The excerpt below is from an article, titled “On the Sadness of Higher Education,” by Alan Charles Kors, which appeared in New Criterion, was later quoted by the Wall Street Journal, and was subsequently republished here.

Under the heirs of the academic ‘60s, we moved on campus after campus from their Free Speech Movement to their politically correct speech codes; from their abolition of mandatory chapel to their imposition of Orwellian mandatory sensitivity and multicultural training; from their freedom to smoke pot unmolested to their war today against the kegs and spirits-literal and metaphorical-of today’s students; from their acquisition of young adult status to their infantilization of “kids” who lack their insight; from their self-proclaimed dreams of racial and sexual integration to their ever more balkanized campuses organized on principles of group characteristics and group responsibility; from their right to define themselves as individuals-a foundational right-to their official, imposed and politically orthodox notions of identity. American college students became the victims of a generational swindle of truly epic proportions. If that part of the faculty not complicit in this did not know that it was happening, it was by choice or willful blindness.

In the academic university-the curriculum and classroom, and the hiring that underlies them-it all varies by where one looks. To understand why and to understand one of the few vulnerabilities of universities to actual accountability and reform, one must understand the hierarchy that predicts academic institutional behavior: sexuality (in their language, “sexual preference”) trumps neutrality; race properly conceived easily trumps sexuality; sex properly conceived (or, in their language, “gender”) easily trumps race; and careerism categorically trumps everything. From that perspective, the careerists who run our campuses have made a Faustian bargain (though they differ on which is the devil’s portion).

Being careful, on the whole, to keep the natural and physical sciences, mathematics, and a variegated Column A of departments (sometimes psychology, sometimes philosophy, sometimes linguistics), and the professional schools that relate symbiotically to practical America relatively free of political agendas-though even in these cases, the barriers to crude politicization may break down-the careerist administrators have kept largely intact those disciplines where added value might be measured. From diverse motives of ideological sympathies and acute awareness of who can blackball their next career moves, they have given over the humanities, the soft social sciences and the entire university in loco parentis to the zealots of oppression studies and coercive identity politics. In the latter case, it truly has been a conspiracy, with networking and common plans. In the former case-the professoriate and the curriculum-it is generally, with striking politicized exceptions, a soft tyranny of groupthink, unconscious bias and self-inflated sense of a mission of demystification. Most of the professors I meet are kind, indeed sweet, and certainly mean no harm. It is profoundly sad to see what they have become. ...

Academics, in their own minds, face an almost insoluble problem of time. How, in only four years, can they disabuse students of the notion that the capital, risk, productivity and military sacrifice of others have contributed to human dignity and to the prospects of a decent society? How can they make them understand, with only four years to do so, that capitalism and individual- ism have created cultures that are cruel, inefficient, racist, sexist and homophobic, with oppressive caste systems, mental and behavioral? How, in such a brief period, can they enlighten “minorities,” including women (the majority of students), about the “internalization” of their oppression (today’s equivalent of false consciousness)? How, in only eight semesters, might they use the classroom, curriculum and university in loco parentis to create a radical leadership among what they see as the victim groups of our society, and to make the heirs of successful families uneasy in the moral right of their possessions and opportunities? Given those constraints, why in the world should they complicate their awesome task by hiring anyone who disagrees with them?

The power of universities comes from their monopoly of credentials. As Richard Vedder so deeply understands in his “Going Broke by Degree,” they are the only institutions allowed to separate young individuals by IQ and by the ability to complete complex tasks. They do not add value to that, except in technical fields. Recruiters do not pay premiums because of what the Ivy League or the flagship state universities teach in English, history, political science, or sociology. They hire there despite, not because of, that. Recruiters do not pay premiums because our children have been sent to multicultural centers for sensitivity training. Recruiters pay premiums for the value already there, which universities merely identify. So long as recruiters pay premiums, however, it is rational for parents who wish to gain the most options for their children to send them to the university with the most prestigious degree. That will not change in the current scheme.

We now have closed-shop, massively subsidized, intolerant political fiefdoms, and they are the gatekeepers of society’s rewards. Without incentives for different models of higher education, we shall have this same system of colleges and universities as far as the mind can foresee. The tax-free mega-endowments will grow. The legislators and the public will not end the subsidy. The alumni will continue their bequests. The trustees will proudly attend the administrative dog-and-pony shows, the most efficient act on any campus. Well-intentioned donors will support ghettoized “centers” (without faculty lines, cross-listed courses, graduate fellowships, or degrees) that marginalize inquiries that should be central to the academy. These provide protective coloration for administrators, help with fund raising in certain quarters, and permit a transfer of funds to the accelerating thirst for ever new forms of regnant campus orthodoxies. Until civil society makes administrators pay a price for the politicized hiring, curriculum and student life offices they administer, nothing truly will be reformed.

Campaign contributions by faculty and administrators at American colleges and universities routinely show a preference for democrat candidates in the high 90 percentages. Leftwing crazies and convicted terrorists have no problem being hired as faculty members, but a speech by a visiting member of the Bush Administration is typically a cause célèbre resulting in angry petitions and demonstrations.

“Who cares?” says Inside Higher Education, we have a study demonstrating that American higher education is a complete waste of time and has virtually no intellectual impact whatsoever.

One of the key arguments made by David Horowitz and his supporters in recent years is that a left-wing orientation among faculty members results in a lack of curricular balance, which in turn leads to students being indoctrinated rather than educated. The argument is probably made most directly in a film much plugged by Horowitz: “Indoctrinate U.”

A study that will appear soon in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics accepts the first part of the critique of academe and says that it’s true that the professoriate leans left. But the study — notably by one Republican professor and one Democratic professor — finds no evidence of indoctrination. Despite students being educated by liberal professors, their politics change only marginally in their undergraduate years, and that deflates the idea that cadres of tenured radicals are somehow corrupting America’s youth — or scaring them into adopting new political views.

Charlotte Observer (3/23):

As a college student in Chapel Hill, John Allison stumbled across a collection of essays by Ayn Rand and was hooked by her philosophy of self-interest and limited government. As he rose over the decades to chief executive of BB&T, one of the country’s leading regional banks, Rand remained his muse.

He’s trying to replicate that encounter through the charitable arm of his Winston-Salem-based company, which since 1999 has awarded more than $28 million to 27 colleges to support the study of capitalism from a moral perspective. But on at least 17 of those campuses, including UNC Charlotte, N.C. State and Johnson C. Smith University, the gifts come with an unusual stipulation: Rand’s novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” is included in a course as required reading.

The schools’ agreements have drawn criticism from some faculty, who say it compromises academic integrity. In higher education, the power to decide course content is supposed to rest with professors, not donors. Debate about the gifts, which arose at UNCC this month, illustrates tensions that exist over corporate influence on college campuses.

UNCC received its $1 million gift pledge in 2005, but details about the “Atlas Shrugged” requirement came to light as the school dedicated an Ayn Rand reading room March 12.

“It’s going to make us look like a rinky-dink university,” UNCC religious studies professor Richard Cohen said Thursday after UNCC Chancellor Phil Dubois told the faculty council about the gift. “It’s like teaching the Bible as a requirement.”

Dubois, who learned of the book requirement this month, says it was ill-advised. He may ask Allison to reconsider it, he told faculty.

Allison has been surprised that the gifts can generate controversy. He says he simply wants students exposed to the late author’s ideas, which he believes the academic community has largely ignored. He welcomes opposing ideas.

He also points out that the schools approached the foundation, not the other way around.

Yale bent over backwards (as it were) to negotiate a deal allowing the administration to save face while accepting an alumni gift to endow a program of Gay Studies amounting to virtual advocacy. Ayn Rand’s philosophic views are hardly a less legitimate subject for academic study.

PJM reports on the discovery of a conservative blade of grass pushing through the concrete of entrenched leftism at Brown.

(The Yale Party of Right was founded in, and has enjoyed a continuous existence since 1952, as a successor to Crotonia, and has itself given birth to two schismatic offshoots.)

Brown University Spectator

The Wall Street Journal notes a certain irony in the characteristic choice of pro bono activity expressive of today’s cultural values at an elite institution like Yale Law School.

John Yoo can be forgiven if he’s having second thoughts about his career choice. A Yale Law School graduate, the Berkeley professor of law went on to serve his country at the Justice Department. Yet last week he was sued by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla and his mother, who are represented by none other than lawyers at Yale. Perhaps if Mr. Yoo had decided to pursue a life of terrorism, he too could be represented by his alma mater.

Padilla is the American citizen who was arrested in 2002, and detained as an “enemy combatant” in a military brig in Charleston, S.C., under suspicion of plotting to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” in a U.S. city. Padilla fought his detention on Constitutional grounds, losing his case in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In January 2006, the feds transferred him out of military custody to be tried in civilian court in Miami. The dirty bomb charge was never filed because the military hadn’t read him his Miranda rights or provided him a lawyer when he was interrogated. A jury nonetheless took a day and half last August to convict him of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas. Padilla could get life in prison.

Mr. Yoo is the former deputy assistant attorney general who wrote memos laying out some of the legal parameters in the war on terror. Those memos most famously pertained to interrogation techniques, some of which were used against such enemy combatants as Padilla. Mr. Yoo long ago returned to Berkeley, and we are happy to say he sometimes writes for us.

Now, years later, Mr. Yoo is being harassed by a lawsuit claiming he is personally liable for writing those memos as a midlevel government official. “Defendant Yoo subjected Mr. Padilla to illegal conditions of confinement and treatment that shocks the conscience in violation of Mr. Padilla’s Fifth Amendment Rights to procedural and substantive due process,” the complaint asserts.

But Padilla’s rights weren’t violated, and certainly not by Mr. Yoo, whose legal arguments at the time were accepted by his superiors, including Attorney General John Ashcroft. The decision to hold Padilla as an enemy combatant was made by President Bush, and defended in court by executive branch lawyers. They won that case in the most senior court in which it was heard, in an opinion written by then-Judge Michael Luttig of the Fourth Circuit. The Bush Administration later transferred Padilla to be tried in the Miami court, and the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. Padilla got his day in court—on both Constitutional and criminal grounds—and lost.

What we really have here is less a tort claim than a political stunt intended to intimidate government officials. Nothing in the claim will change Padilla’s future, and the suit asks for only $1 in damages, plus legal fees. Instead, the suit seeks “a judgment declaring that the acts alleged herein are unlawful and violate the Constitution and laws of the United States.” In short, the Yale attorneys are using Padilla as a legal prop in one more attempt to find a judge willing to declare that the Bush Administration’s antiterror policies are illegal. And if it can harass Mr. Yoo with bad publicity and legal costs along the way, so much the better.

This is nasty business and would have damaging consequences if it worked. Government officials have broad legal immunity (save for criminal acts) precisely so they can make decisions without worrying about personal liability. If political appointees can be sued years later for advice that was accepted by their superiors, we will soon have a government run not by elected officials but by tort lawyers and judges.

The antiwar left has failed to overturn U.S. policies in Congress, or by directly challenging the government in court. So its latest tactic is suing third parties, such as the telephone companies that cooperated on al Qaeda wiretaps after 9/11. And now it is suing former government officials, hoping to punish them and deter future appointees from offering any advice that the left dislikes.

Which brings us back to Yale. The real litigant here is the National Litigation Project at the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School. That sounds august, but this is really a leftwing bucket shop using Yale’s sponsorship to achieve antiwar policy goals via lawsuit. We trust the dean of Yale Law, Harold Koh, is proud of suing an alumnus on behalf of a terrorist, and that Yale’s other alumni know how their donations are being used.

Anthony T. Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law and former Dean of Yale Law School, laments the post-1960s dégringolade of liberal education in America in Against Political Correctness: A Liberal’s Cri du Coeur in this month’s Yale Alumni Magazine.

Today’s defenders of diversity assume that the interpretive judgments of their students will differ according to their race, gender, and ethnicity. But at the same time they expect their students to share a commitment to the values of political liberalism on which the concept of diversity is based. These values may be the fairest and most durable foundation on which to build a political community. I believe they are. A legal and cultural environment marked by the freedoms that political liberalism affords may be the setting in which institutions of higher education are most likely to flourish. I think it is. But when a presumptive commitment to the values of political liberalism begins to constrain the exploration of the personal question of life’s meaning—when the expectation that everyone shares these values comes to place implicit limits on the alternatives that may be considered and how seriously they are to be taken—the enterprise itself loses much of its power and poignancy for the students involved and their teachers lose their authority to lead it.

Whatever fails to accord with the values of political liberalism fits uncomfortably within the range of possibilities that the prevailing conception of diversity permits students to acknowledge as serious contenders in the search for an answer to the first-personal question of what living is for. The political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, with their easy acceptance of the natural inequality of humans, offend these values at every turn. So, too, does the theological tradition that runs from Augustine to Calvin, with its insistence on church authority and its doctrines of sin and grace. And much of poetry is motivated by an anti-democratic love of beauty and power.

All of these ideas and experiences are suspect from the standpoint of liberal values. None represents the “right” kind of diversity. None is suitable as a basis for political life, and hence—here is the crucial step—none is suitable (respectable, acceptable, honorable) as a basis for personal life either. None, in the end, can perform any useful function other than as an illustration of the confused and intolerant views of those who had the misfortune to be born before the dawning of the light.

Today’s idea of diversity is so limited that one might with justification call it a sham diversity, whose real goal is the promotion of a moral and spiritual uniformity instead. It has no room for the soldier who values honor above equality, the poet who believes that beauty is more important than justice, or the thinker who regards with disinterest or contempt the concerns of political life. The identification of diversity with race and gender has thus brought us back full circle to the moral uniformity with which American higher education began, nearly four centuries ago.

New York Times:

For five years, Yale Law School has fought to restrict military recruiters from its job fairs because of the Pentagon’s policy that bars openly gay or bisexual people from the military. But with the federal government threatening to withhold $350 million in grants if the university does not assist the recruiters, that fight will all but end on Monday.

After an appeals court ruled in favor of the Defense Department on Sept. 17, the law school said it would allow recruiters from the Air Force and Navy to participate in a university-sponsored job interview program for law students on Monday afternoon. For now, the legal battle to stop the recruiters is over, said Robert A. Burt, a Yale law professor and the lead plaintiff in the case.

“The judges who hold office at the moment disagree with us,” Professor Burt said. “We must wait for history to vindicate our position.”

History will have nothing but contempt and derision for pampered academic prigs whose commitment to leveling the distinction between perversity and ordinary life so greatly exceeds their loyalty to country and their gratitude to the armed forces which defend them.

Walter Olson explains that Law School at Hofstra University may be lawyering just a little bit too close to the edge.

The brochure (PDF) for the Hofstra legal ethics conference announces that “Hofstra Law School is an accredited NYS CLE [Continuing Legal Education] provider. Continuing Legal Education credits and scholarships are available.” Yet in the discussion at Legal Ethics Blog, commenter “V. May” points to the New York regulations governing continuing legal education, which declare in one provision, Part 1500.4b (5), that “Continuing legal education courses or programs to be accredited shall comply with the following guidelines”:

The course or program shall not be taught by a disbarred attorney, whether the disbarred attorney is the sole presenter or one of several instructors.

The Hofstra brochure designates Lynne Stewart among “Conference Faculty”, but does not warn registrants of the danger of partial or complete loss of CLE credit. Lawyers are asked to pay $475 to attend the conference.

Stewart will be a member of the final panel of the conference, another member of which will be none other than Ron Kuby.

“I want a f****** lawyer, man. I want Bill Kunstler or Ron Kuby.” —Jeffrey Lebowski aka The Dude.

Earlier posting


Lynne Stewart

Walter Olson notes that:

Hofstra Law School, and its Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics, are hosting Lynne Stewart, but their biographical blurb somehow forgets to note that she was convicted of providing material aid to terrorists and then disbarred. Must have been lack of space.

The blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman

Ms. Stewart was merely imprisoned and disbarred for assisting her translator to convey a message to 1993 World Trade Center bombing master-mind Omar Abdel-Rahman in prison from Egyptian terrorist group, and then delivering his response at her press conference.