The Decline of My Alma Mater

by reopeningtheusmind

All the news coming from my alma mater these days upsets me. Over the past two years, we’ve had a complete overhaul of the administration, with a new Dean of Arts & Sciences, President, and Provost arriving. All three were hired to bring about big changes at the university, many of which pertained to diversity. The provost, the most recent hire, is the most egregious example. The President and Dean, whether they espoused radical ideas themselves or were merely fellow travelers (it remains to be seen, but the signals are mixed on both of them), were at least originally in the sciences by discipline. Therefore, they recognized the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate disciplines to an extent, and while they were willing to expand the course and major offerings in areas such as Africana studies, queer studies, and “critical studies,” they at least were concerned with protecting their own disciplines from the attacks of radical students. Sure, there were slip ups–for instance, after presenting his plan for emphasizing diversity in hiring at a meeting of the political science faculty, the president responded to a question about the role of excellence in teaching in this new system by saying that it didn’t matter–but overall, the President and Dean realized that these new fields could only be supported insofar as they did not substantially detract from more legitimate departments. However, the new Provost, David Harris, a sociologist by training, appears to be much more radical so far. I’ll outline some of the changes below.

To start, the Provost’s previous position entailed being the director of the Africana studies department at Cornell–perhaps the most frightening Africana studies department of all. To start, it had its origins in the Willard Straight Hall takeover, when radical students armed with guns took over the Cornell student center that was doubling as a hotel for parents during Cornell’s parents’ weekend. After a long standoff, the Africana Studies department was established. For years, the Africana Studies and Research Center was autonomous, not a part of the College of Arts & Sciences, and reporting directly to the provost. In 2011, it was merged into the College of Arts & Sciences, giving it more resources, but also more supervision. This was met with protests, by people who did not want “to be forced to go into buildings with pictures of people who do not look like me.” The director resigned to protest; David Harris stepped in to be the interim director. While he was more cooperative with the administration than his predecessor, he is still tainted with this mess, and should have been more closely scrutinized.

This picture of armed students outside Willard Straight Hall, under the title “Universities Under The Gun,” won Newsweek a Pulitzer Prize

Second, Harris is himself one of the worst offenders of the politicization of education. By his own admission, “[I] realized there was something called ‘social policy’ that you could major in and have a career. I had no idea. I found who I wanted to be, and I’ve been doing social policy work ever since.” The entirety of his scholarship has been scholar-activism. Someone who views education this way can’t help but politicize disciplines that have nothing to do with politics whatsoever. This corrupts the disciplines, imposes an unnecessary and sometimes nonsensical structure on them, and causes people to examine the political views and race/gender/etc. of proponents rather than the validity or importance of ideas or theories themselves.

Finally, what is most troubling for the fate of my alma mater is that the two mere fellow-travelers in the administration are scientists. As Allan Bloom noted, scientists believe that their disciplines are immune to the assaults of radicals, since their disciplines are so clearly fact-based. The scientists, therefore, go along with the radicals, so long as they confine their silly views to the humanities. Bloom remarks:

“Because the student movements were so untheoretical, the natural sciences were not a target, as they had once been in high-grade fascism and communism. There were no Lenins thundering against positivism, relativity, or genetics, no Goebbels alert to the falseness of Jewish science. There had been the beginnings of an offensive against the scientists’ collaboration with the military-industrial complex, as well as their role in producing the technology that abets capitalism and pollutes the environment. But none of this went to the heart of the serious scientists’ research. They were able to avoid the fury by distancing themselves from certain unpopular applications of their knowledge, by insulting the government which supported them, and by declaring themselves for peace and justice. Here too the great Cornell physicist has, predictably, distinguished himself by making a habit of apologizing for physics’ hand in producing thermonuclear weapons. But these scientists were not asked to change one thing in their studies, their classes or their laboratories. So they opted out.”–The Closing of the American Mind, p. 348

However, the scientists did not realize the consequences of their actions. Since the radicals subscribed to a philosophy that denied objective truth, science was within their sights too. The belief in national or ethnic forms of knowledge (not unlike the Völkisch conception of knowledge in German universities prior to World War II) led to attacks on the perceived ethnocentrism of the sciences. Instead of focusing on true, modern, accurate, and up to date science, the radicals want to impose rules that the sciences should emphasize the contributions of certain ethnic groups, to combat the prevalence of “white” or “Eurocentric” science. To truly defend themselves from such attacks, natural scientists should have concerned themselves with what was occurring in the social sciences and humanities. However, they were silent then, and remain silent today. If my alma mater’s administrators maintain similar silence towards the radicals, the university is doomed.