The Kids Are Alright

What to make of the kids on campus having a moment? Is it just performative social media activism, each participant with what amounts to the equivalent of a TV broadcasting studio in his/her pocket? Or are they the canary in the coalmine of something that is deeply wrong with society? Is this indicative of the rot currently wasting away the body of our culture? An intolerant ideological cancer that has been spreading for decades eating away at our value system through Affirmative Action and DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs, which promote shame and guilt for the power and success of western civilization? 

I think the correct answer is found somewhere in between. This is a moment of hysteria supercharged by social media and a mainstream media bent on overdramatizing to generate audience fear and outrage. It also points to problems that have been festering in the universities for decades.

But let's start with the main point: To quote The Who - the kids are alright. Don't blame them for their dumb ideas, their ignorance and misguided notions. For not having depth of knowledge and understanding of a situation that has a complex history. It's totally normal. They feel anxious about the future, as youngsters always do. They reject the conventions of their parents which they feel have taken the world down the path of disaster. They want a more just world. They want to voice concern for minorities and the powerless. They oppose racism, inequality, poverty, discrimination and oppression. They want peace not war. All good things, and nothing new, nothing to be concerned about. When you're a kid at school you have the luxury of entertaining progressive ideas and experimenting with them. We're seeing the manifestations of it because it's being amplified in the media(s). Two other factors are involved as well. A large number of protest organizers and funders were not students at all, but activists coming from outside the university community to spur them on, which explains the coordination across many campuses. And the influx of foreign students which has increased steadily over the last decades - below I will talk further about how universities have become profit centers. But the problem isn't the kids, it’s the universities.

In the era of what we used to call 'politically correct' and is now called 'woke', universities decided they had to become 'safe spaces'. Here's the thing, universities were never 'safe', at least not in an intellectual sense. On the contrary, universities used to be adventurous places, designed to challenge and be challenged, even at the risk of offense. They were places to debate, argue, confront new ideas, try them on for size and either adopt or reject them. That's called growth. The problem is that universities no longer live up to that mission. They have become staid establishment institutions devoted to convention and cultural groupthink that has led to institutional rigidity and dogma. That rigidity was on full display when three Ivy League university presidents were unable to give a clear unequivocal answer before Congress to the simple question whether calling for the genocide of Jews constitutes harassment according to their school’s code of conduct. If they were too fearful to answer that straight forward question, why would anyone think they could be any more capable of dealing with raucous campus protests with a firm hand. Fortunately, the presidents were all forced to resign, which is the important result, I believe.   

But the question remains whether our current universities have doomed society by producing a 'leadership' class of closed-minded, unresilient, overly sensitive graduates, intolerant and offended at the drop of a hat? I doubt it. Take our kids as an example. Our two eldest (ages 30 and 27) graduated university in the last 5 years with advanced degrees. They are both working now, one as a lawyer, and the other at the university that awarded her a Master's. They both see the student protests similarly, as misguided and uninformed, and are extremely critical of the way their universities have handled the encampments. They are both very supportive of Israel and believe the pro-Palestine neo-colonialist narrative is bunk. Incidentally, my eldest daughter majored in Middle-Eastern Studies, took courses in Islamic studies, learned Arabic, and won a scholarship from the Government of Kuwait.

Our third daughter (25) studied fine arts and is graduating this spring. She currently holds views that are in line with what you might expect of a graduate in fine arts ie. extremely politically and socially progressive and very sympathetic to the Palestinian narrative and cause. Our youngest (19) will be attending university next year. Perhaps surprisingly, because it's at odds with most of her peers, she's fairly disgusted by the student protests and is very proud to support Israel. All to say, if our kids demonstrate anything (and maybe they don’t) it’s that nothing is inevitable when it comes to kids, so let's not get too excited. 

If we should have any concern it's for the adults, members of faculties and administrators. But I would not overstate that either. The free market will take care of them, just as it did the bumbling university presidents who embarrassed themselves and their institutions by not understanding what the boundaries of free speech were. Universities have become big business in the last 50 years. The luxury brands (read: the universities with strong name recognition and prestige) have benefited. Tuitions have skyrocketed as they've attracted wealthy foreign students, making them less accessible and even more elitist, and out of touch with mainstream society. The other institutions that have thrived as university profit centers are the ones that specialize in scientific and technical research and development. But what about universities as incubators of ideas and promoters of civic discourse? They're being put out of the free-speech/exchange of ideas business by the internet. The pro-Palestine encampment debacle may just be the latest chapter in the story of their waning cultural relevance, like the book publishers, art galleries, and record labels.