Unfortunately, the university where important things once mattered is being transformed into a place where everything is politicized, and a politicized place is a sick society that, in your words, lives by lies. For my entire career here, I have had students of all backgrounds, races, nationalities, and orientations and have found the experience very rewarding and would do it again. Non-elites tend not to become activists because they are not full of themselves or believe the rest of the world exists for their amusement.
I prefer the non-elite students to elites, who have a ridiculous sense of self-entitlement and who always are looking for new and better ways to be offended. (That is fine college is not for everyone, and I strongly believe that there are many good jobs in the trades that for many people would be much more fulfilling than becoming a bureaucrat, which is many graduates become these days. In my own teaching experience here, I have had students who probably could have done well anywhere and others that probably didn’t belong in college at all. Many are first-generation college students, a good portion of our students are African American, and our entrance standards are not difficult. The curriculum was a fairly classical one in that and students received the kind of educations that were not markedly different than what previous generations had enjoyed. This was a university that while its faculty leaned left (And what faculty at a state university does NOT lean left?), there still existed a commitment to the last vestiges of academic liberalism, free speech, and real diversity. I’m in my last semester at my college, having started here decades ago, when it was a more open, more tolerant place.
He has given me permission to post it, with the proviso that I slightly edit it to preserve his identity: I received this message yesterday from an occasional correspondent, a veteran college professor.
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