The Segregated Universities
NEW YORK—Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, was founded by a minister in order to train other ministers.
Just like Harvard and Princeton.
The difference is that Harvard and Princeton are both listed on all the “best universities in the world” rankings, and Liberty always has an asterisk next to its name.
And I understand the reason why. As the definition of “university” expanded over the past four centuries, we decided that it should be all about academic freedom, inclusion, open-mindedness, and a willingness to look out into the world and study everything—not just the limited concerns of the founders.
And so Liberty has this one big problem: It’s segregated. It’s not segregated by race, but it is segregated by religious belief. If you’re not an evangelical Christian, you probably shouldn’t go there. It’s got everything universities are supposed to have—17 colleges, a medical school, a law school, a business school, an engineering school—and it does basic research and offers master’s degrees and doctorates. The Liberty Flames play Division I NCAA sports. But they also have a course in “young Earth creationism” as well as a “code of conduct” similar to the ones at military schools, so we can assume that atheists won’t fit in and Darwinists won’t fit in and…well, a lot of people won’t fit in.
And so I get why the guys who compile the “best universities” lists tend to downplay its importance or place it in subcategories like “regional” or “specialized.”
What I don’t get is why they don’t do the same thing to, say, Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Clark is a liberal arts school where incoming students are indoctrinated to detect and understand their unconscious “microaggressions” (implying that they’re all racist or sexist in one way or another) and given trigger warnings and safe spaces and all the other protections of Generation Snowflake. In other words, they’re required to “attend chapel”—it’s just a different kind of chapel.
To quote The New York Times, which chronicled the standard instructions at the Clark orientation program:
Don’t ask an Asian student you don’t know for help on your math homework or randomly ask a black student if he plays basketball. Both questions make assumptions based on stereotypes. And don’t say “you guys.” It could be interpreted as leaving out women, said [the chief diversity officer], who realized it was offensive only when someone confronted her for saying it during a presentation.
Of course, as soon as she was confronted during a presentation, the chief diversity officer asked to be absolved of her original sin (not being able to speak precisely enough to avoid all offense at all times) and so altered herself to make sure she was Clark material. She’s giving her conversion testimony.
The post The Segregated Universities appeared first on LewRockwell.
Leave a Reply