Plenty of lefties find a $53.2 billion nonprofit intellectual community (Harvard) a little hard to grasp qua concept; read Robert Reich and many others. Indeed the graphic and grotesque injustice of superfatcat money-hoarder Harvard amid hundreds of struggling meritorious schools is a far leftier… visual... than right. The right is where no-ceiling-on-personal-and-institutional-wealth people like Greg Mankiw, Eric Cantor, and Lawrence Kudlow hang out; it’s predominantly the left that cares about wealth inequality.
Gregory Conti acknowledges that “skepticism” (I’d call it revulsion) in regard to small singular institutions hoarding billions and billions of dollars is not “an intrinsically right-wing proposition.” Nor should it be. But he correctly notes that, in the last few years, most democratic politicians, to their shame, have left the Ivies alone to play with their money, and that it’s the right which has pushed for endowment taxes. Indeed there’s a weird inversion here – the lawmaker lefties who should militate against the degenerate and destructive greed of some of our universities don’t give a shit, while the lawmaker righties who have no problem with greed and don’t like taxes do give a shit. Hm.
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Conti will go on to argue that left-dominated elite universities have no one to blame but themselves for their impending tax doom; if they’d been high-quality, neutral seekers after wisdom rather than woke noisemakers they wouldn’t have raised the hackles of conservative, vindictive legislators.
Go to any of, say, the 20 private colleges with the largest endowments and just look at the signage posted throughout campus for events, programs, services: You will find that at every one they convey a near-identical blend of culturally progressive presuppositions, identitarian appeals, and therapeutic argot.
Okay so I spent years teaching at GW (I know; not rich and elite enough; but hear me out) and years tromping around Harvard (father-in-law was a Harvard prof), and I’ve been visiting/writing about universities for decades. Here’s what you’re likeliest to see posted around most elite schools: Information about campus worship services. Dates/locations of standardized tests. Rentals near campus. Political signage from all sides – pro-Israel, anti-Israel, etc. Cultural event/lecture notices. Lowkey appeals to use campus health services if you are feeling down. Student suicide is a serious problem, and I’m not sure what “therapeutic argot” is bothering Conti, but the phrases I can recall are things like you’re not alone and talk to someone.
Nothing is more exactingly identitarian than fraternities and secret societies and houses, but these cliques are, by definition, not going to plaster statues of Elihu Yale with come-ons.
And as to the quality argument: Ivies have long handed down gentlemen’s C’s and welcomed Jared Kushners; they’re famous for it. Legacy admits are quite a thing, and they’ve watered down quality bigtime forever.
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No, for ol’ UD the only real argument in favor of taxing endowments in the many billions has nothing to do with right or left. It’s socially destructive for outrageous wealth to lie in the exclusive hands of small entities, personal or institutional. Are you okay with Elon Musk romping through the federal government, firing everyone and shutting everything down? Should have thought of that before you let him accumulate 420 billion dollars. Do you think it’s weird that one of Harvard’s recent presidents fucked its endowment to the tune of one billion dollars because no one was able to stop him from using it for high-risk credit default swaps? And that he freelanced for a hedge fund while president? Way woke, babe.
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UD thanks Rita for the link.
February 4th, 2025 at 12:45PM
Broadly true, but I think the vibe has shifted more in the direction Conti describes than you concede. The therapeutic argot is hardly limited to suicide prevention efforts exhorting you to “talk to someone”; it is the basic language through which the admin now communicates to students. I described this to some extent in an essay last year on undergrad housing as a totalizing therapy situation, but the problem is much bigger than what I detailed. Everything is framed in terms of minimizing “harm” and promoting “health” (meaning mental health) – course content, grading practices, residential policies. Universities put on dozens of “self-care” events every term, and encourage students to “process” national news through these “self-care practices.” Like the election is a crisis in your head, rather than an objective political event. It is now normal to have students tell me they’re missing class for a “mental health day” or talk about their stress management needs.
It may be that this therapeutic stuff all began as an effort to address campus suicide (though, given Lasch’s writings from long before anyone views campus suicide as a crisis, I doubt that genealogy), but it has metastasized way beyond efforts to talk a few severely depressed students off the cliff and into a dominant paradigm for all students to understand their life experiences.
Also, Yale’s secret societies have been doing DEI for years now. (Lol.)
Of course, it’s all still a form of elite reproduction yadda yadda. I’m just sayin’, the elites is reproducing some weird things these days, including probably their own destruction.
Also, sad to say, there is much less advertisement of anything via campus flyers anymore. Everything is posted online. Only entities like the Hare Krishna and the World Workers’ Daily are still flyering.
I think Conti basically shares your impulse against letting anyone get too rich. But I think whatever motive brings people to the table is good enough.