FTA:he author’s ultimate protest only gets at part of the tragedy: “This, I believe, is the most significant problem in academia today—the low regard that professors place on honesty relative to other ideals. The narrow problem of race, admissions, and cheating at UCLA is tiny compared to that problem.” Given such frankness, we should not be surprised that he will be leaving UCLA for a post at George Mason University. The failure of the university is even graver than a rejection or redefinition of an archaic thing like honesty. Morality, like patriotism, is not enough. “It is curious,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed about social science, “how often we end where Aristotle begins.” The “institutional dishonesty” Groseclose condemns means disregard for truth as the purpose of the university. Once we commit to the idea that everything is subjective, then truth is a product of power. A dramatic example is the versions of the Bakke affirmative action case in constitutional law casebooks that omit the shockingly inferior scores of those in the minority special admissions applicant pool for the University of California-Davis medical school. The UCLA that Groseclose portrays is a living example of these bizarre abridgements. (And a far worse example than the institution to the south that is sometimes referred to as the University for Spoiled Children.) A well-heeled, “showcase” institution that can’t handle the truth is not only a useless luxury. It is a betrayal of the life of the mind. h/t:Instapundit
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 01:54:31 +0000