We higher-education reformers tend to stress the symptoms of liberal arts decay — illiteracy in Western culture, etc. — without pointing a finger at the culprits responsible.

In addition to presenting a strong case study in how Hamilton College has been refashioned to fixate, institutionally, structurally, and from a curricular standpoint, on group identity, as opposed to intellectual diversity, professor Robert Paquette assigns blame to:

  • “faculty sympathizers” who collude with activist students in their demands to place diversity, not intellect, at the center of campus life (then, I might add, there are those professors who teach and mastermind students in their activism)
  • see-no-evil faculty who applaud faculty-originated, activist student initiatives “like trained seals”
  • “poor, consumer-oriented” presidents and deans who, bowing and scraping, endorse and commend these contrived initiatives
  • and, last but not least, “self-congratulatory, ostrich-like” trustees, who meekly acquiesce to students’ demands.

Writing at Minding the Campus, Paquette captures exactly the pattern by which the teachers and leaders who should have defended the liberal arts have joined in demolishing d them, actively and passively.

I recommend taking this a step further and, at every available opportunity, naming the names of the offending faculty, administrators, and trustees. In fact, some demanding and enterprising soul among us should found a website solely devoted to naming and publicizing these names.