Higher ed has 99 problems — and the New York Times is one
(Credit: Getty/vm)
Over the past few years, a certain class of nominally centrist white op-ed writers have poured forth vast gouts of ink attacking anti-racist progressive college students. As I’ve argued repeatedly, this vast array of coverage sends the message that sometimes un-nuanced critiques from left-wing students soars among the greatest problems facing American academe today.
But as the song goes, it ain’t necessarily so.
One of the latest examples came this week from New York Times op-ed writer and commissioning editor Bari Weiss. The piece is bizarre and sloppy. She uses a fake Antifa troll account as an example of “PC-run-amok” from students, which prompted a Times editor’s note and update to the story. She suggests that University of Chicago students should have protested Rick Santorum over complaining to Dan Savage about his use of anti-transgender slurs (as if she wouldn’t have then complained about snowflake students protesting Santorum). She ignores the complex history of author Christina Hoff Sommers, including her appearance on a white supremacist podcast and her support for Gamergate, and simply calls her a “self-identified feminist and registered Democrat.” Weiss then attacks students at Lewis & Clark for calling her a fascist. You’d never know from Weiss that Sommers in fact was not de-platformed but gave her talk and answered questions.
And then David Brooks struck again, deploying his “not-mad-just-disappointed” dad voice to gently chide “kids these days” for valuing perspective (and identity) over reason and caring about structural inequality. Bizarrely, he dates this shift from rational Enlightenment values to identity politics to the failure of Barack Obama to end racism. Clearly, in this era of global chaos, nothing deserves two op-eds at the paper of record more than students at an elite university being rude to Christina Hoff Sommers.
Here’s the worst part. The focus on “PC-run-amok” is working. As a former professor and current academic advisor, I encounter people outside academe who constantly bring up left-wing protests as their major concern. They’ve read about it, after all, in The New York Times! To be sure, sometimes college students conflate the merely bad (i.e. Charles Murray, the phrenologist) with the truly terrible (i.e. Nazis). Students can be uncivil. Protesters can, it turns out, protest. Alas, either by intention or by accident, the centrist focus on these protesters fuels the broader right-wing assault on the very ideas of the university, academic freedom and the need to educate future citizens.
So before we see yet another high profile column on snowflake students or campus political correctness, I have assembled a list of some other problems facing higher education, to which very serious centrist pundits might consider drawing the attention of their readers. Because academia has at least 99 problems.
99 Problems Facing Higher Education more significant than left-wing students being a little rude sometimes (not wholly in order of importance):
Tuition
Student Loan Debt
Housing Costs
Hunger
Exploitation of Adjuncts
End of Tenure
Homelessness
Alcohol Abuse
Rape
Rape Culture
Sexual Abuse of Students
Sexual Abuse of Faculty
Domestic Violence on Campus
Soaring Administrative Costs
Racism
Sexism
Ableism
Nazis on Campus with Guns
Nazi Recruitment on Campus
Prejudice in Academic Hiring
Textbooks
Especially Math and Science Textbooks
Predatory Lenders
Department of Education Defense of Predatory Lenders
Predatory For-Profit Colleges
Department of Education Defense of Predatory Colleges
Betsy DeVos
Scott Walker
Defunding the Humanities
Legislators Censoring Professors
Legislators Firing Professors
Social Media Censorship
Social Media Harassment
Specifically Racist and Misogynistic Intersecting Harassment
ICE
Lack of Support for Dreamers
Undergraduate Business Degrees
Accessibility
Especially in Housing
Lack of Mental Health Supports
Laptop Bans
EdTech Companies
Surveillance Pedagogy
Racist Professors
Racist Mascots
Corrupt Sports
Brain-Damaging Sports
Rape and College Sports
Graduation Rates in College Sports
Joe Paterno Fans
Larry Nassar Enablers
NCAA Comparing Athletes to Prison Labor
University of Chicago’s Economics Department
Charlie Kirk
Tucker Carlson
Campus Shootings
Conceal Carry on Campus
Attacks on Affirmative Action
Metrics
Assessment
Student Evaluations (When Used for Tenure)
Accreditation
Elsevier
Predatory Journals
Open Access Fees
Academia.edu
The REF
The TEF
Library Budget Cuts
Cuts to Basic Science
Brilliant Academics Leaving
The Postdoc Crisis
Big Data
Service Loads for Associate Professors (Especially Women)
Bad Advising
Police Brutality
Outside Offers
Closing Colleges
Right-Wing Indoctrination
First-Generation Students Struggling
Rural Students Struggling
Bad Donors
Especially the Koch Brothers
Collapse of Public Funding
Deferred Maintenance
Hazing
Staff Excluded from Academic Freedom
No Child Left Behind
Overly litigious students
Censoring Environmental Research
Censoring Gun Research
Attacks on the NEH, NEA, NIH
In-Class Tests
Plagiarism and Online Essay Sales
Legacy Admissions
The Prestige Economy
Academics Who Over-Use Reply-All
Meetings that Should Be Emails
New York Times Op-Ed columnists who write a lot about left-wing students but rarely about the other 98 items on this list.
