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How Not to Fix Higher Education

How Not to Fix Higher Education

Last updated on: December 21, 2023 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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How Not to Fix Higher Education 2023-12-17T12:55:21-05:00 Gene Veith

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As universities double down on their antisemitism–claiming that the “rich” donors, a class almost despised as Jews, are trying to control their schools–an idea is being floated. As Andrew Sullivan reports in his essay The Day the Empress’ Clothes Fell Off,

The absolute worst thing you can do right now is what the presidents of these woke institutions now say they intend to do: switch Jews out of the “oppressor class” and into the “oppressed one,” and re-apply all the DEI discrimination on their behalf.

Think about that! As Sullivan says, “That doesn’t solve the problem; it compounds it.”

He explains why Jews can never be accepted into the intersectionality club.

The new anti-Semitism is simply a subsidiary of the entire rubric of “anti-Whiteness” that is taught as the supreme principle of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” DEI does not mean and has never meant diversity, equity and inclusion for all. It means active support for the “oppressed” against the “oppressors.” It means challenging “whiteness,” as represented by individual white people.

Jews are classified as whites. And the old stereotypes about Jews are now applied to whites in general. “There’s the same envy and resentment of an all-controlling racial group that is deemed not inferior (as in anti-black racism), but superior — by underhanded, shifty, rigged means.”

If a member of an oppressor class says something edgy, it is a form of violence. If a member of an oppressed class commits actual violence, it’s speech. That’s why many Harvard students instantly supported a fundamentalist terror cult that killed, tortured, systematically raped and kidnapped Jews just for being Jews in their own country. Because they have been taught it’s the only moral position to take.

Sullivan recounts a host of examples of the new racism on elite campuses (segregated dorms, segregated graduation ceremonies) and the suppression of alternative points of view (firing faculty for saying there are only two sexes; assaulting supporters of Israel).

“These are not double standards,” says Sullivan. “There is a single standard: It is fine to malign, abuse and denigrate ‘oppressors’ and forbidden to do so against the ‘oppressed.’”

Here is how Sullivan thinks the problem should be dealt with:

Pro-Palestinian, and anti-Israel speech should no more be censored than any other — and the suppression is real. There should be one standard and it should be free speech. But there can be no free speech and no guarantee of it until the toxins of critical theory, and the architecture of its enforcement, DEI, are excised from the university altogether.”

End DEI in its entirety. Fire all the administrators whose only job is to enforce its toxic orthodoxy. Admit students on academic merit alone. Save standardized testing — which in fact helps minorities, and it’s “the best way to distinguish smart poor kids from stupid rich kids,” as Steven Pinker said this week. Restore grading so that it actually means something again. Expel students who shut or shout down speech or deplatform speakers. Pay no attention to the race or sex or orientation or gender identity of your students, and see them as free human beings with open minds. Treat them equally as individuals seeking to learn, if you can remember such a concept.

Photo: Quinn Dombrowski from Berkeley, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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