The response on college campuses and social media to Hamas’ massacre in Israel laid bare the stunning ignorance and absence of moral sense among American students. No, Israel does not “occupy” Gaza. No, there is no recognized “right of return” for 5 million Palestinians. And even there were such an occupation or right of return, Hamas’ crimes against humanity, including rape, torture, and beheadings, would not be defensible.
How did American students become so ignorant? How did they lose their moral compass?
The most plausible explanation is that their education has failed them. Peter Berkowitz shows that this is, indeed, the explanation.
The virus is multicultural in the form preached on American campuses. Berkowitz states:
In recent decades, the several offshoots of multiculturalism spawned at our universities have further stoked resentment, poisoned moral judgment, and inculcated self-righteousness. Identity politics replaces individual rights with group demands. Intersectionality stresses the “interconnected,” “overlapping,” and “interdependent” forms of discrimination suffered by minorities and women. The diversity, equity, and inclusion industry instructs citizens to view each other primarily through the lens of race, ethnicity, and gender rather than that of individual character and shared humanity.
The resolute focus on grievance has had baleful consequences. By conceiving of Israel as a prime example of the settler colonialism that must be overcome, the multicultural mindset fuels antisemitism. But multiculturalism’s impact extends far beyond that sordid alliance. If one wanted to infiltrate the bastions of higher education and depreciate human rights, sow discord, and engineer a return to tribalism, it’s hard to imagine where one would depart from multicultural orthodoxy.
If group demands trump individual rights and if, therefore, group grievances must be remedied without regard to human rights, then it becomes possible for poorly educated Americans to justify Hamas’ slaughter in their weak minds. And if America is racist, colonialist, and generally rotten — as so many professors preach — then our staunch ally in the Middle East deserves all the more whatever horrors terrorists inflict on it.
Having indicted multiculturalism as taught at our colleges and universities, Berkowitz ends his article with this plea:
To reclaim human rights, foster comity among citizens, and restore appreciation of the public interest, it is vital to reform our colleges and universities. Institutions of higher education erode the public interest by promulgating an intolerant and anti-pluralist creed under the rubric of multiculturalism while providing outposts for propagandists of barbarism. Instead, America’s colleges and universities should cultivate free minds by preserving and transmitting the traditions of free individuals and free peoples.
But how do we get there from here? How do we reform our colleges and universities so that they cultivate free minds by preserving and transmitting the traditions of free individuals and free peoples?
Because our colleges and universities won’t reform themselves, and because they have been almost entirely immune to outside pressure, the problem seems intractable. As Stanley Kurtz states:
It has seemed next to impossible to remedy th[e] situation. Insulated from outside influence by academic freedom, illiberal academics abused the tenure system to entrench a political and intellectual monopoly. Protections designed to nurture a marketplace of ideas have been converted into bulwarks of orthodoxy. How can we break this monopoly without destroying the very principles of freedom that we hope to restore?
The answer, Stanley says, lies with state legislatures. But state legislatures can’t remedy the situation reactively — that is, by responding intermittently to abuses and then returning to normal legislative functions. Nor can they exercise permanent supervision over institutions of higher learning.
Therefore, they need to establish a permanent structure within colleges and universities that bypasses the existing bureaucracy and professoriate. Such a structure, if it can be established legislatively, will bring about the necessary reform without continuous legislative supervision.
This is what Stanley, working with Jenna Robinson of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and David Randall of the National Association of Scholars, has proposed through model legislation.
That remarkably ambitious model legislation will be the subject of my next post, but you can take a sneak peak at the proposal here. Stanley’s discussion of it is here.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 