Universities have a long way to go to return to their mission
Public trust in our universities is lower than it’s ever been, with 32 percent of Americans having "very little to no confidence" in higher education. That’s up from 20 percent before October 7, 2023, when the higher-ed crisis was thrust into the national discourse by virulent pro-Hamas protests and encampments. It’s amazing that the heart of antisemitism in America lies on campus, among the most educated and so-called progressive people in the country.
As Bill Ackman put it in a revelatory essay the day Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned, antisemitism is the "canary in the coal mine," a warning about larger issues. It’s a leading indicator of underlying pathologies, which here means everything from cancel culture to ideological indoctrination, intellectual corruption to moral decay. We’ve seen a subversion of the core mission of universities to seek truth and knowledge, and of classical-liberal values like free speech, due process, and equality under the law. It’s been a shift from education to activism.
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Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute.
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