Our institutions of higher education led the news this week, but not for anything they did to advance human knowledge or add luster to Western civilization. Very much the contrary, in fact.

Harvard University has a flagpole out front, right by the statue of the university's founder and namesake John Harvard. Last Saturday that flagpole was flying the flag of Palestine, a nation that only exists as a couple of ambiguous territories controlled by anti-Western fanatics.

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(Until seven months ago I would have closed that sentence with the words "… under the watchful eye of Israel." Alas, Israel's eye turned out to be not very watchful.)

Yale University's Cross Campus on Sunday became an encampment, filled with strangely similar tents occupied by protestors chanting hatred for Israel. Negotiations with the college administration broke down, and on Tuesday morning the campus was cleared by Yale and New Haven police. There don't seem to have been any arrests.

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At Columbia University in New York City, the historic Hamilton Hall was taken over by rioters, who committed much vandalism there. Tuesday evening hundreds of cops stormed the place, climbing in through the windows, and arrested about a hundred protestors. This followed days of equivocating by the college administration while the protestors got more and more numerous and violent.

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At Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, protestors occupied and trashed the university library. Some valuable collections in the library were stolen. By week's end the library had been cleared of protestors, but it will be a while before students can use it again.

And so on. A report on that Portland event includes the sentence, quote, "police arrested 12 people, including four students," end quote. Similar numbers are given for the other occupations. This wasn't just students. There were faculty involved, and outside organizers.

And, yes, administrators — certainly at Columbia, where the university authorities have been flapping their arms uselessly since mid-April while the campus sank into disorder and all instruction ceased.

None of this should be surprising. I've been reading for years how the number of self-identifying conservatives in our university faculties has dwindled steadily, while those who remain are ever more intimidated by radical leftists in the college administrations.

Here's a quote from a report out of the American Enterprise Institute in March last year, quote:

There is real concern about job security in this charged ideological climate. Faculty were asked if they were concerned about losing their jobs or suffering reputational costs in cases where someone misconstrued what they said or did, took it out of context, or posted something about them regarding a past action or episode. Again, conservatives were the most concerned: 72 percent were somewhat or very worried, compared with 40 percent of liberals and 56 percent of moderates.

Conservative Faculty Are Outliers on Campus Today, by Samuel J. Abrams, RealClearEducation, March 23, 2023

 I've likewise been reading for years about the bloated DEI staffing — that's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — in higher education. There's been modest progress in that, with Florida and Texas passing laws to altogether eliminate their DEI bureaucracies, and colleges elsewhere reducing their DEI staff.

Others, however, are doubling down. The College Fix reported January 9th this year that the University of Michigan plans to increase DEI staffing from 142 last year to 241 this year, at a cost of over thirty million dollars. Economist Mark Perry, who conducted that analysis for The College Fix, quipped that "University of Michigan has become a DEI ideological complex with a university attached."

Of course the colleges have to spend their money somewhere and they have lots, lots of money. This morning's New York Post tells me that "Columbia is New York City's largest private landowner, and New York University is not far behind." I did not know that.

Punch line: They are exempt from property taxes!

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So yes, these recent ructions at our universities should be seen in the context of what American higher education has become: a huge amoral money racket, devoted to the promotion of a narrow anti-Western ideology.

It is time — in fact, way past time — to shut off all public funding … and tax relief.