Radical progressivism is a church, crude and brutal, rigid and dogmatic, reactionary and totalitarian, reminiscent of the early Christians and contemporary Islamists. Which is why they support Hamas.
The animating spirit is already gone and is not likely to come back any time soon.
Claudine Gray and what she represents started becoming entrenched in university life in the 1990s. Before that, there had been Boomers as *students*, but not running these places. That started after 1990, when another Boomer, Bill Clinton, became president. In the 80s, as I remember, some of these slogans and ideas were around, but were quite marginal.
The key sign of this was the explosion of administrative bureaucracy, which began around the time of the 1990 recession. At the same, tuition began its gallup, outpacing household income and almost every other cost in the economy. It's the ballooning bureaucracy that is the main driver of the grotesquely inflated cost structure of academia today. (The other is the cost of buildings and facilities, but that's for another day.)
Each decade has featured its special theme. In the 1990s, it was speech codes and sexual harassment, which even then, were often used in questionable ways to target unpopular persons and groups. In the 2000s, the themes were "student services" and "student conduct," leading to star chamber and probably illegal disciplinary proceedings against students and faculty, the basic idea being that universities had the right to set themselves up as quasi-police and quasi-judicial authorities -- which in fact, they do not. The last decade, the 2010s, climaxed with the rise of DEI as an ideology and a bureaucracy.
Each decade has laid down a new layer, DEI being just the latest. First point of business: academia has to slash administration back to where it was in the early 1990s, when American colleges and universities actually were the best in world, rather than just imagining that they were.
I feel exactly the same way, Claire. Though the University of Notre Dame hasn't exhibited the acute symptoms of decay manifested in the Iny League, I shudder to think what I might find if I paid a visit to the Department of History now. Even in 1984 (yeah, I know), when I received my M.A., the early signs of postmodernism were there—though I didn't know the word back then. The kind of history that interests me was on the way out, which is why I decided that a Ph.D. would be a poor investment. And now it's come to this. But maybe we've hit peak po-mo.
I'm not sure that's true. It's definitely what many of the big donors have come to want, a perfect representative of a conformist, politicized bureaucracy of groupthink and diffused responsibility (the buck stops nowhere, really).
Radical progressivism is a church, crude and brutal, rigid and dogmatic, reactionary and totalitarian, reminiscent of the early Christians and contemporary Islamists. Which is why they support Hamas.
The animating spirit is already gone and is not likely to come back any time soon.
Claudine Gray and what she represents started becoming entrenched in university life in the 1990s. Before that, there had been Boomers as *students*, but not running these places. That started after 1990, when another Boomer, Bill Clinton, became president. In the 80s, as I remember, some of these slogans and ideas were around, but were quite marginal.
The key sign of this was the explosion of administrative bureaucracy, which began around the time of the 1990 recession. At the same, tuition began its gallup, outpacing household income and almost every other cost in the economy. It's the ballooning bureaucracy that is the main driver of the grotesquely inflated cost structure of academia today. (The other is the cost of buildings and facilities, but that's for another day.)
Each decade has featured its special theme. In the 1990s, it was speech codes and sexual harassment, which even then, were often used in questionable ways to target unpopular persons and groups. In the 2000s, the themes were "student services" and "student conduct," leading to star chamber and probably illegal disciplinary proceedings against students and faculty, the basic idea being that universities had the right to set themselves up as quasi-police and quasi-judicial authorities -- which in fact, they do not. The last decade, the 2010s, climaxed with the rise of DEI as an ideology and a bureaucracy.
Each decade has laid down a new layer, DEI being just the latest. First point of business: academia has to slash administration back to where it was in the early 1990s, when American colleges and universities actually were the best in world, rather than just imagining that they were.
Beautifully written. What a tragedy to see what's become of the universities that gave me so much.
I feel exactly the same way, Claire. Though the University of Notre Dame hasn't exhibited the acute symptoms of decay manifested in the Iny League, I shudder to think what I might find if I paid a visit to the Department of History now. Even in 1984 (yeah, I know), when I received my M.A., the early signs of postmodernism were there—though I didn't know the word back then. The kind of history that interests me was on the way out, which is why I decided that a Ph.D. would be a poor investment. And now it's come to this. But maybe we've hit peak po-mo.
The problem isn't that Gay is the president that Harvard wants.
The problem is that Gay is the sort of administrator that 35-40% of the country wants.
A significant percentage of the country is committed to politically correct mediocrity.
I'm not sure that's true. It's definitely what many of the big donors have come to want, a perfect representative of a conformist, politicized bureaucracy of groupthink and diffused responsibility (the buck stops nowhere, really).