The Decline of US Universities

American Universities suffer from a momentous decline in functionality. Academia suffers from a deep rot that has spilled over into the media and popular culture. Stuart Taylor explains:

the cancerous spread of ideologically eccentric, intellectually shoddy, phony-diversity-obsessed fanaticism among university faculties and administrators is far, far worse and more inexorable than most alumni, parents, and trustees suspect.

Another hyperbolic, conservative rant about liberals in academia? Perhaps I should confess my biases. I do dislike extremism of the Left and of the Right. But I have never been conservative enough to vote for a Republican presidential nominee. And the academics whose growing power and abuses of power concern me are far to the left of almost all congressional Democrats.

...The PC sickness goes far beyond intolerance of dissent. It also has a pervasive effect on course offerings. History departments, for example, offer fewer and fewer traditional courses such as political and diplomatic history, to make room for courses portraying history as a tale of unrelieved oppression of minorities, women, the poor, gays, and everyone else by privileged white males.

Academia's "diversity" obsession is founded on hostility to diversity of opinion. To most academics, "diversity" is a code word for systematic preference of minorities and women over white males in all walks of life. The preferred groups include many faculty members who are manifestly unqualified for their positions and whose websites read like a "Saturday Night Live" parody of wacky professors.

...Over the decades, academic extremists have taken over more and more departments, like cancers metastasizing from organ to organ. For example, the 88 Duke professors who signed a disgraceful April 2006 ad in the school paper spearheading the mob rush to judgment against falsely accused lacrosse players included 80 percent of the African-American studies faculty; 72 percent of the women's studies professors; 60 percent of the cultural anthropology department; and lots of professors in romance studies, literature, English, art, and history.

...Only in American academia could still another elite university -- Cornell -- proudly hire away and tenure a character such as Farred after he had proved himself a malicious buffoon. "We are very enthusiastic about Professor Farred, whose work everyone in this department has long admired," remarked Cornell English Department Chairwoman Molly Hite.

In academia today, a professor who falsely smears his university's students as racists is a hot commodity. And hate means never having to say you're sorry.

National Journal


The dysfunctional intolerance of opinion diversity and dissent by professors and administrators on US campuses requires a firm response. FIRE provides an extremely useful "within the system" response to the monkeys of academia. But merely reminding the perverted princes and princesses of intolerance that their actions and policies must conform to the US Constitution seems too mild a reply to the monkeys. Something more memorable seems called for.

Anyway, there is something about the absolute job security of tenure that appears to make the monkeys reckless and intolerant. Ben Franklin stated that those who trade liberty for security deserve neither. Intolerance should not be provided to professors and administrators who prey on young minds--before their brains have fully matured, and before they have been able to incorporate enough life experience to weigh the ideas of their brainwashers.

We are exposing these intolerant academic monkeys to the public eye, but are their enough effectual persons extant in the public to take proper action?