The Fall of Harvard and Collapse of American Higher Education
Once great institutions of learning are now feckless, duplicitous, and fabricated
“My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecclesiastes 12:12).
America’s universities have been rotten for decades, but it took this long to see the foundations cracking and crumbling. In a recent debacle that took place in the US House judiciary hearing on Free Speech on College Campuses addressing the spread of jihadism and antisemitism three female presidents of MIT, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania, soiled themselves by highlighting the collapse of higher education in America. This was a pathetic and horrendous display of cowardice that drew into question the entire enterprise of intellectual honesty and academic freedom in higher education.
Universities in America are broken. What started as anti-war protests and marches at the University of California at Berkeley1 and Kent State University in the 1960s became centers of anti-racism that funneled money into the pockets of BLM activists and grifters in the 2020s.2 This fall from grace was detailed in previous posts. However, the visible display of practiced ignorance and legal hairsplitting in the hearings was telling. Elise Stefanik pressed these “accomplished” women to admit that they would not prohibit calling for the genocide of Jews on their campus. Where is the ADL when you need them? They do not really protect Jews or Israel but instead advance liberalism and attack conversatives. Leftist non-profits, evil media and communist advertisers in SWJ organizations work with the political establishment to go after Elon Musk and other “right-wing” nut jobs for anything that mentions problems that relatae to race or ethnicity. But they will not raise a finger in support of the state of Israel against terrorists in Hamas.
Harvard, MIT, and UPenn presidents' comments at a hearing about student rallies and comments following the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which called for the destruction of the state of Israel were unacceptable. All three of them should be fired. Largely, this insanity comes from a school that boasts the highest citation rate of any American institution of higher education. Finally, all of these credentials are beginning to be questioned. Networks of Harvard alumni are part of a pervese protection racket that do not represent the best and brightest among us.
Professors who lied about their data and research must be anathema. If they are not punished and purged then these institutions promote acadmeic dishonesty and must be replaced with schools that will pursue wisdom, knowledge, and truth. Those who benefit from their affiliation with a school that permits and thus encourages plagiarism must be discounted. All professors must be judged on merit and Ivy Leauge academics are no better than any other teachers just because they have access to funding and fast tracks toward publications. It is the merit of the work that counts and we should all have access to must of the data and research needed to produce high quality studies. Many professors have taken advantage of their elevated position to advance their careers on pretenses, and Harvard participated in this fraud.
But, this is really only the most recent example of idiocy on parade in American colleges. Harvard actively prohibits professors from teaching science. Biologists can’t simply redefine sex and gender according to political whims and personal fancy. Dr. Carole Hooven, an instructor at Harvard was forced out because she had the temerity to teach that male and female are biological categories. FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) founded in 1999 ranked Harvard as the most hostile university toward free speech in their 2023 list.
Harvard protects inept and corrupt administrators who are not qualified to teach college courses as an adjunct professor at a Community College (which I did, and do not dismis the value in) let alone manage and oversee a school with this austere reputation.
Harvard University President Claudine Gay is facing new plagiarism accusations related to her 1997 doctoral dissertation. Despite the controversy, the university expressed unanimous support for President Gay. First, note she is president of the college that granted her the doctoral degree she needed. It’s like certifying your kids to work at your shop. Bureaucratic liberals at Harvard appointed a committee that found she used "duplicative language without proper attribution" i.e. plagiarism. She is required to make three corrections to her dissertation in response to these findings as if all students are allowed to “update” their doctoral work 25 years later. Plagiarism in a doctoral thesis must result in expulsion, and in fact, the members of her dissertation committee should come under suspicion for endorsing her fraud. Her fraud is greater than just her dissertation including essays and articles as a graduate student and professor at Harvard. Gay determined her actions may have violated citation policies, but they did not constitute "research misconduct."
The US House Education and Workforce Committee is now investigating these allegations of Gay. One of the principle victims of Gay’s plagiarism are researchers whom she stole work from. Ironically, this includes Carol Swain a conservative academic who converted from a radical Democrat and pentacostal Christian to a Republican and Southern Baptist. Gay took much of her research agenda without attribution from Swain’s book Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress (1993). Swain’s later book The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration (2002) presaged the response to racial divisions that would occur under Barrack Obama’s second term and that continued into the presidency of Donald Trump.
In 2011, Swain wrote Be the People: A Call to Reclaim America's Faith and Promise as she engaged the spiritual battle surrounding our culture. She resigned from Vanderbilt University after she was attacked by radical students who demanded that she attend diversity training because she was conversative. In 2018 She co-chaired President Donald Trump's 1776 Commission in response to The New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project. Swain is one of the best examples of an honest and hard working African American researcher and teacher who has been run out of higher education because she would not toe the line. Gay is a counter exmaple of a midwit who advanced her career through dishonesty by playing the game of racial affirmative action.
Plagiarism and fraud is running rampent in American educaiton. Universities that promote subjective morality and ethical relativism are producing criminals who reject all standards of right and wrong. Research papers in peer reviewed journals are replete with fake data, corrupted analysis, and manufacured results.3 Dan Ariely and Fransisco Gino, well known and celebrated researchers fabricated data and lied about the analyses performed in widely cited studies into social science and economics. The vale has been ripped and what is now visable at Harvard has revealed the disgusting underbelly of a corrupt system that promotes undeserving individuals into positions of power and influence.
Seymour M. Lipset, and Philip G. Altbach. " Student Politics and Higher Education in the United States." Comparative Education Review, 10 (1966): 320-49.
Decosimo, David (September 28, 2023). "Opinion | How Ibram X. Kendi Broke Boston University". The Wall Street Journal.
Baker M (May 2016). "1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility". Nature (News Feature). Springer Nature. 533 (7604): 452–454.