It was already clear long before Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was shouted down at Stanford Law School in March that institutions of higher learning have become far-left monocultures in which ideological imperiousness increasingly supplants the truth-seeking and free exchange of ideas long deemed essential to education. Recall that the abuse of Judge Duncan included vulgarities from students who in another setting—say, the eighth grade—would know they could never get away with. But students at one of the world’s greatest universities considered themselves above such accountability. In a truly farcical scene, they were enabled by the rambling remarks of Stanford’s associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) vilifying Duncan.
The law school’s dean later apologized, but nearly a third of the students at the school protested the dean for apologizing. The entire outrage prompted me to ask whether law schools are a training ground for bad conduct.
Two months after Hamas launched its vile attack on innocent Israelis, the reactions on so many campuses exposed how universities are plagued not only by intolerance of views that differ from the monoculture, but also how morally bankrupt the institutions are. Harvard, where I attended law school, has persecuted faculty members for saying there are two sexes and for signing an amicus brief in Obergefell v. Hodges that favored leaving the definition of marriage to the states. Using the wrong pronouns is deemed abuse in the university’s Title IX training.
Yet at Harvard and elsewhere, university administrators who rail against any number of “microaggressions” that offend those they favor found themselves tongue-tied in the face of Hamas’ sadistic torture, rape, and mutilation of their victims, 1,200 of whom they murdered. Numerous student groups exculpated the genocidal terrorists, blaming the violence on Israel, and antisemitic demonstrations on campus were so intense that they left Jewish students afraid to leave their dorms or go to class. This happened at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT. The presidents of all three universities put their free-speech double standard on display testifying before the House with their equivocation in response to what should have been considered a softball question by Rep. Elise Stefanik—whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates the university’s code of conduct or rules against bullying and harassment.
Penn’s president, Liz Magill, has been ousted. Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, has been supported by a unanimous vote of the university’s board, despite—or perhaps in part because of—her own history of abetting cancel culture on campus. And she faces credible allegations of multiple instances of plagiarism in her scholarship to boot. This should be no surprise at a university ranked dead last at number 248 for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. It is the result of more than bureaucratic obstinacy or arrogance—though that was certainly evident in a letter signed by over 700 Harvard faculty defending Gay against those who would allow the university’s culture to “be dictated by outside forces.” It is the product of moral bankruptcy.
A change at the top is needed at all these universities. But the rot in these institutions runs so deep and has festered for so long that it will take more than that to cure it. There is much work to do, and the federal government is far from helpless in this matter. Ten of the nation’s top universities have alone received $33 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts and grants over the past five years, plus $12 billion in special tax breaks on their endowments. On top of that, failing to protect Jewish students against egregious harassment and discrimination that would not be tolerated if directed toward other groups exposes universities to liability under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI complaints along these lines have already been filed against New York University and Penn. Expect more lawsuits to follow against other universities. And all of this, remember, is on the heels of universities’ widespread violation of Title VI in the use of race in their admissions policies, a practice the Supreme Court rejected this past June. Students who have been harmed should press ahead, and citizens should demand that their representatives use their power of the purse to end this sorry state of affairs with sweeping change to the many universities that have betrayed their purpose.