Reforming Academia in 2016

By Ben Voth

Even President Barack Obama recently lamented the declining state of affairs on America’s college campuses. Essentially, a doctrinaire sense of victimology has descended upon campuses such that free speech, critical thinking, and debate are all but abolished in favor of “Safe spaces.” The complaints are extensive and well-founded. Allan Bloom’s concern in the 1980s about the “Closing of the American Mind” is profound, real, and upon us at today’s university campuses. What is not often discussed is what should be done to reverse this crisis and to begin anew the opening of the American mind.

What exactly is wrong?

Since the 1960s, an Alinsky-styled, Jacobin fueled movement that recognizes that power truly emanates from those centers that disseminate knowledge, has worked to gain control of places like American universities......In their essential view, there is one profound evil in the world -- the conventional America. All of our traditions, all of our economic and cultural practices, and religious faiths, are code words for direct suppression and oppression of minorities they define and manipulate through the terminologies of academia. It is difficult to complete sentences in front of these academic radicals who have made a profession of taking offense.....
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