This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write. I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf. The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie. And it is where you want to be on a golf course.
It is not possible read national newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post these days without coming into contact with stories on higher education.
And, if you read carefully, you’ll find a multiplicity of views.
- Some say higher education is in deep trouble.
- Others say higher education has a chance to correct itself, if only it will act to return to learning as its main purpose, not political action, especially from the left.
- Still others advocate for outside intervention.
This week, I read two views on higher education in the same edition of the Wall Street Journal. One was by partially retired columnist Daniel Henninger. Another was by a letter writer from the East Coast.
Here is a summary of the two views:
HENNINGER: He wrote under this headline and sub-head: University Presidents Flunk Out; What six-syllable word describes the testimony of Claudine Gay and Liz Magill?
First, Gay and Magill are two of the university presidents who appeared before a Congressional committee a couple weeks ago and offered comments that continue to make headlines. One reason is that, looking back, they were not as definitive as they should have been in condemning genocide against Israelis.
To a degree, they answered in an understandable fashion because of the tension between over-the-top speech and America’s commitment to freedom of speech. Tough topics that don’t lend themselves to an appearance in Congress.
Still, to me, a simple declaration that “all advocacy for genocide is wrong and cannot be tolerated” would have avoided the controversy, part of which owes to a trap sent by Representative Elise Stefanik, herself a vapid office holder who seeks to garner headlines, not make sound policy.
From Hennninger: “It may be no coincidence that colleges are abandoning SATs at the same time as three university presidents were flunking questions in public about genocide. After receiving Fs for insisting that the answer to any direct question is ‘It depends on the context,’ University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill lost her job and Harvard’s Board of Governors retained Claudine Gay with a limp vote of confidence — ‘she is the right leader to help our community heal.’ Uh-huh.
“This may be the moment to bring back vocabulary tests.
“Question: What six-syllable word describes the three university presidents who testified before Congress?
“Answer: Pusillanimity.”
Capitalizing on his choice of a word, Henninger challenged readers to name as many synonyms as they could for “pusillanimity.” He answered his own question: Cowardice, cravenness, gutlessness, spinelessness and — his favorite — poltroonery.
Henninger attributes the loss of esteem for universities to their adoption of “cancel culture,” which he said should have been another “sign their schools were off the rails.”
To this, the letter writer to the Wall Street Journal, Tom Littleton, says this: “The College Presidents Were Right: Questions about speech codes demand nuance and, yes, context.”
“I reject Representative Elise Stefanik’s narrative that the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and Penn are morally unclear. Had they been asked if they find anti-semitism contemptible, all would have answered yes. Instead, they were bullied into answering binary questions about whether certain speech was in violation of their institutions’ codes of conduct.
“Those questions demand nuance and, yes, context. The moment we start punishing speech that doesn’t specifically threaten individuals or incite violence, we become no better than Russia.”
There you have it. Two views on higher education.
To conclude, I turn to Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan who wrote this, quoting Fareed Zakaria on his CNN news program:
“’When one thinks of America’s greatest strengths, the kind of assets the world looks at with admiration and envy, America’s elite universities would long have been at the top of that list,’ he said. ‘But the American public has been losing faith in these universities for good reason.’
“He scored the three presidents who’d come under fire in the House for their ‘vague and indecisive answers when asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their institutions’ codes of conduct.’
“Their performance was understandable if you understand that our elite universities ‘have gone from being centers of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas.’ Those agendas, ‘clustered around diversity and inclusion,’ began in good faith, ‘but those good intentions have morphed into a dogmatic ideology and turned these universities into places where the pervasive goals are political and social engineering, not academic merit.’”
So, again, back to learning as a central goal of higher ed. It cannot come too soon.
Perspective from the 19th Hole 