Sunday, November 5, 2023

Ivy League Schools Favoring Leftist Causes at the Expense of Honest Intellectual Discourse

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

Much of academia has, of late, become openly hostile to America, Americans, and the American way of life. This comes as no surprise to anyone who has been conscious and not living in an isolated cabin in the Uncompahgre Wilderness for the last thirty years.

Princeton University, however, seems determined to take things to the next level. The Manhattan Institute's Joshua T. Katz, a former faculty member at Princeton, is calling out the university for their blatant double standards, and he has the receipts.

On October 22, however, the Daily Princetonian published “An open letter from Princeton faculty and students in solidarity with Gaza.” This new letter has so far received 664 signatures from people with Princeton affiliations, 69 of them university employees.

Because this letter was not published in the heat of some traumatic moment, instead appearing more than two weeks after the surprise Hamas attacks on Israel, there is little chance anyone signed it without understanding what’s at stake. The fact that it must have been produced with “care” makes its contents especially horrible: far worse, in my view, than the knee-jerk reaction of a bunch of college kids.

Joshua T. Katz, it should be noted, had his tenure revoked and his employment at Princeton terminated because of his temerity in writing a criticism of student demands for more "anti-racism" discussion and creation of a faculty committee to police “racist behaviors.” Because Princeton has nothing better to do.

It's been apparent for decades that the university system has been captured by the Left, but in recent years many university students and faculty have gone completely off the rails, even to the point where a group of Harvard law professors, people who really ought to know better, called upon President Biden to openly defy the Supreme Court.

Interestingly enough, that's not cause for firing at Harvard, even though said advocacy in any other quarter should be cause for pointing and laughing.

Meanwhile, Princeton has gone down the road of actually advocating for terrorists.

Responding to the open letter of July 2020 led, undeniably, to the highly unusual revocation of my tenure. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that even as sizable crowds in prominent spaces on campus chant “long live the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” no Princeton faculty member has publicly called out those who signed the new letter “in solidarity with Gaza.” Not surprising, but very sad.

These people, these skulls full of mush who are repeating the "from the river to the sea" chant, are the ones advocating for genocide. They are supporting the cause of people who rape young women to death and behead babies. The proper response from Princeton would be to fire/expel anyone who signed this letter "in solidarity with Gaza," but the Ivy League rarely does what it ought to do these days. Sadly, Princeton isn't the only school where people are this stupid.

The purpose - the sole purpose - of academia is to produce young adults with marketable skills. The Ivy League schools no longer seem to have this as a priority. It's time to yank any government funding, including any and all grants and loans to their students until they change their ways and get back to the serious business of education. Even better would be the complete and utter withdrawal of any and all government control of or funding for education and letting the university system sink or swim in the marketplace.

Oh, for the good old days, when college was worthwhile.