Victor Davis Hanson
Real Clear Politics, Dec. 8, 2023
“Huge numbers of students have entered universities, who would not have been admitted by the very standards universities until recently claimed were vital to ensure their own competitiveness and prestige. Consequently, they are no longer the guarantors of topflight undergraduates and professionals from their graduate programs.”
After October 7, the public was shocked at what they saw and heard on America’s campuses. Americans knew previously they were intolerant, leftwing, and increasingly non-meritocratic.
But immediately after October 7 — and even before the response of the Israeli Defense Forces — the sheer student delight on news of the mass murdering of Israeli victims seemed akin more to 1930s Germany than contemporary America.
Indeed, not a day goes by when a university professor or student group has not spouted antisemitic hatred. Often, they threaten and attack Jewish students, or engage in mass demonstrations calling for the extinction of Israel.
Why and how did purportedly enlightened universities become incubators of such primordial hatred?
After the George Floyd riots in 2020, reparatory admissions — the effort to admit diverse students beyond their numbers in the general population — increased.
Elite universities like Stanford and Yale boasted that their so-called “white” incoming student numbers had plunged to between 20 and 40 percent, despite whites making up 68-70% of the general population.
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