Newsletter

September 2013

Barbarians at the campus gates

Thomas Sowell

An
all-too-familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a
meeting on May 4 to discuss demands by student activists for the college to
divest itself of its investments in companies that deal in fossil fuels. As a
speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a
disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting,
seized the microphone, and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to
object.

Although there were professors and administrators in the room — including the
college president — apparently nobody had the guts to put a stop to these
storm-trooper tactics. Nor is it likely that there will be any punishment of
those who put their own desires above the rights of others. On the contrary,
these students went on to demand mandatory campus “teach-ins,” and the
administration caved on that demand. Among their other demands are that courses
on ethnic studies, and on gender and sexuality, be made a requirement for
graduation.

Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency,
instead of letting campus barbarians run amok? At a prestigious college like
Swarthmore, every student who trampled on other people’s rights could be
expelled and there would be plenty of prospective students available to take
their places. Although colleges and universities across the country have been
giving in to storm-trooper tactics ever since the nationwide campus disruptions
of the 1960s, not all have. Back in the 1960s, the University of Chicago was a
rare exception. As Professor George J. Stigler, a Nobel Prize–winning economist,
put it in his memoirs, “our faculty united behind the expulsion of a large
number of young barbarians.”

The
sky did not fall. There was no bloodbath. The University of Chicago was in fact
spared some of the worst nonsense that more compliant institutions were
permanently saddled with in the years that followed as a result of their failure
of nerve in the ’60s. When the nationwide campus disruptions and violence of the
1960s gave way to quieter times in the 1970s, many academics congratulated
themselves on having restored peace. But it was the peace of surrender.

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other “studies” was part of
the price of academic peace. All too often, these “studies” are about propaganda
rather than serious education. Academic campuses have become among the least
free places in America. “Speech codes,” vaguely worded but zealously applied to
those who dare to say anything that is not politically correct, have become the
norm. Few professors would dare to publish research or teach a course debunking
the claims made in various ethnic, gender, or other “studies” courses.

Why
did all this happen? Partly because of the lure of the path of least resistance,
especially to academic administrators and faculty. But there was no such
widespread surrender to every noisy and belligerent group of student activists
prior to the 1960s. Moreover, the example of the University of Chicago showed
that surrender was not inevitable.

The
cost of resistance to the campus barbarians may not have been the only factor.
Resistance requires a sense that there is something worth defending. But decades
of dumbed-down education have produced people with no sense of the importance of
a moral framework within which freedom and civil discourse can flourish. Without
a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some
and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.
Disruptive activists indulge their egos in the name of idealism and others cave
rather than fight.

It’s not just academics who won’t defend decency. Trustees could fire college
presidents who cave in to storm-trooper tactics. Donors could stop donating to
institutions that have sold out their principles to appease the campus
barbarians. But when nobody is willing to defend civilized standards, the
barbarians win.

Whether on college campuses or among nations on the world stage, if the battle
comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are bound to win.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2013 Creators Syndicate, Inc.