Frank's Musings

During a U.S. House hearing on antisemitism at highly selective colleges last month, a conservative representative, Ms. Rep. Elise Stefanik, RN.Y., questioned three presidents of elite universities, UPenn, Harvard and M.I. T., on their policies regarding the expression of antisemitism on their campuses.  The performance of those three women has resulted in the resignations of at least two of them.   All three of them denied Ms. Stefanik’s request that they affirm that the recent or any such demonstrations against Israeli policies governing the treatment of Muslim Palestinians were in violation of their institutions’ standards of conduct and were prohibited.

Here is a clear conflict of perspectives on race, politics, and academic freedom.  All these institutions are heavily dependent on financial support from private donors for their large budgets and their diversity programs.   Apparently, the university presidents had been coached by legal and financial advisors to give a common reply to Ms. Stefanik’s pointed line of questioning, viz. “it depends on the circumstances.”  It appears that the private donors, on which the institutions depend, and their Boards of Directors could not accept that legal advice and forced two of them, so far, to resign.  Ms. Stefanik expressed her victory over those women as a shaming of their presumptive sense of superiority over commonly held concepts of nondiscrimination.

It is interesting that the effective use of schadenfreude of the leaders of elite educational institutions in this examination comes at a time of the upsurgence of resentful libertarian national politics.  This trend is also a likely explanation of the popularity of Donald Trump among his solid base of supporters. Both the wide acceptance of Ms. Stefanik’s verbal attacks and the electoral strength of the MAGA right are demonstrations of a growing impatience with genuflecting to the intellectual and entitled elite in our society.  They are thought to be undeserving of special treatment in what is advertised as a “democratic” country. 

Distrust of the principles and institutions of a liberal democratic society can easily be harnessed to pull into power an authoritarian regime of government as soon as a majority willingly acquiesces to the enticements of a demagogue.  It has happened before and through effective manipulation of a content-hungry media industry and an increasingly compliant media audience it will happen again.    Every time it has occurred in the past, the promises of the demagogue eventually fail, usually not without great human cost.  It is, therefore, our mission to forewarn the public that they are in danger of falling into this painful trap.  Many novels and polemics have elucidated this truth; but there can be no substitute for an effective strategy and savvy media campaign if we are to avoid life in a democracy destroyed by uncontrolled populism.