The Dark Ages Are Back!
I seem to be finding a lot of material at The Atlantic lately. Alan Lightman, who has been a professor at both Harvard and MIT and appears to be nothing if not a member of the academic establishment, has recently sounded the alarm: The Dark Ages Are Back . Since April 22, more than 500 leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies have signed a statement protesting the unprecedented interference of the Trump administration into higher education, interference that included external oversight of admissions criteria, faculty hiring, accreditation, ideological capture, and, in some cases, curriculum. As the statement says, higher education in America is open to constructive reform. However, “we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.” Especially targeted by the administration have been international students. Here's where his argument starts to lose momentum. In this post , I looked at so...