Return to Tradition to Fix Higher Education

Amid growing momentum to reform the American university system following despicable acts of anti-Semitism – merely the latest example of left-wing extremism on college campuses – lawmakers and college administrators should look to the traditional ideological foundations of higher education in the United States and throughout the West for guidance.

Following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, Americans on both sides of the political aisle have rightly been horrified to see significant portions of university student bodies and even many faculty members become cheerleaders for Hamas while targeting Jewish students and faculty with intimidation, threats, and even acts of physical violence.

All of this has been carried out with the tacit approval of university administrators. In one particularly shocking incident earlier this month, the presidents from several top universities refused to affirm that calling for genocide against Jews violated their schools’ code of conduct during a congressional hearing.

University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill, who subsequently resigned under pressure, infamously told Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) that whether or not a student would be punished for calling for genocide was “a context-dependent decision.”

Dani Dayan, the head of Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Center, told Reuters that universities had become “the epicenter” of a worldwide rise in antisemitism following Hamas’s attacks.

“Western academies, stone by stone, piece by piece, article by article and book by book, a pseudo-academic theory is being developed that calls for, justifies and even advocates for the elimination of the Jewish state,” he said.

As Americans increasingly wake up to the decades-long trend of escalating left-wing extremism on college campuses and demand change, they should first seek to understand how academia was co-opted by the radical left and then work to restore institutions of higher learning to their original mission: searching for and upholding truth and wisdom.

Professor Helmut Weilheimer, who taught ethics at universities in Germany and Austria for three decades until his retirement in the early 1990s, told me that after the Berlin Wall and socialism collapsed, academia adopted neo-Marxist morals, a key component of which was hatred for Israel. It was the only country that officially celebrated God in its holidays and religion of Judaism; thus, it was an enemy of the left’s vision of “progress.”

Weilheimer further explained that the open antisemitism seen on university campuses now is merely one particularly grotesque symptom of university administrators and faculty stomping on traditional morals and asserting that all truths – like “genocide is wrong” – are subjective.

A key element of the left’s takeover of the university system was removing all references to God, and instead installing Man’s understanding of the world as supreme above all else.

Professor Weilheimer also noted that U.S. universities had abandoned the vision set forth by America’s Founding Fathers.

Many leaders of the founding generation, including George Washington and James Madison, were strong proponents of a national university that would serve as an ideological continuation of the American Revolution. Washington feared that if too many American youth studied abroad in the universities of Europe, foreign influences would creep into U.S. politics and poison the American experiment in self-government – a fear that seems to be coming true today.

James Madison argued as president in 1810 that a national university was necessary to promote patriotism, intellectual curiosity, and “social harmony.” Most importantly, he said, “it would contribute not less to strengthen the foundations than to adorn the structure of our free and happy system of government.”

Benjamin Rush, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence and the founder of Dickinson College, wrote in a letter to John Adams in 1789 that America’s higher education system must promote the country’s founding principles in order to alleviate the “effects of the political passions.” He saw the role of universities as incubators for future generations of leaders who understand American Exceptionalism and believe in the goodness of America.

Today, virtually every American university is completely divorced from the Founders’ vision for higher education. In 1998, the late eminent historian Robert Conquest described the status of American academia as “progress in advanced ignorance.”

The late professor Peter Berger, a renowned sociologist, told me in a 2005 interview that American universities had rejected the search for truth and understanding in favor of subscribing to radical ideologies.

These ideologies all purport to have found the philosopher’s stone, a “magic key” that explains all the mysteries of the universe and the human experience. But one by one, all of them ultimately fall short, as is evidenced by the fact that the left’s ideology of identity politics and intersectionality demands that we view Hamas as the victims in their war on Israel even as they were the ones who began the killing by slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent Israelis.

Lawmakers and concerned citizens eager to return universities to their proper role of educating and not indoctrinating the next generation need not look far for inspiration. America’s own Founding Fathers and centuries of Western philosophy have provided the intellectual foundations for a robust and healthy higher education system that our society today would be wise to build upon, rather than tear down.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.