ACADEMIA HITTING A NEW LOW?

Even the academy is not immune to a self consumed agenda. Thomas Lifson of American Thinker posts his take on the sad state of affairs entrenched within the halls of our great institutions of higher learning:

I used to wonder how German universities, among the most distinguished in the world back then, fell into lockstep behind Hitler. How could the supposedly the best minds allow that?

I wonder no longer. The signs are very discouraging, and it isn't the outlier marginal campuses where the problem is greatest. Not just the University of California and Duke. Harvard, fresh off the disgrace of hounding Lawrence Summers from its presidency, is embracing the madness. Scott Johnson of Powerline writes today:

At Harvard, President Drew Gilpin Faust is proving herself to be immune to concerns about intellectual standards or racial discrimination. Indeed, she seeks "a different Harvard" -- one with so many black professors and staff that it could fill Harvard's stadium.

Read for yourself the sort of faculty enjoying President Faust's embrace, and follow the links provided by Scott.

I devoted more than two decades of my life to a career in academia, the majority of that time at Harvard. I am quite simply nauseated at the level of anti-intellectualism rampant at America's most elite academic institutions. Harvard, with its age, prestige, and $35 billion endowment is leading the academy into a vortex.

The barbarians are not just at the gates or even inside the gates, they are in command.

The academy tends to provide the philosophical animus behind a nation's social actions. In my opinion, solutions my lie in creating scholarships for the best and brightest young conservatives with the hope of their returning as faculty members, particularly targeting the departments of history and humanities. Perhaps too, a more concerted effort to establish conservative chairs within these liberal institutions would provide a fair and balanced curriculum. I may, however, be engaging in nothing more than a naive idealism here. Just a thought, that's all.