VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Are Universities Doomed?

Over the last 30 years, enrollments in the humanities and history crashed. So did tenure-track faculty positions. Some $1.7 trillion in federally backed student loans have only greenlighted inflated tuition—and masked the contagion of political indoctrination and watered-down courses.

But “gradually” imploding has now become “suddenly.” Zoom courses, a declining pool of students, and soaring costs all prompt the public to question the college experience altogether.

Nationwide undergraduate enrollment has dropped by more than 650,000 students in a single year—or over 4% alone from spring 2021 to 2022, and some 14% in the last decade. Yet the U.S. population still increases by about 2 million people a year.

Men account for about 71% of the current shortfall of students. Women number almost 60% of all college students—an all-time high.

Monotonous professors hector students about “toxic masculinity,” as “gender” studies proliferate. If the plan was to drive males off campus, universities have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

The number of history majors has collapsed by 50% in just the last 20 years. Tenured history positions have declined by one-third to half at major state universities.

If only there had been some sort of warning.

PAULA BOLYARD WITH AN EXTREMELY CONTRARY TAKE: Hear Me Out: We Need More Men Like Prince Harry.

A BAD IDEA FROM THE SUMMER OF 2020: “California, Never a Slave State, Considers Reparations.”

TOO GOOD TO VERIFY:  This mad lad claims Bitcoin farming saved the Texas energy grid during this latest cold snap and I thought he was crazy but now I believe him .

If true absolutely hilarious.

MAN OF THE YEAR . . . DAVE WEIGEL?

The joke was edgy, cerebral, and hilarious. “Every girl is bi,” wrote Cam Harless, an anti-Sean Astin podcast host from Florida. “You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.” Weigel, then a reporter for the Washington Post, wanted to share this humorous take on a universal truth—women are crazy—and assumed his followers were sophisticated enough to laugh along with him. (They were not.)

Felicia Sonmez, one of Weigel’s colleagues at the Post, had a reaction so frenzied and deranged that it was not immediately (or ever) clear whether she was demonstrating the truth of the joke’s punchline by acting like a crazy woman. “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!” she howled.

The rest is history. Weigel was suspended for a month without pay. Nevertheless, Sonmez persisted. Though she was told repeatedly to calm down, the humorless scold continued to berate her colleagues and her employer for making her feel unsafe, or whatever. She kept tweeting until the Post had no choice but to fire her for “insubordination” and “violating the Post‘s standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity.”

For his pivotal role in vanquishing a petty and deranged tyrant, and for embracing his fate as a martyr for the cause of comedy and common sense, Dave Weigel is 2022 Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year.

Well, when you put it that way. . .

AND ONCE AGAIN, MY SHOCKED FACE:  EPA cracks down on trucking industry to push an all-electric fleet.

SO MUCH FRAUD WOULD BE FUNNY IF WE DIDN’T HAVE TO LIVE HERE WITH THEM:  Omnibus Fraud.

BEHOLD, MY SHOCKED FACE:  US Grid Needs Fossil Fuels, Not Wind.

CLOWNWORLD. THEY’RE GOING TO TRY TO USE THIS TO SHUT DOWN AGRICULTURE:  Now they’re coming for your garbage – NASA to track landfill methane emissions from space.

WELL, IF SCIENCE ISN’T ON THE LEFT, IT’S NOT THE RIGHT SCIENCE YOU KNOW?  Today’s blacklisted American: Black scientist blacklisted for doing good research.

STILL DOING A DEEP DIVE. BRING YOUR SNORKEL: So It’s Off To Work — Riding the catastrophic Change Wave Part III.

HE’S NOT WRONG:  John Cleese On Wokeness And Creativity.

WE’LL GO AS FAR AS A BAG OVER RACHEL LEVINE’S FACE!  Rachel Levine Demands Censorship.

THE LITTLE BOY KEEPS HIS FINGER IN THE HOLE IN THE DIKE:  .SCOTUS Rules Title 42 Must Stay In Effect.

AND THERE’S MY SHOCKED FACE AGAIN. I CAN TELL IT’S GOING TO BE ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS:  Conflict of Interest Issues Arise as Sec. of Interior’s Daughter Lobbies for Moratorium on Oil and Gas Leasing.

OR IN OTHER WORDS, FLU SEASON:  Signs that the “Tripledemic” is Winding Down.

Worsened by lockdowns which seem to have made everyone’s immune system wimpy. (Yes, I’m sick with something. So is my entire friend group, which would make perfect sense if we were all in one area, but we’re spread all over the country and abroad.)

BEHOLD, THE MAGNIFICENCE OF MY SHOCKED FACE:  #Twitterfiles Vindicate Dr. Andrew Bostom – Wrongly Suspended For Accurate But Politically Inconvenient Science On Covid.

WHAT THEY’RE DOING IS THE OPPOSITE OF INSPIRING TRUST:  The Kari Lake election fraud verdict: Part I.

WELL, IT WOULD, WOULDN’T IT?  Sexual orientation law impacts freedom of religion.

OPEN THREAD: Because I love you and want you to be happy.

BIG ‘BROTHER’ IS WATCHING! Rachel Levine wants tech companies to censor gender-related ‘misinfo:’ Dr. Rachel Levine slammed after calling for Big Tech to clean up ‘misinformation’ on sex change.

I’LL HAVE WHATEVER THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE IS SMOKING: No, soft-on-crime liberalism isn’t fueling San Francisco’s drug crisis. Libertarianism is.

Many conservative commentators attribute the city’s drug problems to its political liberalism, but this is incorrect. San Franciscans’ liberalism is why the government offers generous health and social care services, without which overdose deaths would be higher, not lower.

What bedevils the city instead is its libertarian, individualistic culture. Since at least the 19th century, Americans have come to San Francisco to be free of traditional constraints back East, to reinvent themselves, to escape the small-mindedness of small towns and to find themselves. This culture underlies the city’s entrepreneurialism, artistic energy and tolerance for diversity in all forms.

But this has a downside when it comes to addiction, which thrives in such a cultural milieu. San Francisco has long been one of the booziest cities in the country as measured by metrics such as bars per capita or percentage of income spent on alcohol. The psychedelic drug revolution and much of the cannabis culture were born in the Bay Area. The “new” crisis around fentanyl is thus not as novel as portrayed: Heavy use of substances has always been part of how San Francisco defines freedom and the good life.

But while addictive substance use brings short-term pleasures, it brings long-term misery and a reduction in freedom. The libertarian assumption that given freedom and tolerance, everyone will rationally and productively pursue their self-interest cannot explain why a starving person would, for example, forgo food in exchange for fentanyl or cocaine.

I hope the guys at Reason magazine are properly ashamed of themselves now for single-handedly ruining San Francisco.

SOUNDS LIKE THEY DESERVE IT:  The Air Force Academy is being sued for failure to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request that asked for its Critical Race Theory/Anti-White Supremacy training materials.  (Can we get an army of FOIA-wielding Davids going?  There are a lot of public entities that should receive one.)

SPACE JUNK: Senate passes orbit debris cleanup bill.

BETHLEHEM’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Mary Holding Out Hope For 4th Wise Man Bearing An Air Fryer.