Outlook

Hakaros hatov (gratitude) all the experts on shalom bayis (marital harmony) assure us is the key to building solid relationships. I suppose it’s no secret that my relationship with President Barack Obama has often been a troubled one. So I’m trying to work on my hakaros hatov. And I think I’ve succeeded. I’m grateful to President Obama for

having convinced the American public of the limited utility of an Ivy League education in picking its leaders. Already a year ago New York Times columnist David Brooks noted with alarm that the public had turned decisively against the “educated classes.” Brooks the Times resident conservative voice was so dazzled by then freshman senator Barack Obama at their first meeting as the two chewed over the finer points of the philosophy of Edmund Burke that he urged him to run for president as soon as possible. (Perhaps Brooks can be forgiven: Had Obama shown any of Burke’s skepticism about revolutionary change he would not be in the pickle he is in today.) Noemie Emery in the Washington Examiner captures brilliantly what the American public has discovered about the Ivy League: “That our ‘educated class’ is educated beyond its intelligence and mistakes mastery of its patois and attitude for wisdom and competence. It . . . values too highly its skill sets which are entertaining but not on the optimum level of consequence.” Far more important writes Emery are “resolution moral clarity and an ability to understand and connect with a great many people.” There are two principal deficits to an Ivy League education.

One is the lack of diversity of opinion to which one is exposed. With all the rush to affirmative action in faculty hiring one group remains vastly underrepresented: academics of a conservative bent in the humanities and social sciences. Many bright young men and women enter university never having met anyone whose politics are not roughly the same as their own and they are likely to leave the groves of academe just as they entered. As anyone raised learning in chavrusa can appreciate having to defend one’s position in debate is essential to clarifying one’s thinking. For that reason conservative students are better served by an Ivy League education than their leftwing counterparts. The former spend their entire educational careers surrounded by people whose political views — and often social mores — differ sharply from their own. Their experience makes it impossible for them to entertain the idea that all intelligent people think exactly as they do. And they learn early on the limited persuasiveness of shouting at those with whom they disagree “You’re an idiot.” That is one reason that bright young conservatives are

such good debaters. Think William Buckley (Yale College). Or Chief Justice John Roberts (Harvard College Harvard Law) who was by general consensus the outstanding appellate advocate of his generation. Or Associate Justice Samuel Alito (Princeton University Yale Law) another firstrate appellate advocate. A lack of exposure to diverse opinions fosters the belief that there is one correct solution to social problems. That explains in part why liberals entertain so few suspicions of big government. Belief in one correct solution makes government coercion more palatable: One comes to view those who are not with the program as either immoral or congenital idiots.