Middlebury College just completed its final round of disciplinary hearings for students involved in March’s violent disruption of a lecture by Charles Murray, the influential but controversial social scientist.
The punishments to date have been laughably lax. Guilty students have been presented with non-official “probation” letters that’ll vanish upon graduation.
This toothless response reflects a deeper rot. Middlebury, like many prestigious colleges, has steadily gravitated away from its core educational mission and now serves primarily as a sort of finishing school for the ruling class. Professors and administrators alike are simply expected to shower students with affirmation—and then hand over a degree securing smooth entry into America’s elite. College has become four years of expensive fun. This is what parents and students now demand.
This change—from institutions of learning to institutions of affirming—threatens the nation’s future as colleges foster a vicious strain of anti-intellectualism.
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