Political Correctness Threatens American Higher Education

By some measures, American higher education is in the midst of a golden age. It enjoys a worldwide reputation as the best in the world. Global rankings of universities consistently put American institutions at the top. Students from virtually every country compete to gain entry to both their undergraduate and graduate programs. Faculty often enjoy both great prestige and impressive salaries.

Yet higher education in the United States has serious problems. The tuition its institutions charge students encumber many of them with career-distorting debt. For other young people, the price of enrollment places higher education out of reach altogether. Rising costs, along with the decline in the college-age population, is forcing some colleges to reduce sharply the number of faculty members and even to cease operations entirely. In addition, research has shown that a painfully large fraction of students demonstrate no discernible improvement in either the command of information or the capacity for thinking and reasoning over the course of their college years. They have, in effect, spent a great deal of money without getting what they paid for.

Among the most disturbing, and damaging, problems afflicting higher education is the widespread imposition within its institutions, by students, faculty, and administrators using both formal and informal methods, of a particular set of political ideas, beliefs, and values that are found on the left side of the Western political spectrum and have come to be called, collectively, political correctness. Three episodes at Yale University, beginning in 2015, illustrate its scope and impact.

In the first, the head of one of Yale’s residential units, known as colleges, announced that he would no longer be called the “master,” as had been customary and uncontroversial for more than eight decades. The word, he said, conjured up unacceptable associations with the plantations of the pre-Civil War south—although in academic life it has always had an entirely different meaning. There it stems from the Latin word “magister,” which historically denoted someone qualified to teach in a medieval university.

Then, under pressure from students, the university removed from one of the residential colleges the name it had borne since 1930, that of John C. Calhoun, a Yale graduate of the class of 1807 who served his country as a congressman, senator, secretary of state, secretary of war, and vice president. The name had become unacceptable to the students because of Calhoun’s support, two centuries earlier, for slavery.

Finally, in 2015, the head of a different residential college was surrounded and verbally assaulted by hostile students who were furious that his wife had, in response to a university email warning against wearing “inappropriate” Halloween costumes, ventured the opinion that Yale students were capable of deciding for themselves what costumes, if any, to wear. If a student encountered a costume that gave offense, she said, it might be a good idea for him or her to engage the wearer in a calm discussion of the reasons for this reaction. The video of this event, which was widely viewed on the internet, brought to mind the student-led “struggle sessions” in China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, in which adults (many of them Communist Party officials) were viciously harassed by bands of students known as “Red Guards” and often suffered serious, even fatal, injuries.

Anthony Kronman holds two graduate degrees from Yale and has spent four decades there as a professor in its law school, serving from 1994 to 2004 as its dean. (The present writer—full disclosure—spent four happy years as a Yale undergraduate from 1964 to 1968.) Kronman has written a book explaining and exploring the surge of political correctness at Yale and other universities, subjecting it to searching and scrupulous criticism, and enumerating the costs it has exacted. In The Assault on American Excellence, he has produced an account that is cogent, alarming, persuasive, and, considering the gap between the author’s views and those that prevail where he teaches, courageous.

All of philosophy, it has been said, is a series of footnotes to Plato. It might, in this spirit, be said with only some exaggeration that all commentary on American society, customs, and beliefs is a series of footnotes to Tocqueville, a statement that applies here. Kronman takes his principal theme from the Frenchman’s 1837 classic Democracy in America. Tocqueville considered the America he visited to be the pioneer in a trend toward social and political equality that he believed, correctly, was destined to spread beyond the United States, sweeping away the aristocracies of Europe. He appreciated the virtues of equality as a governing principle but worried about the social costs of its triumph.

Similarly, Kronman imputes the surge of political correctness on campus to the embrace of a militant egalitarianism that, while conceivably justified in the political sphere, is incompatible with one of the virtues that universities, almost uniquely, can and should cultivate: what he calls “excellence.” By excellence, he means not the mastery of a particular skill or body of knowledge but rather the superior development of character, a “greatness of the soul,” which he identifies as historically, although not necessarily, an aristocratic feature of Western societies.

All apart from its deleterious impact on excellence as Kronman defines it, and which he highly values, political correctness has done substantial damage to American colleges and universities, as he documents in the book’s three central chapters. One of them deals with the meaning, in theory and practice, of diversity, which he terms “the most powerful word in higher education today.” (The University of California system, for example, has announced that all potential appointees to its faculties will have to demonstrate a firm commitment to diversity.) The academy defines diversity exclusively in terms of race, ethnicity, gender identification, and sexual orientation. Diversity of ideas and viewpoints is not included and usually not welcome. Another chapter of The Assault on American Excellence documents the negative consequences of summarily removing from buildings the names of people whose political and social views do not accord with those that now dominate American institutions of higher education. A third considers the status of speech, which is no longer entirely free on campus.

Tocqueville, and even more his British contemporary, John Stuart Mill, in his 1853 essay On Liberty, were concerned about the tyranny of the majority, to which they feared social equality would lead and that would suppress unpopular views. That is precisely what has occurred in American institutions of higher learning. The expression of ideas concerning the approved building blocks of diversity that depart from what has become campus orthodoxy risks intimidation and public vilification by the university community and even punishment by the university’s administration. Students censor themselves in class and prospective speakers holding (or thought to hold) forbidden views are often disinvited or, if they do speak, shouted down and even physically assaulted.

Besides violating the spirit (and perhaps in some cases the letter) of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the suppression of speech subverts the two basic missions of the university. One of them is the discovery and production of knowledge, which requires free inquiry. The other is the education of students. At its best, this involves what the great sociologist David Riesman called “deprovincialization”—taking the individual beyond the boundaries of the familiar and exposing him or her to ideas, customs, and beliefs previously unknown and sometimes disorienting when first encountered. The demand, widely articulated on campus, that students be protected from exposure to ideas that distress them runs directly counter to one of the central purposes of the institution.

All of this is having an impact on the way Americans view universities. Political correctness of the kind that Kronman analyzes is fostering skepticism about, disapproval of, and even outright hostility toward institutions of higher learning in the wider public. That, in turn, poses a major threat to higher education in the United States. Its institutions, like all institutions, require public acceptance in order to survive. Indeed, colleges and universities need more than acceptance: They require active support. Public ones need appropriations from state legislatures; private ones depend on donations from individuals, often alumni. The collapse of support for them, which militant political correctness is fostering, would present American higher education with an even more serious problem than those it already has.

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Political correctness should not cost MHS students a great teacher

Political Correctness is far more deadly than CoVid-19. While it does kill people, it also kills creativity and the human spirit. Case in point: Milpitas High School teacher, David Carter. While trying to creatively inspire his students to embrace the possibilities that technology offers them, he was struck down by the forces of political correctness. He was taken out of the classroom based on the opinions of the easily and habitually offended and may lose his job. But that may not be the worst that happened.

I suspect that Mr. Carter’s spirit has been crushed and his creativity has been greatly diminished. There may never be another morning where he gets up with a feeling of zippity-doo-dah and heads off to his classroom with a new approach that might inspire some student to go on to achieve. He may never be that wonderful teacher that some of us remember who turned our lives in the right direction because he may never teach again.

Not only that, there may be other teachers who have remarkable talent at teaching who will never try a creative approach to teaching because they have viewed what Mr. Carter has experienced at the hands of the politically correct crowd. 

 What was Mr. Carter’s crime? Innocence. He did not realize that dressing up and acting like somebody whom you admire is a bad thing. [He wore blackface]. Perhaps he was naïve. Nonetheless, he meant no harm and really did no harm. I doubt that anyone who complained really had such a fragile psyche that they needed psychological counseling.

When I was growing up, Jackie Robinson was an heroic baseball player much admired throughout the USA and particularly in my family because he was a classmate and friend of my uncle at Muir Tech (Now Muir High School) in Pasadena. At Halloween one year, my oldest brother dressed up as Jackie, complete with blackface.  If Jackie Robinson had been at one of the houses he trick-or-treated at, do you think that he would have been offended? I don’t think so. He probably would have been delighted at having a young fan paying such a tribute to him and put an extra Snickers in his bag. But… that was before political correctness started systematically killing the human spirit.

Mr. Carter: I hope that your spirit is not broken and that you go on to teach using all of your talent and creativity. Keep admiring the people you admire and bringing their spirit to your classroom. Political correctness has been around for a few decades now. It is getting old and will hopefully soon die.

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'Political correctness on steroids': Australian principal's birthday cupcake ban backfires

An attempt by a Perth primary school principal to ban cupcakes on birthdays has backfired after the state government stepped in to put the policy on hold in the wake of widespread outrage.

The move by Arbor Grove Primary School principal Glen Purdy was chided by both sides of politics, with WA Education Minister Sue Ellery voicing her support of birthday treats and Opposition Leader Liza Harvey labelling the move "political correctness on steroids".

The Ellenbrook school's note to parents raised eyebrows after telling them the school executive had been mindful of the increasing number of students with food allergies and intolerances, the cultural diversity of the school, and the beliefs and traditions of those cultures.

The note asked parents to no longer send students to school with cupcakes, lolly bags or other unhealthy options to share with their classmates when celebrating their birthdays.

If a student arrived with such items, teachers would no longer hand them out, instead returning them with the student at the end of the day.

"I acknowledge that this may not be a universally popular decision, however it does avoid the risk of a child suffering a potentially life-threatening health issue that may arise should they ingest an item they are allergic to, is respectful to the cultural diversity within the school maximising inclusivity, and supports the School and Education Department focus on healthy food choices for students," the note said.

But Ms Ellery said the move went too far, telling ABC Radio she was not aware of which "cultural sensitivities" there would be around cupcakes.

She told the Department of Education to ask the school to reconsider the policy, and in an updated notice to parents Mr Purdy said the school had put the new policy on hold, pending the outcome of a survey canvassing the school community.

"I will meet with members of the P&C and also provide the opportunity for all parents to have their say through an online survey," he wote.

Ms Ellery said ensuring parents were sensitive to students with allergeies was "perfectly reasonable and indeed appropriate".

"But banning cupcakes for cultural reasons is a bit beyond me," she said.

Ms Ellery said birthdays were important for students and was confident it was possible to find a way to celebrate birthdays with food "in a way that is safe and inclusive for all".

Opposition Leader Liza Harvey asked where common sense had gone.

"For goodness' sake. We shouldn't change our culture for other people's cultural reasons," she said.

A parent at the school told 6PR Radio her son had brought cookies for his kindergarten friends to enjoy on his birthday, but the following day the principal's decision was made public. She said parents were happy to work around allergies.

Mr Purdy told 6PR the school's focus was to put children's safety foremost and sharing food was not allowed. The issue of allergies and intolerances was a serious consideration.

"We do have a diverse culture clientele and some of our families do not have animal byproducts in their food offerings," he said.

"We have always as a school supported the celebration of birthdays and will continue to do so."

Western Australian Primary Principals’ Association president Ian Anderson said the majority of primary schools would have policies in place around students bringing cakes, treats and certain foods to schools due to allergy concerns and health issues.

“My understanding is that teachers will still celebrate birthdays in their classrooms and that the new policy is simply around bringing treats that could potentially develop an allergic reaction in a student," he said.

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