The Enlightenment-inspired higher education that I encountered during my 1958-72 studies at Antioch College and the University of Chicago, and at McGill University for much of the time when I was a professor there beginning in 1968, was conceived as a quest for the truth. The means for this quest was an evidence and argument process in which questioning and debating evidence and inferences were meant to elicit the soundest, the nearest-to-reality understandings about the world.
But in the latter decades of the 20th century, the Enlightenment quest eroded and was superseded during the first decades of the 21st century by a new vision, which was labeled “social justice.” Setting aside the quest for truth through evidence and argument, “social justice” was a moralizing approach, asserting allegedly known moral truths that must be indoctrinated and implemented, and never questioned or challenged. The new “woke” university was devoted to changing society according to its new moral vision through internal structural changes at the university and outward-directed activism. No more ivory tower: into the streets, corporations, and governments they would spread “social justice” enlightenment.
This transformation of our universities began with the Women’s Movement of the late 1960s. Set free from the constraints of biology by the arrival of the birth control pill, women organized to free themselves, not unjustly, from the constraints of society by demanding “gender equality.” Nascent women’s studies programs were established by the demands of some in many universities. The Women’s Movement was conceptualized as a fight against “the Patriarchy,” thus introducing the neo-Marxist concept of class conflict between evil oppressor males and innocent victim females. Female college students were in some institutions urged not to date “the enemy,” but to commit to political lesbianism.
But it did not take long before the Women’s Movement morphed into the Feminist Movement, and “gender equality” morphed into a quest for female supremacy. This was justified by men being characterized as “toxic,” violent, and heterosexual relations, married or not, construed as “rape.” Feminist studies were conceived not just as an academic subject, but as a social movement to change society. Feminist studies were established in many universities, often through secondary appointments of female professors in sociology, anthropology, English, history, education, social work, etc. In this way, it infiltrated back into departments throughout the university.
Feminist studies, or its other labels, such as women’s studies and gender studies, were not really academic subjects in the Enlightenment sense. It did not seek to discover truth, because it presumed the truth that females were oppressed by the Patriarchy. Any allegedly “empirical” studies were simply instantiations of the general truth already known: women were queens who really ran things and provided all that was good in society, as well as brutally oppressed victims of evil males. Feminist studies is not an academic subject; it is a grievance conveyance. And it nursed the university away from an academic search for truth to an ideological movement for social justice and change.
Feminism provided a model for other grievance subjects that also were established in universities. Blacks and those who claimed to speak for them adopted the neo-Marxist class conflict model, pitting helpless black victims against their evil oppressors: white people. There is no shortage of grievance, so included with white people were successful minorities: Asians who were called “white adjacent” and Jews who were, for the first time, promoted to “white” and labeled “hyper-white.” Bunched with blacks were indigenous peoples and “people of color,” all together BIPOC.
Victimhood became a popular and prestigious designation, spawning more grievance subjects. Homosexuals struggled against social restrictions and legal sanctions, demanding equal rights and the cancellation of heteronormalcy. The membership of sexual deviancy expanded to include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, queer, two-spirit +++ in an almost unending lineup of victims. Queer studies became a popular university field.
The icing on the grievance cake was intersectionality, which granted multiple victimhood credits to those who could claim membership in two or more victim groups. Black lesbians, male gays with physical disabilities, and autistic females all get double credit as victims. Black trans with disabilities hits the trifecta.
All of the grievance movements came to fruition when “social justice” became the official policies of the United States and Canada. In the U.S., President Biden declared that America was systemically racist and that reverse racist and reverse sexist policies would be instituted throughout the government and all that it touches. In Canada, Prime Minister Trudeau made universities an offer they could not refuse, to adopt reverse racist and reverse sexist policies or be punished financially. The operationalization of reverse racism, sexism, and sexuality was DEI: “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
DEI was in practice providing preference and benefits for members of victim categories, and punishment and exclusion for members of oppressor categories. The categories were flipped: females, LGBTQ2S++, and BIPOC were to be admitted, funded, hired, and rewarded, while whites, males, Asians, Jews, and other unworthy people, such as Christians, were to be disfavored and excluded. In order to achieve this, traditional academic criteria had to be demolished: achievement and merit were labeled “racist” and “sexist,” and standardized tests were also called “racist” and no longer considered.
The justification for reverse racism and sexism was that disparities between categories in academic achievement, status, or awards were due always to racist and sexist discrimination. No evidence was adduced to support this extraordinary claim, and no counterargument — for example: about family and community culture — was ever refuted based on evidence. “Social justice” became a crusade on behalf of “marginalized” and “underserved” victim categories, and was not given to self-reflection or even attempts at substantiation of its unlikely justifications.
Members of victim categories were admitted to universities, funded, hired, and rewarded, irrespective of their merit, while straight white males, Asians, Jews, and Christians were sidelined and excluded. Females now vastly outnumber straight males among university students, professors, and administrators. “Representation according to percentage of the general population” as a criterion to be met applies only to preferred victim categories, but never to straight white men, who make up half of the general population. Non-Hispanic whites, some 60% of the U.S. population, and 70% of the Canadian population, are highly underrepresented in universities, especially in Canada.
“Social justice” is enforced in universities by political commissars called DEI officers, who are found, at great expense, in every faculty, and, in some universities, in every department. Objections expressed to official policy are suppressed through re-education programs, punishment, or exclusion from the institution. If as professor says the “wrong” thing, such as in favor of fairness, or equality, or merit, that leads to loss of salary and even loss of position, tenure notwithstanding. Students were activated to report to DEI political commissars anything professors say that offends them. “Social justice” is a cult of “cancellation,” crushing its opponents.
What fruit has the “social justice” cult brought the universities? Most basically, they no longer teach; they propagandize. They no longer seek the truth through evidence and argument, because they have committed to woke truths. Universities are more like convents than houses of education. But, worse, they diffuse malicious ideology: “decolonialization” is anti-American and anti-Canadian; “anti-racism” and feminism are anti-white, anti-male, and antisemitic; Marxism and neo-Marxism are anti-capitalist.
In Canada, “decolonialization” has classed everyone not indigenous “First Nations” as “colonial settlers.” Universities have been required by government to “indigenize” their offerings, replacing Western science with “indigenous science” and history with indigenous mythology. If this continues, Canadians will all soon be residing in nomadic camps, living by hunting and gathering.
My own Department has Palestinianized, focusing on destroying, among all in the world, the Jewish state of Israel, and colluding with the extermination of the Jewish people. Students across many universities have been burning American and Canadian flags, and chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Canada,” as well as celebrating Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the atrocities they carry out against Jewish people.
Medical schools and law schools cut back on the study of medicine and law to indoctrinate their “students” with “social justice” fervor. Weak students are admitted because they have the right skin color or sexual preference. Good luck in the operating room or driving over the newly built bridge. But the greatest damage is done by so-called faculties of education, which relentlessly rail against the countries in which they are located, against capitalism, and against white people, males, Christians, Jews, and heterosexuals. They have guided school administrators and teachers not to teach their pupils how to read, write, and understand science and civics, but what races and religions to hate, how to transition to imaginary sexes, and how to demonstrate in favor of abortion and against Israel, and, in so doing, have destroyed our entire school system.
What can be done about the destruction of our universities? There are many possible tools to bring to bear. First, public universities are funded by state and provincial legislatures, and legislatures can actively shape the policy of universities. Many private universities receive large amounts of funding from the federal and national governments, which thus have serious leverage over them. Furthermore, all universities operate by virtue of formal accreditation provided by accreditation boards. Withholding accreditation would put uncooperative universities out of business entirely. Voters have some sway over legislatures, and legislators over accreditation and funding, and thus over universities.
Public opinion needs to be directed to the sad state of our universities. We have seen recently the fall in public confidence in many institutions, especially “public health” bureaucrats and “mainstream” or “legacy” media, which are no longer trusted. Universities too have fallen in public confidence, and the number of applicants for undergraduate studies has fallen, resulting in a number of small colleges closing. Law schools at once elite universities are viewed with a more critical eye; some law firms refusing to consider job applicants from certain elite universities: Stanford, Yale, and Harvard law schools have had their reputations questioned and their graduates boycotted.
A few American states—Florida, Texas, Oklahoma—have banned DEI racism and sexism, and some DEI political commissars were fired and DEI departments closed. However, some universities went into resistance mode and changed titles but carried on as usual. Mandatory declarations of loyalty to “social justice” DEI for applicants and employees must be banned. DEI needs to be eradicated thoroughly in all universities. This should be a priority for legislators. Woke DEI violates American civil rights law, and universities and university administrators should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for race, sex, and religious discrimination. As well, universities that do not base their student admissions and staff hiring on merit should have their accreditation revoked.
Second, all faculties of education should be closed, and the training of school administrators and teachers initiated on an entirely new basis. Competence in an actual academic discipline (if these could be revived) would be a start. Secretaries and ministers of education in state and provincial governments must take a critical view and activist stance against “social justice” school boards and administrators who promote in schools far-left ideologies not supported by parents or the public but neglect basic education in reading, writing, math, science, and civics. The blatant failure of North American schools, especially public schools, is a shame on our countries and an existential threat to our future success as countries.
No fact about universities is better known or documented than their political monoculture. Almost every one of our universities enforces a leftist political monoculture, ranging from leftist to far leftist to extreme leftist. I never met people who proudly declared themselves communists until I met my fellow professors. “Diversity” of skin color and origin is much championed at our universities, although not diversity of religious belief, and especially not diversity of political opinion. It is indicative that some 95% of all professors are declared and donating Democrats in the U.S., Liberals, NDP socialists, or Greens in Canada, although the ideological extremism is not caught by these designations.
Universities become ever more extreme because the professorate is self-perpetuating. The departments select and recommend new hires, which the administration usually rubber-stamps. So each department is ideologically self-replicating, with a tendency, guided by the majority, to become more extreme over time. The female members of my department not only demanded that all future hires be females but also interrogated each applicant to ensure their strong feminist credentials. This self-replication must end.
Hiring must be taken out of the hands of the existing professoriate to open the possibility of a diversity of opinion in the university. Administrators, who have the formal responsibility, must take on some of the actual work of selecting new professors. They would have to draw expertise from whatever external sources they could trust, keeping in mind that disciplinary organizations and granting agencies have been totally corrupted by ideologies at the universities. The American Anthropological Association now requires members to be anti-Jew, as a matter of “social justice.” Sadly, anthropology as an academic discipline hardly exists, as the field has been taken over by grievance studies.
If admissions and hiring are to be based, once again, on merit, how can we guarantee diversity of opinion without selecting candidates for their opinions? One solution is to establish new departments, institutes, and schools with foci of interest to people without far-leftist opinions. There used to be whole programs on Western Civilization until they were banned by leftist critics. A few colleges still exist focusing on the classical works of history of science. In the U.S., the Constitution could be a multidisciplinary focus, encompassing history, law, politics, and culture. Recently, a few universities have established such independent institutes in order to shoehorn in the possibility of diversity of opinion.
In sum, extremists have taken over our universities and destroyed them. Until now, with a few noble exceptions, our civic authorities have either ignored the destruction or abetted in it. The corruption has spread its tentacles throughout education, government, business, the professions, and even sports.
As the author Lionel Shriver says in her quasi-alternative history novel, "Mania," “Watching an entire population swallow whole a transparently lunatic proposition and then jubilantly embrace a raft of ruinous new social conventions has profoundly lowered my estimation of people in general.” And while it is, unfortunately, human to adopt lunatic propositions, it is also human to assess the consequences and make a correction. We badly need a correction now.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member