The Radical Leftism of College Campuses is Now in Our Politics
“One thing stands in the way of the onward march of this malevolent force: the public’s common sense.”
If this isn’t stopped now, it won’t be stopped at all. We won’t get another chance.
John Ellis writes at the Wall Street Journal:
Can Politics Get Better When Higher Education Keeps Getting Worse?
Only a few years ago, several well-established features of the current political landscape were too absurd to be taken seriously. Defunding the police was a ridiculous idea; critical race theory would be a giant step backward in race relations; leftist radicalism was a fringe element of the Democratic Party. Suddenly all have gone mainstream…
Where are we headed now? On campus, radicalism grows stronger each day. The current left-right campus faculty ratio is probably about 15 to 1, but new appointments are being made at a rate of about 50 to 1. As we approach complete leftist saturation among professors, college campuses will become even more intolerant, irrational and politically aggressive.
More important still, academia’s influence on society will intensify as the number of people who have graduated from radicalized campuses increases and the number of those who graduated with a conventional college education declines. A generation—students from about 2000 to now—has graduated from one-party campuses. Where will we be when two generations have done so and another generation has died off?
One thing stands in the way of the onward march of this malevolent force: the public’s common sense. Parents have mounted spirited campaigns against teaching critical race theory in schools, but will this pushback weaken as the number of politically indoctrinated college graduates rises?
We shouldn’t wait to find out. We must stop the political radicals who have a stranglehold on U.S. campuses. Why isn’t that happening already?
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Comments
The best way to stop this is to stop sending your kids to these schools. A drop in admissions makes it harder to continue funding this insanity. They will continue to hire these loons as long as people are willing to pay for it or sign the student loan paperwork. Stop. It ends when we end our financial support.
Places like Haahvahd, Princeton, MIT, etc have enough of an endowment fund that they can survive with NO students.
Right on. Harvard’s endowment is worth about $53 billion, and earning about 7%, which is about 3-4 billion per year. They have about 5,000 undergrads paying an estimated average $50K per year (after discounts), for about 1/4 of a billion per year. They could do without the tuition and barely have to cut back.
Still, at least twice a year they have the gall to send me fundraising solicitations, which I immediately file in an appropriate place.
Whoa, Harvard is doing even better than I thought. They could buy Amazon and forget about students altogether.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/10/15/endowment-returns-soar-2021/
The Crimson article correctly reports that only $2 billion was paid out to be spent and the rest was rolled over and reinvested in the endowment. Most large universities pay out at a steady rate (set by the Board of Trustees) and then use the surplus from the good years to make up for the bad years where returns are low or negative.
OldProf2 fails to point out the large amount of income that comes from faculty research contracts. While those contracts cover faculty, graduate students and equipment costs, the university charges a heavy overhead factor to also help cover accounting, laboratory space, and administration. So, even if Harvard were to stop taking students and stop charging overhead on faculty research grants, they could still stay in business forever.
You’re Harvard?
Just to think… we may have already met, as a Mass. Ave. venue, over a hot, steaming canister of tear gas.
Every time I smell tear gas, it reminds me of Harvard. The first time I smelled tear gas was about a week after I arrived there (1969) as I walked through Harvard yard.
“We must stop the political radicals who have a stranglehold on U.S. campuses. Why isn’t that happening already?”
Because they serve the interests of the political radicals who already have a stranglehold on political office and mainstream media. If these radical kids OPPOSED the swamp, they would be quickly crushed (see: Turning Point USA).
I think Dementia Joe’s inflation will kill the financial bubble in everything. Markets crash and banks collapse. These endowments will collapse too. Once it gets going, nothing can stop the collapse. The only questions are when and exactly how bad. The Republicans had better be prepared to take advantage of this certainty. We will be best off if it happens under the Biden regime, but we had better be prepared to survive when he declares Martial Law.
They will have to pack the Supreme Court first. As they will.
Washington and Lee hit an enviable point a few years ago when the endowment income displaced tuition as the primary source of operating revenue. The upside was the school could offer need-based scholarships to every kid who needed one. The downside–the college no longer needed to listen to the alumni and the leadership and faculty appointments since then have shown it. I will still attend the reunions but otherwise have no intention of sending W&L another dime.
WLU used to be such a great thing….now it is a disgrace and their student population has become more toxic to that town than anything.
I am so glad I turned down their offer for a visiting position when I wanted to move back to Virginia. They tend to use people badly in those roles anyway and have quite the reputation for it around the region.
Thousands of us feel the same way about our schools, colleges and universities. I’ll support he rowing program but that is it until they stop the insanity.