I contend that the more
courses that are heavily ideological and biased in advocating a particular
ideology that a university has, the higher the chances that a university will
eventually suffer from a lack of educational legitimacy and perhaps even
have to close down for want of students. Even great American universities such
as Harvard and Yale are not immune. Their huge endowments could even function
as organizational slack enabling a particular ideological bent to percolate throughout
the universities for a long time with impunity due to the sheer amount of money
in the universities respective invested wealth. When I was a student at Yale, I
worked part-time at the Development Office calling alumni to give to the already-wealthy
university. I had no idea at the time that being rich could actually harm a
university, or allow for educational decadence with impunity. At Harvard in 2024,
there was some indication that the students’ freedom in selecting some of their
courses was serving a good purpose in putting biased-ideological courses out of
business for lack of sufficient enrollment. The student marketplace could
substitute for compromised university administration in its educational
oversight function. Adam Smith would be proud.
The full essay is at "Cancelled Classes at Harvard."
