evenbhistoryvand English professirs - seemed apolitical
Sorry, that was attempted through SAT and ACT screening. This was found to be racist, mysogynist, and white supremist.
True. Colleges are no longer requiring SAT's.
No
Not as a government-funded, nationwide ideal and universal employability-training program.
Most of them should be shuttered IMO.
**Note - I tried to find a short excerpt to copy here. Decided to post his conclusion in full. Very well worth your read by a Stanford (and Hillsdale) professor.
So, to save us from the monsters we created, Americans must get the government out of the student loan business. We must demand that universities’ endowments back their own student loans.
The government should tax endowment income and end lifelong tenure. Universities must expel and deport foreign students who violate campus laws as they violently act out their various hatreds.
Reinstate the SAT for admissions, and end racial quotas. And require a national SAT-like exit exam to reassure the public that graduates at least know more when they leave college than when they enrolled—an increasingly dubious assumption.
But most important of all: the public should stop giving money to elite institutions. To continue such philanthropy is akin to supplying heroin to an addict, gas to a fire, or fireworks to children.
Do not consider our prestigious schools any longer necessarily prestigious. Many are not. Do not hire a graduate simply because she graduated from Yale, or he attended Stanford—unless one prefers to risk dealing with an employee poorly schooled but likely to act out a pampered victim status and to disrupt a workplace.
Please read the whole article, worth your time.
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson
Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.
As a reminder, Professor Hanson has asked that we do not post the full article of his writings. Thank you for following the link to finish his article.
Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience.
The decline in our universities began with ensconcing majors and whole departments like Womens Studies and Black Studies as legitimate academic disciplines. These programs quickly became void of any scholarship and research and were filled with radicals given legitimacy as professors. This opened the floodgates to other pseudo academic programs like gender studies, peace and justice studies, queer studies etc. that displaced actual academic disciplines especially in the liberal arts. Sadly higher education followed the trend of becoming failure factories that started in the K-12 schools. A baccalaureate degree in say peace and gender studies means very little in the real world.
Only those who understand how indoctrination works survive universities to live a normal life.
Yes, our leaders need to do something about the indoctrination of children. Our young folk are the leaders of tomorrow! A few years ago the anti-patriotic college teaching molded the leaders we have today. How has that worked out. I don’t understand why anyone would want to change the greatest freedom loving nation that ever existed into some kind of utopia run totally by one set of ideas. Now this anti-patriotic madness is molding the minds of our youngest generation. How is that going to work out? Add that to the influx of people entering our country, who have no idea of what our traditional values are, and a so-called new world order - we will have complete failure. I’m 76 years old. Don’t know when the Lord will take me, but it sure would be comforting to know that the generations following me would enjoy the freedom that I enjoyed.
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