{"id":1441749,"date":"2023-12-02T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-02T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1441749"},"modified":"2023-12-02T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T08:00:00","slug":"campus-dysfunction-easy-to-recognize-difficult-to-cure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/campus-dysfunction-easy-to-recognize-difficult-to-cure\/1441749\/","title":{"rendered":"Campus Dysfunction Easy To Recognize, Difficult To Cure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Campus Dysfunction Easy To Recognize, Difficult To Cure<\/span><\/p>\n

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Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClear Wire<\/a>,<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Machiavelli observes in \u201cThe Prince\u201d that politics presents challenges akin to those physicians sometimes face: \u201c\u2026 in the beginning of the illness it is easy to cure and difficult to recognize, but in the progress of time, when it has not been recognized and treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to recognize and difficult to cure.\u201d<\/strong> So too for higher education in America: At this late date, our universities\u2019 dysfunction \u2013 and the damage to the nation it has wrought \u2013 has become easy to recognize, but curing the dysfunction has become difficult.<\/p>\n

The Hamas jihadists\u2019 Oct. 7 atrocities in southern Israel may have provoked a watershed moment for higher education in America. Student and faculty expressions of solidarity with the mass murderers, university administrators\u2019 initial confusion and missteps, and the eruption of antisemitism on campus compelled many who have long averted their eyes to confront our universities\u2019 role in fanning the flames of division and discord. However, since most university administrators, professors, wealthy donors, left-of-center commentators, and politicians of both parties have allowed the dysfunction to progress for decades without calling higher education to account or warning the public,<\/strong> only dramatic and costly interventions<\/a> provide hope at this point of remedying the cluster of pathologies ravaging America\u2019s universities.<\/p>\n

Evidence that it is now permissible to speak in polite society about the dire state of our universities comes from the New York Times opinion page. Since Oct. 7, the Times has published several pieces declaring that our universities have gone badly astray and proposing measures to repair them.<\/p>\n

These opinions are welcome, but tardy by several decades. <\/strong>They fail to identify the chief problem. They ignore the principal obstacles to reform. They propose reforms that provide the equivalent of band-aids for gaping wounds and shattered limbs. And they overlook the mainstream media\u2019s complicity in largely ignoring, downplaying, or dismissing repeated warnings extending back a quarter century and more \u2013 largely, but not exclusively, from conservatives \u2013 that our universities undermine the public interest<\/a> by attacking free speech, eviscerating due process, and hollowing out and politicizing the curriculum.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 16, in \u201cThe Moral Deficiencies of a Liberal Education<\/a>,\u201d Ezekiel Emanuel proclaimed, \u201cWe have failed.<\/strong>\u201d As vice provost for global initiatives and professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, Emanuel sees the failure as personal and professional: The transformation of our universities into boot camps for inculcating progressive opinions about social justice and disdain for other views proceeded under his watch.<\/p>\n

Students blaming Israel for Hamas\u2019 massacres and praising the terrorists \u201chave revealed their moral obliviousness and the deficiency of their educations,<\/strong>\u201d<\/strong> stated Emanuel. \u201cBut the deeper problem is not them. It is <\/span>what they are being taught \u2013 or, more specifically, what they are not being taught.\u201d Universities \u201chave failed to give them the ethical foundation and moral compass to recognize the basics of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

A bioethicist, Emanuel calls for a two-course ethics requirement, and, more generally, the restoration of a curriculum built around required courses (he doesn\u2019t say which ones). Professors must cease their widespread dereliction of duty, he adds, which consists in refraining from challenging students\u2019 opinions for fear of discomfiting or offending them. The aim is to rebuild undergraduate education \u201caround honing critical thinking skills and moral and logical reasoning so students can emerge as engaged citizens.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Emanuel\u2019s measures move in the right direction but are inadequate to the challenge because they overlook how a proper liberal education itself furnishes and refines minds and provides an ethical foundation and moral compass. The center of liberal education in America must consist in the study of the principles of freedom \u2013 moral, economic, and political \u2013 on which the nation is based and the constitutional structure and virtues of mind and character through which they are institutionalized and preserved. Since those principles and virtues have a history, the broader Western civilization of which they are a part must also be studied. And since Western civilization revolves around the tension between individuality and our shared humanity, liberal education includes study of other civilizations.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Nov. 8, in \u201cHow Are Students Expected to Live Like this on Campus<\/a>es?<\/span>\u201d New York Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman observed that the numerous instances \u201cof abhorrent speech by students and faculty members, mostly aimed at Israel, Jews and even Jewish students\u201d raised pressing questions of free speech. \u201cHow should a university respond,\u201d asked Wegman, \u201cwhen members of its community express sentiments that are at odds with the values the school is trying to inculcate, not to mention with human decency?\u201d His answer was good insofar as it goes. \u201cSpeech should be presumptively allowed, as a basic principle of free inquiry and academic debate,\u201d he asserted, while drawing the line at expression that concretely threatens, harasses, or incites to violence.<\/p>\n

But are university administrators and faculty members disposed to vindicate free speech? <\/strong>Are they competent to draw the necessary lines? Are they prepared to face the mob? Wegman skirts these questions.<\/p>\n

He acknowledges that universities have eroded free speech on campus, not least by instituting speech codes and by affirming campus orthodoxies on controversial political questions. His principal recommendation is mandatory free-speech training for first-year students to build \u201ca culture of basic respect and listening.\u201d But who will educate the educators?<\/p>\n

Having undermined respect for others and the art of listening by presiding over \u2013 or silently acquiescing in \u2013 the curtailment of dissenting speech for more than a generation, the current crop of administrators and professors seems ill-suited to fashion and implement free-speech training. Moreover, free speech is best learned not by didactic lectures and seminars but by practicing it in the reasoned consideration of competing ideas with those capable of challenging one\u2019s assumptions and arguments. But where are the professors who can lead such conversations? Which faculty members remain capable of understanding their side of the argument because they understand the other side?<\/p>\n

On Nov. 16, in \u201cUniversities are Failing at Inclusion<\/a>,\u201d Times columnist David Brooks also took grim, post-Oct. 7 realities as his point of departure: \u201cJewish students on America\u2019s campuses have found themselves confronted with those who celebrate a terrorist operation that featured the mass murder and reportedly the rape of fellow Jews.\u201d Brooks blamed higher education for betraying its mission. \u201cUniversities are supposed to be centers of inquiry and curiosity \u2013 places where people are tolerant of difference and learn about other points of view,\u201d he wrote. \u201cInstead, too many have become brutalizing ideological war zones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow on earth did this happen?\u201d<\/strong> asked Brooks, who mentioned that he has \u201cbeen teaching on college campuses off and on for 25 years.\u201d He faulted \u201c<\/span>a hard-edged ideological framework that has been spreading in high school and college, on social media, in diversity training seminars and in popular culture.\u201d Although he said the framework lacks a name, it reflects a <\/strong><\/span>postmodern progressivism<\/a><\/strong>. It holds that group identity is more important than shared humanity<\/strong>; the fundamental social and political distinction is between oppressors and oppressed; a person in one group cannot understand a person in another; racism and bigotry are endemic to America; principles of freedom \u2013 free speech, due process, meritocracy \u2013 are tools of oppression; and affirming these dogmas of postmodern progressivism takes precedence over acquiring knowledge and developing intellectual independence and integrity. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is not feasible, Brooks argued, to jettison the deeply entrenched <\/span>campus diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies<\/a> that divide people into racial and ethnic groups, give preferential treatment based on group membership, and exclude dissenting views. Instead, he advocated the teaching of true diversity grounded in the remarkable achievements of American pluralism. To help students understand that they \u201c<\/span>live in one of the most diverse societies in history\u201d and prepare them to cooperate with others from different backgrounds and with alternative perspectives, courses should \u201ce<\/span>xplore diversity, identity and history from a pluralistic framework\u201d and assign \u201ca range of books on the social and moral skills you need to see people across difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brooks rightly espouses study of diversity in America and the means of preserving and enriching it, but he makes the same mistake as Emanuel and Wegman. All three suppose that special classes \u2013 on moral reasoning, free speech, and diversity \u2013 will provide an antidote to our universities\u2019 ills.<\/p>\n

Liberal education is itself the best means available for cultivating toleration and civility, virtues conspicuously lacking on campus but essential to freedom and democracy. The sciences and the social sciences mustn\u2019t be neglected<\/strong>. But serious study of literature, history, and philosophy \u2013 at once questioning and rigorous, patient and probing, and determined to understand before criticizing or extolling \u2013 provides an incomparable tutorial in the complexities and continuities of morality and politics, the competing conceptions of the good life, and the basic rights and fundamental freedoms that are inseparable from human dignity.<\/p>\n

That campus dysfunction is now easy to recognize but difficult to cure does not revoke the obligation to do what is in our power to repair America\u2019s colleges and universities by providing students with the liberal education they need and deserve.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com<\/a> and he can be followed on Twitter @BerkowitzPeter.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 12\/01\/2023 – 22:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/campus-dysfunction-easy-recognize-difficult-cure<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Campus Dysfunction Easy To Recognize, Difficult To Cure Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClear Wire, Machiavelli observes in \u201cThe Prince\u201d that politics presents challenges akin…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1441749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-6341","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1441749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1441749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1441749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1441749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}