Are Elite Universities Doomed? | Power Line

They may be if they don’t change their ways, Victor Davis Hanson argues. He recites the familiar litany of how such universities have veered radically to the left, adopting DEI, gender, and anti-Semitic theories and practices that represent distinctly minority views. He then describes the hammers being wielded by the Trump administration:

[T]here was bound to be a public reckoning. And now it has arrived.

Congress will soon pass legislation that will tax the annual multimillion-dollar income from multibillion-dollar endowments at somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.

There will be no more “overhead” or “surcharges” on government campus grants allowed larger than 15 percent.

Those two reforms alone could cost some of the richest campuses nearly a half billion dollars a year in lost income.

Racially offensive DEI programs will disqualify schools from federal support.

Foreign student guests who break U.S. laws or violate university rules will have their visas yanked and be shown the door to go home.

Campuses will have to abide by the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments of the Bill of Rights or forgo federal funds.

All these remedies enjoy broad public support.

True, I think.

For the first time in memory, a majority of Americans disapprove of current higher education. Only ten percent of Americans believe an Ivy League degree translates into becoming a better American worker.

In a nation of declining fertility, smaller numbers of youths choosing college, and a federal government $36 trillion in debt, universities have very little leverage.

They can return to the original mission of offering rigorous, meritocratic, and disinterested education, guarantee constitutional protections for all on campus, and slash their vast administrative bloat.

Or if not, they are free to continue as they are, ensuring only further mediocrity, public dislike—and eventual irrelevancy.

It is an optimistic picture–too optimistic, perhaps. I think we are seeing, in a number of arenas, that leftists are doubling down on their ideology. They have no intention of acceding to the will of the majority of Americans; certainly not on the basis of a single election cycle. Or probably several: remember how first Ronald Reagan and then George H.W. Bush won three landslide elections in a row. Leftists didn’t change their ideas or their ways; some of them laid low for a few years, but the Left soon rebounded in a more extreme, and more powerful, version than ever.

As far as elite universities are concerned, another factor is at work. Their entire identity is bound up with considering themselves to be smarter than other Americans. That inherently inclines them to adopt minority views.

If you think America is a pretty terrific place, and men and women are different in ways that people have understood for thousands of years, and a productive society like Israel’s is better than a sick, terrorist society like Gaza’s, and people should be able to say pretty much whatever they think, and we ought to be grateful to the police for protecting us from criminals, and so on, then how are you any different from the average guy? How are you manifesting your superior intellect?

Of course, you might do this by mastering difficult technical skills or by a deep knowledge of history, literature or philosophy, but those paths are chosen by only a few. Nowadays, students can get As as long as they remember to show up for the tests. A sense of superiority is easily obtained, but it requires adherence to views that are different from those of the masses.

So I think the elite universities will be a tough nut to crack. And they have enough money to hold out for a very long time.