The Ivy League Has Been Dumbed Down to Irrelevance

I should begin this article with the disclosure that I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1977. I was still 25 at the time, fairly young for a graduating law student. Many of the faculty were in their 50s and 60s and had carved out distinguished careers as scholars, litigators, authors of leading treatises, and public officials.

I felt truly honored to walk through the doors of the school where generations of law students and scholars had gone before me. The fact that Penn is one of only five Ivy League law schools (Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth are Ivy League colleges but don’t have law schools) and hosted its first law lectures in 1791 was a nice touch as well.

But what impressed me the most was the quality of the education. Penn was a true academic law school. Whether you could pass the bar or not was up to you; they didn’t train you for that, they taught the law.

Now that’s all gone. The law school along with the entire University is suffering a reign of terror under the banner of DEI. That stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The entire DEI regime is a lie. It does not encourage true diversity; it supports uniformity of thought along Marxist lines. It does not encourage equality of opportunity; it supports equality of results regardless of talent, merit or hard work.

And it certainly does not encourage inclusion. It practices exclusion of white males, Jews, and Asians and anyone else who cannot be labeled an “oppressed minority” using skin color as a litmus test. It is repugnant racism posing as anti-racist. It’s a fraud.

This article highlights just how bad things have become not just at Penn but also Harvard and MIT and, by extension, other once-great schools.

The presidents of Penn, Harvard and MIT were called to testify before Congress recently regarding anti-Semitism in their schools. When asked point blank if calling for genocide against Jews violated their schools’ code of conduct, they could only respond with mealy-mouthed tropes about “context.”

There’s no context needed when calling for genocide – it’s just wrong. These presidents showed themselves to be mediocre intellects who were slaves to ideology rather than leaders of the future elite class. Fortunately, Liz Magill of Penn was forced to resign shortly after the testimony (although sadly, she remains a professor at Penn Law). Harvard supported its president Claudine Gay, which is a disgrace for Harvard.

The lesson for parents is simple – send your kids abroad or to smaller schools that still value history, Western culture, literature, and critical thinking. The lesson for benefactors is even more clear – close your checkbooks and let these schools try to get by with bloated budgets and no new gifts.

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