I recently posted Professor Mitchell Langbert’s view that “academic reform is a charade.” Here is a rebuttal from one reader, Ronald Trowbridge, a higher–education policy analyst who managed the Center for Higher Education of the Texas Public Policy Foundation:

Mitchell Langbert’s contention that universities are not worth saving because they are hopelessly totalitarian, Keynesian, Marxist, social, politically correct and left wing, while generally true, is still too defeatist for my taste. For a number of reasons:

1. Their pathologies may not rub off on students as much as you might think. If I as a conservative were to sit down with a liberal and analyze solutions to, say, five problems outside the arena of politics, we might likely agree on all five solutions. But mention politics and our paths sharply and quickly diverge. Why? Because in politics we are governed by our pathologies. And my point is that my pathology or Ward Churchill’s may not influence students as much as we might think. To be sure, some on the margins might be influenced, as might those already predisposed to a political view. But there are an increasing number of college kids voting Republican who attend these totalitarian, Keynesian, yada yada schools. Other forces have long been at work on these kids, namely parents and friends.

2. Burke said that “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men [and women] to do nothing.” Mr. Langbert is the only conservative/libertarian I know who wants good people “to do nothing.” Similarly, Yeats said that “the best lack all conviction [to act]/While the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Mr. Langbert is, again, the only conservative/libertarian I know who wants “the best” not to act. He will allow the yahoos to fill the vacuum entirely without a scratch.

3. John Adams said in 1776 that only one-third of the people supported independence, yet look at what they achieved! Sometimes a minority can change a majority, and if universities can get a couple of tough, principled trustees, they could possibly indeed make radical changes within universities. I would not be a defeatist here. The world has enough Prufrocks and Hamlets.