So what’s to blame for this sad state of affairs? Competition from the private sector? Budget-slashing politicians? Students who are just too dumb to know what’s good for them?
No. The main culprit is the institutions themselves, individually and collectively. As Obi-Wan Kenobi told Annakin Skywalker, when the young Jedi blamed his former mentor for the loss of his beloved Princess Padme, “You have done that yourself.”
Colleges and universities have driven away students, and are on the verge of making themselves irrelevant, because they have abandoned their core mission of pursuing and disseminating truth. Instead, they insist reality is both subjective and malleable and objective truth does not exist.
It’s as if the American Dental Association suddenly announced that tooth decay is no longer a thing, thereby repudiating its own raison d’etre. How long would the profession survive?
[This is a good point about the corrosive nature of ‘narratives’ and moral relativism. Jenkins, himself a tenured professor, ties this to the eruptions of anti-Semitic rallies and worse on college campuses this week, but this has been coming on a long time. — Ed]
Join the Conversation
VIP members get the ability to comment on articles.