Midwit ideologues: You get more of what you select for and reward. By Jill Jacobson.
Americans are shocked and horrified as university and law-school students nationwide show support for the terrorist group Hamas after its heinous attacks against the Jewish people. …
Those outside academia should know these students are likely shocked that wider society is not applauding their actions.
They don’t see these statements as particularly heterodox — in fact, the opposite.
Why?
Schools have, by their own design, become devoid of free inquiry and exchange, adopting instead a homogenous set of viewpoints, many of them extremely radical.
An elite American institution’s average student body is no longer a representative sample of adolescents with top GPAs and test scores.
For years, admissions offices across the country have deliberately prioritized passion for social justice and activism in potential applicants — to their detriment.
While community engagement is a worthwhile pursuit, at 17 years old, zealous activism for any complex cause is too often accompanied by a lack of intellectual curiosity and misplaced confidence in one’s point of view.
Have you changed your mind on fundamental issues since the age of 17? We sure have.
Yet increasingly, these young “activists” have neither the opportunity nor the incentive to allow their thinking to evolve.
Their views are rewarded by admissions offices around the country, then encouraged and intensified by like-minded students and faculty members. …
At elite institutions particularly, good jobs are nearly guaranteed, irrespective of students’ ability to display intellectual curiosity and exercise good judgment.
Curious students without such convictions who secure spots at top universities are generally in the minority. …
Why are such gifted students so willing to go along, especially when the end result is antisemitism?
While the wider population wonders in horror, the explanation is simple, albeit anticlimactic: They are doing precisely what the educational system rewards — applying the logic they have learned, even if it leads them to immoral ends.
Thus, tomorrow’s ruling class is selected and advanced. They are trained and rewarded to be hard left. Follow the money.
The left’s claim to care is revealed as mere pretence. Just as they once excused Soviet slaughter, they now excuse Muslim slaughter
