Hot on the heels of Columbia University reaching a $200 million “settlement” with the government — in order to release $400 million in grants withheld (how shall I put this) because we don’t like you, comes now Harvard University kicking $500 million back to the Treasury to put all this unpleasantness behind us. (Just like Harvard to outdo its fellow Ivies.) One does have to wonder: is all this money really staying in the US Treasury? I’m just asking questions, but I digress — as one is so often forced to, these days, because the insanity never stops.
Universities are supposed to be (so they told me at the one I attended) places of academic inquiry, of free speech and the free exchange of ideas. I’ve noted before that the main benefit of an undergraduate education isn’t rote learning of some academic canon; it is learning to think for yourself: it develops the critical thinking skills that are necessary for further intellectual growth — and, I might add, an absolute minimum requirement for surviving in a world of mindless misinformation and shameless disinformation.
And now two of our leading universities have followed the examples of major law firms, media companies, and news organizations and have decided to pay tribute rather than stand on principle — important principles on which this once-great nation was founded. Adding insult to injury: the academic shakedown is an order of magnitude and then some above the “fines” or “settlements” paid by for-profit corporations like CBS and ABC, and Meta; all this in the name of “fighting antisemitism on campus. So congratulations, CBS! You got your merger, and all it cost you was $15 million and firing the court jester. Oh, and your reputation and integrity.
Trump brings the media companies to heel in pursuit of “free speech” when it is anything but: it’s freedom for the speech he likes, praising the emperor’s new clothes; criticism in the brave new world is verboten. And the universities? The pretense is fighting antisemitism. In truth, it is MAGA: Make Antisemitism Great Again: it will enable, abet, and encourage the very thing it purports to prevent. (If Columbia and Harvard think they should monitor antisemitism on campus, they are free to do so — maybe they could make it some kind of study and publish the results? Are research institutions equipped for that sort of thing? That seems a forced but far more satisfactory outcome than the jackboots I can already hear marching across College Walk. But, again, I digress.)
The America we celebrate is dying: Make Academia Grovel Again is today’s watchword.
I encourage you to spend two minutes — using the link above — with Tom Lehrer, who died this week at the age of 97. We need more of his kind of wit and satire1. Jon Stewart and John Oliver provide it on cable; Stephen Colbert was just canceled by CBS and will have to find new ways to ignite our righteous anger when his contract expires next year. CBS claims it was a cold financial decision: Malarkey. Like everything else, it’s about avarice and enabling corporate advancement. Making the Airwaves Greedy Again: it’s not exactly catchy, but it is at least accurate.
This is hardly Tom Lehrer’s most biting composition. This would be a good time to explore his oeuvre for as long as the website stays up.
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