Penn 2.0 overcomes in one stroke a weakness bedeviling a central strategy of campus reform. Those seeking to create new universities face the challenge that no new institution can offer the prize that a legacy university confers: status and bragging rights. It is prestige that drives the ever-more frenzied torrent of college applications, rather than any promise of knowledge. The beauty of the Penn 2.0 plan is that it re-founds Penn on a new footing, while maintaining Penn’s prestige-granting power.
Were Penn 2.0 to become part of the presidential hiring search, it would be clarifying to see how many university apparatchiks demurred from its principles. …
For now, the campus Left is sitting on its hands and staying silent as its core beliefs are reviled by campus administrators and by the Democratic Party establishment. But it is hard to imagine such self-discipline lasting. And when that self-control finally breaks down, the results will be enthralling to watch.
[Mac Donald posits the same issue with Academia that Adam Baldwin and I have talked about a number of times on our Amiable Skeptics shows: It wants to destroy Western civilization. (We discuss it again in Monday’s episode, and maybe we’ll take Mac Donald’s essay up in our next set.) The problem with Penn 2.0 is that the Campus Left is probably too strong, especially financially, for Penn 2.0 to survive the crib. An alumni revolt will help, but the only way to cripple them is to cut off all the federal funding that supports the administrative state at Academia. We need an Aragorn Moment. — Ed]
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