Below is my column in the New York Post on a growing crisis in higher education as enrollments and trust falls. Despite these trends, administrators and faculty appear entirely oblivious and unrepentant. They continue to alienate many in the country who view schools as pursuing indoctrination rather than education.
Here is the slightly expanded column:
In the 1930s, Bertolt Brecht asked “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” As someone who has been a teacher for over 30 years, I find myself increasingly asking the same question as trust and enrollments fall in higher education.
Trust in higher education is plummeting to record lows. According to recent polling, there has been a record drop in trust in higher education since just 2015. Not surprisingly, given the growing viewpoint intolerance on our campuses, the largest drops are among Republicans and Independents.
There has been a precipitous decline in enrollments across the country as universities worry about covering their costs without raising already high tuition rates. From 2010 to 2021, enrollments fell from roughly 18.1 million students to about 15.4 million.
There are various contributors to the drop from falling birthrates to poor economic times. However, there is also an increasing view of higher education as an academic echo chamber for far left agendas. For many, there is little appeal in going to campuses where you are expected to self-censor and professors reject your values as part of their lesson plans.
That fear is magnified by surveys showing that many departments have purged their ranks of Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians.
In my new book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculties replicate their own views and values.
One survey (based on self-reporting) found that only nine percent of law professors identified as conservative.
Some anti-free speech advocates are actually citing higher education as a model for social media in showing how “unlikeable voices” have been eliminated.
Many of those “unlikeable” people are now going elsewhere as schools focus on degrees in activism and denouncing math, statistics, the classics, and even meritocracy as examples of white privilege.
Schools offering classic education are experiencing rising enrollments, but the growing crisis has not changed the bias in hiring and teaching. Despite repeated losses in courts, universities and colleges continue to deny free speech and diversity of thought.
The fact is that this academic echo chamber may be killing educational institutions, but the intolerance still works to the advantage of faculty who can control publications, speaking opportunities, and advancement with like-minded ideologues.
We have seen the same perverse incentive in the media where media outlets are seeing plummeting readers and revenue. Journalism schools and editors now maintain that reporters should reject objectivity and neutrality as touchstones of journalism.
It does not matter that this advocacy journalism is killing the profession. Reporters and editors continue to saw at the limb upon which they sit due to the same advantage for academics. For reporters, converting newsrooms into echo chambers gives them more security, advancement, and opportunities.
Recently, the new Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis was brought into the paper to right the ship. He told the staff “let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
The response from reporters was to call for owner Jeff Bezos to fire Lewis and others seeking to change the culture. The Post has been eliminating positions and just implemented another round of layoffs to address the budget shortfalls.
In the meantime, trust in the media is at record lows — paralleling the polling on higher eduction. The result is the rise of new media as people turn to blogs and other sources for their news.
The same phenomenon is occurring in academia. People are now evading campuses with online programs. For those of us who believe in brick and mortar educational institutions, we may be watching a death spiral for some universities and colleges as administrators and faculty treat their students as a captive audience for their ideological agendas.
In the meantime, alternative educational opportunities are seeing a rapid rise. Take the Catherine Project, a project started four years ago, to offer free discussions of classic works that is also free from ideological indoctrination. The project has reportedly doubled in size since 2022.
With online educational technology, universities and colleges no longer have a monopoly on education. People have choices and they are increasingly choosing alternatives. To paraphrase Lewis, “let’s not sugarcoat it…People are not [buying our] stuff.”
We are killing our institutions through an abundance of ideology and a paucity of courage. Recently, interim Columbia President Katrina Armstrong actually apologized to students who took over and trashed a building in pro-Palestinian protests.
During the protests, a Jewish Columbia professor was blocked by the school from going on campus because he might trigger anti-Semitic students. Yet, Armstrong apologized for the alleged abuse of police and the role of the university in allowing them to be harmed, adding “I know it wasn’t me, but I’m really sorry.… I saw it, and I’m really sorry.”
Like many conservatives and libertarians, Jewish students and families are now reportedly looking for alternatives to schools like Columbia.
What is clear is that many administrators and departments will continue to bar opposing views and maintain the academic echo chamber. Many have tenure and expect to ride out the decline of their institutions while enjoying the acclaim of being academic crusaders. Of course, it will become increasingly hard to be social warriors if you hold a war and nobody comes.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage”
Alex Soros BUYS Tampon Tim, Kamala Harris’ VP debacle.
https://nypost.com/2024/09/25/us-news/alex-soros-hosts-tim-walz-in-his-fancy-nyc-home/
Walz, soros, and abedin…where was Xi?
Anyone that thinks walz and soros and anthony weiner’s ex are in it to make things better for America and Americans are freakingh out of their minds.
OT:
Hey Prof Turley,
Will you comment on free speech loving Musk doing exactly what he scolded his predecessor for doing at Twitter by censoring media for posting unverified media content?
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24255298/elon-musk-x-blocks-jd-vance-dossier
JT believes in good free speech and bad free speech. This is obviously bad free speech because it might show JD and trump in a bad light. The cult master does not allow bad speech. See speech is free only if trump approves of it.
Much like Repos in general. They believe in freedom, as long as it is practiced in their definition of freedom.
Do you enjoy displaying your ignorance for all to see.
Now go find out the real reason it was censored.
He censored the publication of illegally hacked data.
* What a disgrace it all is. It’s without dignity, grace, honor, virtue of any kind. Prof Turley points to Shellyne Rodriquez as the face of rage but I’d point to the squad and words of “baby girl, bleached blond bad body, I’m trying to get clarification” as the faces of disgrace.
Vacation.. merci
* It’s been an exciting excursion into the philosophies of Sartre’s Existentialism and Nietzche’s Nihilism. Certainly they do not have a political and moral foundations component. The left must be understood as being without morals, ethics, laws, rules because it’s all lies and they are good existentialists.
There aren’t God given rights because there is no God and the God thing is a tool to oppress and suppresexistentialist. Morals make slaves No one has a right to free speech. That principle is a lie. They have said the Constitution is a trash piece of paper.
The constitution certainly isn’t an existential document. Rage and disgrace and topless transsexuals on the WH lawn, transsexual day for Easter and what, Ms. Harris, can the nation look forward to at Christmas 2025? BYOD, bring your own drugs, strip tease in the hallways, eyes wide shut Christmas Eve?
It’s unhinged, insanity. There are laws.
Mail your ballot while on vacation…
Salvador Daliesque…
FINISHED !
“FINISHED !”
I can only futilely wish that you were finished posting to the comment section of this blog. What a tremendous upgrade to the mean of intelligence and integrity on display here that would be. My personal preference is that you meant that you were finished existing as a respirating organism, and that you were prepared to make that wish a reality.
Sorry, slammed on wrong post, I would like to retract what I wrote.
Hurricane going by and it’s blowing harder than Kamala at a Willie Brown rally!
Did you buy your watch from the grifter?
Get it now, maybe it comes with a stock certificate for DJT, near an all time low, for the loser, convicted felon, rapist, paid millions for his failed university.
But hey, get your watch now.
^ TDS sufferer ^^
Can I use my $25,000 down payment money karmela harris is gonna give me and take out a HELOC and buy that watch? Maybe those possible, maybe we’ll see potential, temporary tax measures can offset the watch costs.. Maybe when she cancels my medical debt I can but the watch instead of paying what I owe? Maybe if she lowers Rx costs, you can offset the watch cost with saving from your ozempic and viagra costs?
I can’t wait until I get some karmela money…uhm uhm uhm. Maybe she’ll blow me for a vote?
My estimated master AS BRILLIANT as always!
You wanna hear something absolutely beyond the pale and uproariously hilarious?
There are political signs popping up in the one-party communist state of the People’s Republic of California.
As if…
These communists are idiots.
When comrade Harris was elected U.S. Senator, there were two Democrats and no Republicans on the ballot in the one-party communist state of the People’s Republic of California.
Biden’s Handlers and his Soros funded prosecutors are an example of how universities have failed us. They failed to inculcate dicsernment of right/wrong but also encouraged them to disregard absolute truth. What universities are doing now is teaching that there are no absolute truths, except that espoused by the elitists in power.
If they will go after Trump, they will go after any of us. Biden’s Soviet tactics should alarm all Americans.
Appeals Court Questions $489 Million Civil-Fraud Judgment Against Trump
Panel voices concern that case brought by New York attorney general overreached
“I’m sorry, what’s being described sounds an awful like a potential commercial dispute between private actors,” Justice John Higgitt told a lawyer who argued the case for the state.
“There has to be some limitation on what the attorney general can do in interfering in these private transactions where people don’t claim harm,” said Justice Peter Moulton.
Judith Vale, New York’s deputy solicitor general, told the panel that the fraud law at the center of the case was meant to stop and deter business practices like what Trump was accused of committing.
Justice David Friedman said he couldn’t find another example of the state attorney general’s office using the fraud law so broadly. “You’ve got two really sophisticated parties in which no one lost any money,” he said. Other cases, he said, involved damage to consumers or the marketplace.
“You don’t have anything like that here,” he said.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/appeals-court-questions-489-million-civil-fraud-judgment-against-trump-0d3f3c72
Dennis will be devastated.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
THE DOJ ALWAYS GETS ITS MAN!
N.Y. Mayor indicted for opposing Obama’s invasion and “Great American Population Replacement Plan”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Eric Adams indictment unsealed: NYC mayor accused of accepting improper campaign contributions”
“New York City Mayor Eric Adams is accused of taking bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources”
– ABC
________
“Mayor Adams term has been mired by squabbles with White House over migrant influx and border crisis”
– NY Post
NYC government has become a monopoly. When that happens the government requests bribes. Why? Because they can unless someone stops them. Same unions. Wholly corrupt.
Adams took bribes. He’s guilty. Did the turks blow the whistle?
Jonathan: I will get back to your column but first some other breaking news I should posted a couple of days ago but domestic priorities came in between. So here is that post now.
Demonizing Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio by DJT and JD Vance has resulted in real life consequences for the two. The Haitian community and its supporters are fed up with all the slanders and have filed a criminal complaint against DJT and his VP nominee. What’s that about?
The “Haitian Bridge Alliance” has brought a complaint under a unique Ohio criminal statute . Section 2935.09(D) of the statute permits “A private citizen having knowledge of the facts who seeks to cause an arrest or prosecution under this section may file an affidavit charging the offense committed with a reviewing official for the purpose of review to determine if a complaint should be filed by the prosecuting attorney…”. Basically, this means the HBA must first file an affidavit with a municipal judge. If the judge finds there is sufficient evidence in the affidavit that a crime has been committed it is forwarded on to a local prosecutor for review. If the prosecutor agrees with the judge a criminal complaint can then be issued.
There are a number of bullet points in the affidavit. One alleges that DJT and Vance did “Make false alarms–by knowingly causing alarm in the Springfield community by continuing to repeat lies that state and local officials have said were false”. Another allegation is that DJT and Vance engaged in “Committing telecommunications harassment–by spreading claims they know to be false during the presidential debate, campaign rallies nationally televised interviews, and social media”. The affidavit further alleges DJT and Vance “Committed aggravated menacing” by “knowingly making intimidating statements with the intent to abuse, threaten, or harass the recipients [the Haitian community] including Trump’s threat to deport immigrants who are here legally to Venezuela, a land they have never known”.
I will try to keep you posted on developments in this case. If the municipal judge approves the affidavit and the prosecutor also agrees there are sufficient facts under the Ohio statute we could see DJT facing another criminal indictment–this time including his sidekick!
“Breaking news,” says Dennis to JT.
“I will try to keep you posted on developments in this case.” Well, I’m sure the professor will appreciate you keeping him knowledgeable on news that was plastered all over television, print, and Internet during the last 24-36 hours. Or is it that you live on the west coast and got the news hours after everybody else? Or is it that Trump’s golf course interfered with your signal capacity way up high on your one-of-a-kind property?
Denny loves being fashionably late to the party.
His Supermarket Tabloid is often days behind on the news.
Jonathan: I will get back to your column but first some other breaking news I should posted a couple of days ago but domestic priorities came in between. So here is that post now.
Jonathan, your Besty Dennis McIntyre wants to deflect from No Longer Breaking News: his former hero and sponsor here, alleged and currently on parole President Joe Biden, has been replaced in the job of president by First Babysitter Jill and The First Felon Son.
The recent Babble Session he showed the world while being unable to introduce the leader of India on almost the same day First Babysitter Jill chaired his administration’s first cabinet meeting in a year is why Dennis is so desperately attempting to deceive you.
AND don’t forget the esteemed scammala Harris covered for them for the good of the nation…
It’s a disgrace to ourselves and our families and friends to be here.
Interim Columbia President Katrina Armstrong says: “I’m really sorry.” How Right she is.
At this point, any parent that still thinks they are sending their kids to ‘college’ probably need a talking to. Our university system is *already* toast. This is not something in the works, it’s something that’s already been achieved. You might as well light those dollars on fire.
The problem is not present in every college or within every department within every college.
Regardless, parents should be considering how to address their childrens futures.
And they have choices.
The left has owned Education in the US for a couple generation, now. The results are exactly what you would predict based on the left owning anything for that period of time – a complete disaster.
Pick an institution in the US that the left has held sway over that is better off than before they had sway, hell, find one that is worth much of anything since they held sway. It is so clearly obvious they are parasitic.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
Congress has no power to tax for, fund, or regulate education.
The Founders and Framers left education to the free markets of the private sector.
And those institutions are failing.
Free markets work.
Even slightly free markets ultimately work.
I love that part in the movie when our Captain “catches” and then rides the great woke … er … white whale. Colleges seem to love and mimic Melville, too.
Kids can come down to New College in Florida to avoid the indoctrination.
“TRUST AND ENROLLMENTS FALL IN HIGHER EDUCATION”
AMERICA DISINTEGRATES
______________________________
“In the 1930s, Bertolt Brecht asked ‘What if they gave a war and nobody came?’ As someone who has been a teacher for over 30 years, I find myself increasingly asking the same question as trust and enrollments fall in higher education.”
– Professor Turley
_____________________
Haven’t nations throughout history typically done their utmost to repel invasions and invaders whose clearly stated intent is to “open borders” and “fundamentally transform” them, including “Constitution and population replacement?”
Perhaps the nations that didn’t failed to “Know the Enemy,” as admonished by Sun Tzu.
The communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) are the direct and mortal enemies of The American Thesis of Freedom and Self-Reliance, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Actual Americans, and America.
The communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) are committing “Cases of Rebellion or Invasion,” not dissimilar to chaos and anarchy, wherein public safety requires the suspension of habeas corpus.
Habeas corpus may be suspended “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it,” which President Trump may have been referring to when he posted on Truth Social, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
Apparently, the American Founders and Framers were of the same mind.
Suspension of the writ remains today as ambiguous in declaring under who’s authority it may be suspended as it was in 1861, when it became a point of contention between then President Lincoln and Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney.
Article 1, Section 9, of the Constitution states that “the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
“The Great Writ’s origins go back to the signing of the Magna Carta in England in 1215 and the writ compels the government to show cause to a judge for the arrest or detention of a person.”
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/lincoln-and-taneys-great-writ-showdown
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/article-i/clauses/763
President Lincoln and Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, were in dispute over this issue as to whom it was specifically, the Executive Branch, or the Legislative Branch, of the U.S. Government upon which the authority of suspension of the writ was authorized as provided by the Constitution. In the end, Lincoln ignored the Supreme Court both by order and by deed.
Taney said; “The clause in the Constitution which authorizes the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus is in the ninth section of the first article. This article is devoted to the Legislative Department of the United States, and has not the slightest reference to the Executive Department,” Taney argued. “I can see no ground whatever for supposing that the President in any emergency or in any state of things can authorize the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, or arrest a citizen except in aid of the judicial power,” Taney concluded.”
“However, Taney noted that he didn’t have the physical power to enforce the writ in this case because of the nature of the conflict at hand. “I have exercised all the power which the Constitution and laws confer on me, but that power has been resisted by a force too strong for me to overcome,” he said. But Taney did order that a copy of his opinion be sent directly to President Lincoln.”
“Lincoln didn’t respond directly or immediately to the Ex Parte Merryman decision. Instead, he waited until a July 4th address to confront Taney at a special session of Congress.”
“The President also confronted Taney’s opinion that only Congress could suspend the writ.”
“Now it is insisted that Congress, and not the Executive, is vested with this power; but the Constitution itself is silent as to which or who is to exercise the power; and as the provision was plainly made for a dangerous emergency, it can not be believed the framers of the instrument intended that in every case the danger should run its course until Congress could be called together, the very assembling of which might be prevented, as was intended in this case, by the rebellion,” Lincoln argued.”
“After the Merryman incident, (On May 25, 1861, the U.S. Army arrested a Maryland Planter and private citizen named John Merryman, by order of Lincoln’s suspension of the writ, whereupon Merryman was detained without warrant by the military), Lincoln suspended the writ in other situations, and he received approval from Congress in March 1863 to suspend the writ for the duration of the conflict when “the public safety may require it.”
Article 1, Legislative Branch
Article 2, Executive Branch
The Constitution would require amendment for the Legislative and/or Executive Branch to transfer and reassign powers.
Lincoln had no say.
Executives execute.
Justices judge.
It has been estimated that nearly 10,000 people were eventually incarcerated under Lincoln’s suspension of the writ during the war years, including editors and publishers, anti-draft activists, and in some cases political party activists.
Attorney General Edward Bates himself stated that while he believed the President had the authority, particularly under the circumstances in 1861, suspension of the writ would be likely to result in abuse.
“Lincoln might have appealed ex parte Merryman to the full Supreme Court. Instead, he chose to ignore Taney’s comment as having no legal standing, and only replied to Taney in a message he drafted for Congress when it met in special session on July 4, 1861.”
“Lincoln was seconded in his response to Taney by Attorney General Edward Bates (on July 5th), by Philadelphia jurist Horace Binney in The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus under the Constitution (1862) and by Harvard law professor Joel Parker in Habeas Corpus and Martial Law: A Review of the Opinion of Chief Justice Taney, in the case of John Merryman (1862).
Congress eventually confirmed Lincoln’s suspension of the writ in the Habeas Corpus Act of March 3, 1863, and Lincoln went on to suspend the writ in several other locales, eventually extending the suspension to the entire country and defending the suspension in his public letter of June 12, 1863, in reply to Erastus Corning. Nevertheless, the suspension of the writ continued to be contested in ex parte Vallandigham (1863) and ex parte Milligan (1866). Merryman was released to civil jurisdiction on July 13, 1861, and attempted unsuccessfully to sue General Cadwalader for wrongful imprisonment in 1864.”
https://constitutingamerica.org/ex-parte-merryman-1861-guest-essayist-allen-guelzo/
The Taney decision has been criticized as being partisan against Lincoln. Lincoln’s argument was that Congress was out of session and it was an urgent matter of national security during a time of rebellion to arrest a man who committed treason. Most legal scholars think Lincoln had it right.
In opposition, Justice Scalia supported the legal argument holding that Congress alone may suspend the writ in a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, in the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.
Current legal thinking is that Lincoln had the legal right to declare martial law by his position as commander in chief. Thus, although the legal question of Lincoln’s decision remains ambiguous, his act was defensible legally and constitutionally. Lincoln and the Union were in a time of insurrection and war. Congress was not in session. Congress approved his suspension when they were back in session.
https://thecivilwarcenter.org/2023/06/13/abraham-lincoln-and-the-suspension-of-habeas-corpus/
* Thank you Professor Turley and Professor Dershowitz for the exploration of the Constitution of the United States of America!
Thank you also to Professors Shapiro and Sandal for a brief exploration of the political and moral foundations. Great adventure!
* and so many other hyper-intelligent Professors, Sapolsky, Lewin, Stearns for giving so generously -and others.
* and Professor Susskind.
Dear Prof Turley,
The demise of higher education will not be due to a lack of ‘conservative’ voices/educators – like some glorified ‘fact checkers’ in the hallowed halls of Academia .. . and the revolution will not be televised.
Compared to global thermal nuclear war, the indispensable right of free speech don’t amount to a hill of beans in the winter time. And, afaict, for the most part the ‘conservatives’ are every bit as crazy as the ‘liberals’ when it comes MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction.
That’s why I remain vehemently and urgently opposed to U.S. involvement in Ukraine, in particular, and Israel more broadly. Before it’s too late. Specifically, the corrupt, vile, vicious little uber-nationalist fascist neo-nazi Zelenskiy regime as well as Bibi’s gang of genocidal psychopaths, in toto.
(note. I used to think they were ‘our’ puppets .. . but now I think ‘we’ may be their puppets.)
Revised Top election issues;
1. Global nuclear war. duh
2. Free Speech
3. Price of Cheerios .. . and my ‘personal’ economic forecast (special note. I don’t give a flying fu(k about Raythons and/or Wall Street’s leading economic indicators.)
*and I continue to believe proper ‘education’ is the quickest route out of any social [TDS] disorder.
Good day sir.
* Everyone needs to get up to speed on Existentialism. Jean Paul Sartre’s crap philosophy.
Good post, professor Turley.
i love the question, and the answer is: the silent majority might actually have a say when freed from the inconceivable wealth of the people that oppose them. By its current proponents, ‘College is aright’, is hysterical, indeed. Make no mistake; we are fighting literal liberal fascism in 2024. Stop sending your kids. They can make six figures in professions that do not include dogma. There is no point in sending them, for years of debt, to a place they will just be shamed for being a fair-minded human being.
And sorry gang, posting from work on my phone, I did not intend typos.