Victor Davis Hanson devotes his latest National Review Online column to longstanding problems plaguing higher education in the United States.
What do campus microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes, and censorship have to do with higher learning?
American universities want it both ways. They expect unquestioned subsidized support from the public, but also to operate in a way impossible for anyone else.
Colleges still wear the ancient clothes of higher learning. Latin mottos, caps and gowns, ivy-covered spires, and high talk of liberal education reflect a hallowed intellectual tradition.
In fact, today’s campuses mimic ideological boot camps. Tenured professors seek to indoctrinate young people in certain preconceived progressive political agendas. Environmental-studies classes are not very open to debating the “settled science” of man-caused, carbon-induced global warming – or the need for immediate and massive government intervention to address it. Grade-conscious and indebted students make the necessary ideological adjustments.
