Gutmann wasn’t the president of just any university. She was the president of an Ivy League university, and that made all the difference. Her relationship with the Biden family is a perfect distillation of the immense influence of the Ivy League and its peer institutions—and it points to how that influence might come undone.
Armed with billion-dollar endowments, America’s most selective universities have in recent decades transformed themselves into “the makers of manners” for the nation’s mass affluent population. By mixing the children of the rich and powerful with the children of designated disadvantaged groups, they’ve given rise to a new progressive elite that holds enormous sway over the nation’s cultural and political life. Now, as Ivy-plus admissions practices come under intense scrutiny from left and right, this potent alchemy is at risk, opening the door for a new set of elite-making institutions. . . .
This in turn could create an opening for a different set of higher-education institutions committed to a different set of values—perhaps even a revival of the midcentury vision of elite institutions that would promote social mobility while instilling patriotism and a sense of civic obligation.
That, at least, seems to be the impetus behind a slew of new higher-education initiatives in red and purple states, where many voters, policy makers, and philanthropists are wary of Ivy League progressivism. The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, a public research university that has seen surging enrollment in recent years, is pioneering an approach to civics that welcomes debate and encourages a deep understanding of the nation’s founding principles. In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee is creating a similar institute, which aims to inculcate an “informed patriotism,” through the state university system.
And then there is the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, a new initiative that is being led by Will Inboden, a distinguished scholar of international relations who most recently taught at the University of Texas at Austin. With more than 60,000 students at its Gainesville campus, UF is already one of the nation’s most respected public universities and, in light of the Sunshine State’s rapid economic and demographic expansion, it is well positioned for further growth. The Hamilton Center, aimed at fostering diversity of thought and improving the quality of civic education on campus and throughout the state, represents a bet on UF’s enormous potential. One possibility is that it will serve as the seedbed of a new liberal-arts college that would compete with the likes of Penn and Harvard, attracting bright and capable students from a wide range of social and ethnic backgrounds.
The Ivy League’s loss of cultural authority stems in part from its growing ridiculousness. “Luxury beliefs” have to be somewhat crazy to fill their role — if they were obviously true and practical, everyone would believe them and they wouldn’t be elite signifiers. But that’s an arms race of silliness that leads to further and further distance between elite institutions and the social mainstream.
It is worth inquiring into the nature of this madness. When I read that attack on Bari Weiss, what sprang to mind was Albert Camus’ play Caligula, a retelling of the well-known tale of the deranged third emperor of Rome. In the play, the initially benign ruler suffers an existential crisis. Realizing that he alone wields absolute power, he decides to follow the logic of that power to its ultimate conclusion. “It’s just because no one dares to follow up his ideas to the end that nothing is achieved,” he says. “All that’s needed is to be logical right through, at all costs.”
This logic leads Caligula to believe that he is beyond good and evil. Thus, he is free to choose evil. So he does; nothing, after all, can stop him. He initiates a reign of terror over his subjects, rapes the women of the nobility, randomly orders executions, declares himself a god, kills his wife, and in the end invites his own assassination.
Rereading Caligula while writing this piece, I was shocked by the extent to which Camus had anticipated the Woke phenomenon.
Indeed.