Friday Interview: Ivory Tower Helps Erode American Values | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post was created by the staff for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

Pope Center's Robinson details critical problems on college campuses


Jenna Robinson
    RALEIGH - Universities once served as repositories of knowledge. They were the defenders of civilization. Now, Dr. Jenna Robinson, president of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, says universities have turned away from that traditional role. Robinson addressed the John Locke Foundation's Shaftesbury Society earlier this year on the theme "Counterculture: How the Ivory Tower is Eroding American Values." Robinson shared themes from that speech during a conversation with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)

    Kokai: Before we get into them, we should point out that ... you said the speech would have gone on too long if you had talked about all of the ways that the ivory tower is eroding American values, so you just cut it down to a list of 10.

    Robinson: Right, 10 ways that the ivory tower erodes American values - I think that's plenty.

    Kokai: Now this is something that may surprise people who think very highly of the university system - either the public universities or private universities across the United States. We hear how great they are, but they really are taking an ax to sort of the core American traditions, aren't they?

    Robinson: They are. I mean, they have no respect for wisdom and tradition anymore, no respect for civil liberties, and really no respect even for the meritocracy and hard work that universities ought to be built on.

    Kokai: Well, let's get into some of the 10 ways that you listed during this speech. What's No. 1?

    Robinson: The first two - I'll talk about the first two together because they're so related. And it's what goes on in the classroom and who gets into the classroom. So the first one is that the general education curriculum has been completely gutted. It used to be that you would go in and you would take mathematics and logic and history and literature, and it would build a foundation for your major. You would have that baseline that you could then add to.

    Now it's just a smorgasbord. You go in, you take almost whatever you want, and if the faculty has imposed any limits, it's to make sure that you've taken a class on race, class, and gender. And the other part of it is that the students who do come in are not being held to the high standards they once were. Some universities, especially here in North Carolina, we've just seen a reduction: the SAT score required to get in is 750 combined for math and writing. And in other cases, the standards are just, they're not what they were. People are eschewing SAT scores all together.

    Kokai: So what kinds of problems do you have on a campus when you have students who shouldn't necessarily be getting in, and requirements that don't really require what they should be learning?

    Robinson: Well, one of the problems is that they're willing to take the faculty's word as gospel, and there are too many faculty members who are just replacing those old foundations with a new dogma of relativism and postmodernism.

    And they do that across the curriculum, in so many different ways. They do it by, like I said, adding race, class, and gender in. ... Radicals get hired and then get tenure - instead of real scholars.

    But what they really do is they attack civil liberties. So one way is by attacking religious freedom on campus. This has been going on for decades, and they just keep changing their tactics. So in the '80s they tried to keep religious groups from using classroom space, and the Supreme Court said, "No, you can't do that." Then in the 1990s they told student groups - Christian student groups or religious student groups - [they] couldn't share in student funds. The Supreme Court said, "No, no, no, you can't do that. You just have to distribute it evenly."

    And so, finally, they tried a new tactic. And that was, you have to have an all-comers policy. So if you're a Christian group or you're a Muslim group, you are not allowed to say that your leaders have to be Christian or Muslim. It has to be just open to everybody. And they finally won in the Supreme Court.

    So now the all-comers policy is the law of the land, unless states protect it specifically. So here in North Carolina and in Ohio, that's protected, but in the other 48 states, that's not the case.

    Kokai: I wanted to hit another one of your key points, and this would be of interest to anyone who followed that University of Virginia rape hoax case and what was done with students who were considered to be under a cloud during that whole incident. And that is, people are losing some of their basic rights that they would have in a criminal court if they happen to be on a university campus. In what way does that happen?

    Robinson: Absolutely. Basically, there is no due process on campus. So instead of having the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard for convicting students of sexual assault, the standard is preponderance of the evidence. So it really means that the jury weighs: Is it more likely than not that this happened?

    And that's a very, very weak standard. It's the weakest legal standard that there is. And what else has happened is that students are being punished before any evidence is even collected. So in the University of Virginia rape hoax case, all of the fraternities and all of the sororities were disbanded for a semester before any evidence was collected, before any investigation even got off the ground, really just in response to the Rolling Stone article being published in the first place.

    So I mean it's almost expel first, ask questions later. So the [public relations] is more important than evidentiary standards and students' rights.

    Kokai: We're not going to have a chance to get through all 10 of the ways that the ivory tower is eroding American values, but I want to hit the one you put as No. 10, and you mentioned this as one you thought was particularly significant. Tell us ... the one that you use to conclude your list.

    Robinson: Right. I think it's significant because it is the most pervasive. By no means do I think that everyone on campus is a radical, or that everyone on campus wants to conduct witch hunts or end free speech or religious liberty.

    But the problem is that the people who are not radicals on campus are far too willing to just keep their nose in a book or stay in the classroom and not get involved. And by doing that they're sending a signal to the professors who do want to radically change the campus that their behavior is acceptable and that radicalism is more important than scholarship, or is more important than inquiry or speech. And they're allowing all of this to happen by simply sitting around and saying nothing.

    Kokai: Now with this list, you followed it up by saying what could people do about it. You listed a couple of different ways that people can react to this and perhaps help change the situation.

    Robinson: Right. I think the first one, and the most important one, is to stop giving money to your alma mater. Unless you are 100 percent certain that they are on board with your values, do not send them another penny. They will use it in a way with which you don't agree, and even if you try to attach strings to that donation, they will find a way to get around them.

    We know from many, many examples that donor intent is really meaningless. So if you have to send money, send it to a student group who is hosting an event that you think is going to be a great addition to the campus conversation. Don't send it to the development people when they come calling once a year.

    The second way is, when you find out that something has happened on a college campus, particularly on your own alma mater's campus, broadcast what you found out. Too many people are just devoted to their alma maters, no matter what has gone on. And they really do need to find out what's been happening on campus, the kind of things with which we know they don't agree and they're just not aware of. So broadcast whatever it is you find out to as many people as possible.

    Kokai: And certainly in addition to both of those steps, pay attention to the work of groups like the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. If people want to know about many of these issues and the other things that you're following, what's the best thing for them to do?

    Robinson: They can go to PopeCenter.org, or they can also follow the Pope Center on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
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