University Blues

The Ivy League is running out of friends:

Prestigious universities have come to find adversaries in many worlds, among the working class, among rich alumni, among highly educated progressives who find them self-regarding. “Universities are good targets for resentment,” said Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University who has written about modern campus politics. “They take such enormous pride in how many people they reject. “We at universities have not done enough over the years to pay attention to those groups — conservative groups, religious groups — around the country that are essential parts of a democratic culture. The isolation makes us very vulnerable.”

But why is this happening?

Colleges don’t contribute as they once did to the creation of a common civilization with common cultural touchstones. Worse, they sometimes seem to contribute to the antithesis: students and faculty wedded to the idea that Western civilization is nothing except oppressive, colonialist, racist, exploitative and so on. That’s not only false, but it also invites the very reactionary tendencies we’re seeing with the Trump administration’s assault on the universities.

They should have expected the backlash...