The Manhattan Statement on Higher Education

Some of my friends have authored & signed the Manhattan Statement on Higher Education. Read it here. The demands:

We call on the President of the United States to draft a new contract with the universities, which should be written into every grant, payment, loan, eligibility, & accreditation, & punishable by revocation of all public benefit:

• The universities must advance truth over ideology, with rigorous standards of academic conduct, controls for academic fraud, & merit-based decision-making throughout the enterprise.

• The universities must cease their direct participation in social and political activism; the proper vehicle for criticism is through the individual scholar & student, not the university as a corporate body.

• The universities must adhere to the principle of color-blind equality, by abolishing DEI bureaucracies, disbanding racially segregated programs, & terminating race-based discrimination in admissions, hiring, promotions, & contracting.

• The universities must adhere to the principle of freedom of speech, not only in theory, but in practice; they must provide a forum for a wider range of debate & protect faculty & students who dissent from the ruling consensus.

• The universities must uphold the highest standard of civil discourse, with swift & significant penalties, including suspension & expulsion, for anyone who would disrupt speakers, vandalize property, occupy buildings, call for violence, or interrupt the operations of the university.

• The universities must provide transparency about their operations &, at the end of each year, publish complete data on race, admissions, & class rank; employment & financial returns by major; & campus attitudes on ideology, free speech, & civil discourse.

I have five thoughts to share below:

1. What is the political situation we're facing concerning the universities? Americans obey the moral demands of universities, which on the other hand allow students to turn to violence & every kind of depravity -- all in a bid to get more tax money. At the same time, the elite universities are now at the core of the regime, it's not possible to staff elite institutions without them, & yet these same people hate most Americans.

2. You can see the inevitable political conflict. In order to make sense of it & to conduct it, well, however, we have to always keep in mind the different demands of justice & wealth, science & prestige. This becomes easier to see if you consider the likely paths to failure.

Justice could fail: If we let the universities create a new elite system based on calling most Americans evil racists, the democracy will die of despair & we'll then have an unusually callous oligarchy, propped up by criminal gangs.

Wealth could fail: If we turn to political conflict to the point that the economy is not taken care of, America would lose its eminence--elites are needful, after all, to produce wealth & too much fear or indignation would get in the way.

Prestige could also fail: A democratic-populist insurgency could use the state to destroy elite institutions, but then it would no longer be possible to recruit & train talent.

3. So we need an alternative to the extreme options, a blending of prestige, wealth, & justice, so that most people have strong motives to work & endure to see America thrive.

Maybe burn Harvard to the ground, but leave its competitors, properly chastised, to take its place.

Maybe encourage the techno-lords to reindustrialize America in order to produce wealth, but only if they yoke themselves to the demands of the middle class family.

So also with our political conflict--we need a new class of Republicans who will use the state to fight against a corrupt oligarchy, but only while they're answerable to the democracy.

4. What Rufo is talking about here with academia helps accomplish some of this, because it threatens lawsuits against academia, as well as denial of funds, while encouraging the democracy to exercise moral judgment about its elites, thus gaining confidence, & allowing our businessmen to recruit talent.

The major recommendations are to ban DEI & restore tranquility to the campus, putting an end to violence & ideology. This requires political supervision over an entire generation, as well as immediate action to restore decorum for the upcoming academic year.

5. But the major steps will be taken later, only when America will again claim to have first rate minds dare to speak publicly.

The first step is a frontal attack on "gender studies" & everything related. Academia can mean nothing while that nonsense persists.

The second step will be a public audit of the state of our elite universities by wiser men than those now running them into the ground. Think about "The closing of the American mind" as a blueprint for an exercise conducted in public, with counter-elite support, every year until we win. Only the most intelligent of our public spirited men can help in this regard. They are the guides of the learned.