[Tzimisce]

Freedom of speech? Freedom of press? Freedom to think anything you want? You can't force that sh!t on us! This is OUR Ivory Tower and we'll run any way we damn well choose - so f$%k off and pay your taxes you ungrateful peons.

It's only discrimination when conservatives do it.

[illinoissmith]

The structure of universities is prone to this sort of corruption.

It's a structure that, once you get in, you keep a cushy tax-funded job (and the tax-funding is all couched in education catch phrases, so there's little public support to cut it) and immense power over the direction and pace of intellectual life in the society. And the people currently in get to decide who else gets that power. And they decide to give the power to people who won't question their work, thereby challenging their legacy, and to people who won't question the system, itself, thereby usurping the power structure that allows their inadequate work to survive. And, of course, to people willing to kiss their a$$ on a daily basis.

It is ugly. It is miserable, at least in the humanities/social sciences, to deal with if you're not someone comfortable with getting ahead through schmoozing and brown nosing, unless you are one of the few who luck out with a decent supervisor or a marginally ethical faculty.

Recommend "The Ph.D. Trap" by Wilifred Cude for more info about the flawed structure that encourages mediocrity, stagnancy, and culture of syconphantry. It's not from a conservative perspective, even, just from the perspective of someone who has dug up a lot of research on the flaws of the current university system. Might be useful for arguing and thinking about the university not only from the position of vital political interest, but also the position of the intellectual life that is vital to the civilized world.