Trading Knowledge for Power: Elite Universities and Washington, D.C.

As of this month, which saw the broadest and most concentrated campus unrest in 55 years, the academy is undeniably at a crossroads. But its reckoning has been obvious since last June, when the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action in universities is unconstitutional. It’s been even more obvious since October, when some student groups de facto endorsed terror with the implicit backing of DEI departments. Since Affirmative Action and DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) are the subjects or contributing causes of these landmark events, they naturally become the focus of the discourse around them. But viewing the situation through a broader lens suggests that both may be symptoms of deeper issues in higher education.      

This is especially evident when we consider that many of Affirmative Action and DEI’s most vocal proponents and opponents are speaking mirror-image versions of the same language. This language, in turn, is premised on a basic, and disquieting, assumption about the relationship between knowledge and power. 

Digging into this assumption, and its history, raises a troubling possibility: that as universities, particularly elite private ones, have increasingly become accoutrements of national power, they have minimized their ability to fulfill one of the purposes of knowledge since Socrates: using reason to carefully and systematically question authority and equip people for self-government. 

Read more at Law & Liberty.