This is an important book on a vastly important subject: the destruction of our system of higher education and the fact that the forces at work there are now reaching into the wider realm of American society and spreading the corruption into new areas. The author uses an interesting metaphor. She suggests that the University of California (or an individual campus) is now two institutions: Cal 1 and Cal 2. Cal 1 is the great university of the past, built upon the development and transmission of knowledge, the amelioration of human ignorance, the reduction of disease, the expansion of the human imagination and the dispersion of knowledge to corners of society that previously lived in darkness. Cal 2 is something altogether different: a vast and vastly expensive bureaucracy subscribing to the beliefs that identity politics are paramount, western history is a trail of tears involving victimization of the marginalized, that patriarchy reigns and lives to despoil the lives and spirits of women and minorities, that the university represents a culture of rape and dominance and that the university's principal role is to reduce the oppression, comfort the oppressed and bring them to the forefront of power and influence. Cal 2 has now largely supplanted Cal 1, particularly in the humanities and soft social sciences and the apparatus that leads that process is in place to intimidate presidents and chancellors and hold a damoclean sword above their heads that threatens them with charges of racism, homophobism, heteronormativity and so on which will destroy them if they should be so bold as to challenge the status quo. Those charges will be applied ruthlessly, without regard to fact or logic since facts and logic are in disrepute following the depredations of the French Nietzscheans and other voices of postmodernism and poststructuralism. One might call this neoRousseauan, given Rousseau's contempt for civilization and the rationalism of the Enlightenment, but Rousseau is a dead white male and is to be silenced along with his brother voices from the past.
This is a problem. It is a problem for many reasons, not just because it is destroying higher education, but because it has, at the end of the day, simply not worked. Minorities are not thriving. Their test scores remain lower than, e.g., Asians and whites; their graduation rates are lower. Their indebtedness is higher. Their pass rate on the Bar exam lags behind, and so on. The solution has not been to raise expectations or (Heaven forfend) question the incidence of single-parent households, out-of-wedlock births or the injunction to not 'act white'. The 'solution' has been to further reduce expectations, to remove such obstacles as standardized tests and conventional methods of instruction. Again, this has not worked, and so the diversity bureaucracy (or 'industry' as it is now often termed) is expanded beyond all reasonable bounds. Fifty million more dollars of endowment and a dozen more deanlets, deanlings, associate vice provosts, directors and vice-chancellors just might do the trick.
The book consists of four broad sections: Race, Gender, The Bureaucracy and The Purpose of the University. The arguments are factual, logical and rational. There are a few major takeaways: the processes at work here are truly delusional; the processes at work here are incredibly expensive though there is precious little evidence of their success; the processes at work here are expanding rather than contracting, and, perhaps most important, the processes are hurting the people they are most designed to help (except for the fact that the processes are creating a bureaucracy that provides a plethora of well-paying jobs for those operating what is, ultimately, a cruel scam).
I have read Heather MacDonald's work in the past and it is scrupulously fair, informative and on point. That is certainly true of this more extended study of a subject that she has addressed on several previous occasions.
The question that haunts me is how and why we have permitted all of this to happen? Part of the reason is that the academic leaders of the past have been replaced by corporatists prepared to scrounge tuition dollars and protect their own positions at any cost. These individuals advance themselves by creating new programs and expanding the number of their 'direct reports'. "Diversity" is an area that will always go unchallenged by sympathetic faculty regardless of the fecklessness of the activities or, indeed, the detrimental effects on the instructional budget, the internal research budget and faculty salaries and faculty hires. The corporatists know that they can never defend courageous counter actions by principles, facts or logic because we are at war and the cui bono forces within the industry will seek victory by any means and at any cost. There are also doubtless a number of individuals who are 'true believers' and some who seek to signal their virtue through bien pensant actions and stances. The delusion may not result in positive, authentic results but it soothes and salves egos to a considerable degree. It is also fair (but 'outrageous' to say) that some portion of the student activism in this area is motivated by a desire to bypass requirements that might be in the students' best interests but are not part of their desired lifestyle. Calculus is difficult; why can't I call myself an engineer and not be required to study it? It's racist and sexist anyway because it was created by Leibniz and Newton.
It is fascinating to see the ideological contradictions at work here. One extended discussion concerns the 'rape culture' industry and the manner in which it argues, on one side, that women should be as promiscuous as men, as sexually indiscriminate as men and, thus, validate the claim that gender differences are not biological but cultural. At the same time, these women cry out for a culture of legal/sexual contracts, of kangaroo courts that deny the possibility of cross examination, legal representation or the kinds of evidentiary requirements consistent with the laws that obtain one inch beyond the university campus. We have both Babylon and a neoVictorian fainting-couch/ vapor-laden construct at the same time.
The book is sad, frightening, enraging and utterly riveting. It is not particularly enjoyable to see one of the principal institutions of our society brought to the brink of destruction, particularly one that has served to utterly alter lives, hearts and minds and bring both titanic achievements and great social mobility. There may be hope in the fact that insanity generally does not persist forever. There is certainly evidence that students have fled from self-corrupted majors or, e.g., gone to new emphasis areas such as Creative Writing, that valorize art, form, craft, imagination and, sometimes, wisdom. When the tuition payers finally rise up in revolt it may catch the attention of the corporatists.
Highly recommended. Every person who is concerned with the state of higher education should read this book.
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