[TheForceOfOne]

I think this article relates well to a recent thread.

The Left University (How it was born; how it grew; how to overcome it.)

[TAdams8591]

Marking.

[RJL]

At Harvard University, beleaguered President Lawrence Summers challenged notions of "diversity" and paid a steep price. He suggested--off the record, at a conference of the National Bureau of Economic Research--that factors other than institutional prejudice and cultural pressure might help explain the relative dearth of women faculty in the hard sciences at Harvard and other elite universities.

One of President Summers's chief critics, Denice Denton, the newly appointed chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, heralded Mr. Summers's public humiliation as a "teachable moment." As one president to another, she objected: "Here was this economist lecturing pompously [to] this room full of the country's most accomplished scholars on women's issues in science and engineering, and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day."

But Chancellor Denton has her own shortcomings. They do not revolve around mere impromptu remarks, nor have they been trailed by public apologies and task forces. Yet in its own way her controversy goes to the heart of the same contemporary race-and-gender credo that governs the university, enjoying exemption from normal scrutiny and simple logic.

Before her arrival, Ms. Denton arranged the creation of a special billet--ad hoc, unannounced and closed to all applicants but one: Ms. Denton's live-in girlfriend of seven years, Gretchen Kalonji. Most recognize this as the sort of personal accommodation--old-boy networking, really--that Ms. Denton presumably wishes to replace with affirmative action, thus ending backroom deals and crass nepotism.

An angry lesbian, it all makes sense now.

[Reeses]

As institutions age, they slowly move to the left until one day they go bankrupt. Old universities, old businesses, the Democrat and Republican parties, all move to the left over time until they fail. It's the changing of the guard that allows parasitic forces in.

One solution is to seek out new institutions being managed by people who have the organization's interests at heart rather than their own.

[AZLiberty]

Universities have become expensive sources of brain mush. Technology-enabled competition is brewing and will soon take over.