Why the Universities Matter

I would guess that many readers wonder from time to time: Why does Rosenblum spend so much time writing about the decline of American higher education? After all, few Mishpacha readers dream of their children frolicking at Ivy League schools.

Admittedly, some of my fascination with the topic is personal. The late Allan Bloom writes in The Closing of the American Mind (1987) about how earlier generations of students came to college with high expectations of a new world of ideas about to open up before them.

I know I did. And I was not disappointed. Not only did I love college, but I feel it provided me with a base for much of my subsequent life. My classmates and I came to college to learn, to be exposed to new ideas and perspectives. Today’s students, according to Princeton’s Robert George, come into college already thoroughly indoctrinated and prepared to be offended at whatever challenges that indoctrination. By contrast, at the University of Chicago, in my day, the dictum of former president Hanna Holborn Gray, “The purpose of education is not to make people comfortable; it is to teach them to think,” still reigned supreme.

When I think of the intellectual ferment of those years, and the sheer joy of reading for hours on end in the library, I am filled with sadness for all those young people today who will never experience the same love of learning, largely because they think they have nothing of importance yet to learn.