Cornell’s students, professors, and administrators might have to descend from their high horses to explain this one.
University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds’ recent editorial “To reduce inequality, abolish Ivy League” backs all of the Ivy League’s liberal do-gooders and agents of express wisdom and moral authority into a corner. Where do Ivy League universities get the notion that they can address the issue of income inequality when they are among the very institutions that exacerbate it, or, in the very least, do nothing to alleviate it?
Here’s an excerpt:
The problem of “inequality” looms over America like a storm cloud. According to our political and journalistic class, inequality is the single biggest problem facing our nation, with the possible exception of climate change. It is a desperate problem demanding sweeping solutions. President Obama calls it the “defining challenge of our time.” Hillary Clinton says we’re living in a throwback to the elitist age of “robber barons.” Bernie Sanders says inequality is the result of a “rigged economy” that favors those at the top while holding down those at the bottom.
In that spirit, I have a modest proposal: Abolish the Ivy League. Because if you’re worried about inequality among Americans, I can think of no single institution that does more to contribute to the problem.
As former Labor secretary Robert Reich recently noted, Ivy League schools are government-subsidized playgrounds for the rich: “Imagine a system of college education supported by high and growing government spending on elite private universities that mainly educate children of the wealthy and upper-middle class, and low and declining government spending on public universities that educate large numbers of children from the working class and the poor.
Reynolds goes on to make some insightful arguments about the nature of the Ivy League, and proposes among other ideas a minimum endowment payout to financial aid, as Tom Reed (R-NY) has recently proposed.
As with many Reynolds pieces, his point here is not necessarily literal. It’s meant to back ivory tower liberals into a corner and watch them squirm as they try to claw themselves out. It ensnares them within the confines of their own twisted or erroneous logic, and exposes them as hypocrites for opposing their own rhetoric or policies when they are on the receiving end of the gauntlet.
One conclusion from Reynolds’ piece is the hope that Ivy League professors and students, imbued with certain privileges unrealized by the overwhelming majority of this country and world, would focus their research and studies towards ends which will help grow the economy to benefit everyone. However, many professors and their students are greatly concerned with redistributing what’s already available in vain pursuit of what they think to be “fair” and “moral”. Their intellectual prowess is wasted spinning in the Marxist mud while more and more across the country grow increasingly despondent over their economic prospects.
Another form of inequity the Ivy League really exacerbates is social inequity by creating a false class of superior citizens.
At Cornell, at least, administrators, professors, and students inculcate in each other a lavish sense of elitism over those who either never went to college or who did but not to an Ivy League or similar top school. These types of often speak of “our role to educate others” and use other condescending phrases to establish a stark “us and them” mentality between the patrician Ivy elite and the less educated plebians (who live in the real world). True, many who attend Ivy League schools are able to do so because of their own hard work and the financial sacrifices of their families, but once students come to campus, administrators and older students do nothing to impart a sense of humbleness in them. Instead, students are convinced that they are philosopher kings whose ability to pontificate aimlessly confers upon them intellectual and social high-standing (they also think it should also confer economic rewards, but if often doesn’t, and this is the origin of intellectuals’ rage against capitalism). All this is nothing more than an augmentation of the widely-referenced culture of entitlement which has to great extent damaged the moral fiber of this country.
In short, attending Cornell might mean that you are smarter, or harder working, or more talented than most others—or it might not—but it certainly does not mean you are of a new class of superior citizen.
Don’t be surprised when, in reaction to Reynolds’ piece, you see Ivy Leaguers invoking the same haughtiness, arrogance, and elitism I have but only briefly described here to justify their privileged status and flattering self-appraisal.