Hothouses of Anti-Semitism

I know that many readers have had a similar question about my own particular obsession with the decline of America’s universities and have wondered why I have devoted so much space over the years to the topic. After all, as one revered rosh yeshivah put it, our children do not aspire to go to Harvard or Yale.

In my own case, the answer begins with my own happy college experience at the University of Chicago. Among the other benefits of the education that I received there, I believe, were habits of mind that made it easier for me to become an observant Jew within less than a decade of leaving college. Though the University of Chicago of my college years no longer centered on the same Great Books curriculum of my parents’ days in the Hutchins College, a great deal remained of the respect for the acquired knowledge of mankind over the centuries and the belief that the best way to pursue the big questions of life was to start with the wisdom of the ancients. That certainly made it easier to throw myself into the lifetime study of texts recording debates of two millennia ago.

Second, the assumption was that the truth is most likely to emerge from testing one’s ideas against those of others, and listening carefully and respectfully to what others have to say, even if it goes against the assumptions of a lifetime. That attitude left my ears and heart open to hear the Torah.

But those halcyon days are long past for American colleges and universities. As Fareed Zakaria, who holds degrees from both Harvard and Yale, asked recently on CNN, how did American universities, which were once the envy of the world, go in eight years from being viewed as centers of excellence to becoming objects of ridicule pushing political agendas? In 2013, 74 percent of those polled thought a college education was important. Just six years later, that had fallen to 41 percent. Applications for early admissions to Harvard have plummeted 17 percent over the last year alone.