The last few weeks have awakened donors to the rising intolerance and extremism on our faculties. Some donors have even pulled funding, including $100 million withdrawn from the University of Pennsylvania.
Donors (and state legislatures with state-funded schools) can use their leverage to force greater diversity of thought on our campuses. The problem is not that we have these radical faculty members. The problem is that we have comparably few faculty with opposing views. The diversity of opinion on most faculties runs from the left to the far left. Some faculty members now argue that intellectual diversity is not a core or essential value in academia.
If donors want to open up our campuses, they may need to close their wallets until real reforms are implemented in higher education.
[Those aren’t the dollars that matter. We need to end the federal subsidies for Academia across the board, including student loans, Pell grants, research dollars, the whole gamut. Colleges and universities existed before these money streams incentivized a vast administrative caste and subsidized the radicalization of these institutions. Let them sell their services in a market with full pricing signals and see how many people want to spent $80K a year in cash up front to attend a Poison Ivy. — Ed]
Join the conversation as a VIP Member