Derangement

Twenty-two years ago, the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome” to describe what he saw as the left’s unthinking, hysterical hatred of President George W. Bush (and for no reason other than that Bush was dragging us into America’s worst foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, costing thousands of lives for us, far more on the Iraqi side, and trillions of dollars). During Donald Trump’s first term in office, “Trump Derangement Syndrome” became a popular phrase among his supporters. More recently, I have heard some Israelis speak of “Bibi Derangement Syndrome,” and progressive New Yorkers evoke “Mamdani Derangement Syndrome.” And it all seems weirdly appropriate, somehow. If I had to come up with a single adjective to describe the state of America’s political culture today, “deranged” would probably be my choice.

So here’s another one: University Derangement Syndrome, prompted by the appalling “Manhattan Statement on Higher Education,” signed by right-wing activist Christopher Rufo and forty-three of the usual suspects, and issued by the prominent conservative thinktank the Manhattan Institute. It claims that “institutions of higher education” have “finally ripped off the mask and revealed their animating spirit: racialism, ideology, chaos.” In a shameless rip-off of the Declaration of Independence, it charges “the universities” (what? all of them?) with “a long train of abuses, evasions, and usurpations, which, with every turn of the ratchet, have moved our society toward a new kind of tyranny.” It then enumerates these crimes in seven bullet points, charging universities with promoting far-left ideologies, imposing racial quotas, practicing censorship, and trying “to advance the cause of digital censorship, public health lockdowns, child sex-trait modification, [and] race-based redistribution.” It finishes with the mephitic statement that “The universities have… in effect, declared war on millions of Americans who simply want to live, work, worship, and raise families in peace.” And, of course, it calls for federal funding to be used as a cudgel in this “war,” to force the universities to pursue “real knowledge” and properly educate “the future guardians of our republic.”

It’s worth dismissing right away the single biggest falsehood in the statement, namely that “The American people provide… more than $150 billion per year to the universities,” as if this is a subsidy that the universities are blithely diverting towards left-wing idiocy. Federal research funding consists overwhelmingly of contractual payments to universities to carry out research mandated by Congress to promote the public interest by doing things like curing cancer. The Trump administration’s attempts to cut off this funding amount to a blatantly illegal, deeply ideological attempt to destroy America’s scientific research infrastructure in order to increase its own power.

But take the rest of the statement. America’s system of higher education is massive, complex, diverse (can I still use this adjective?), and very difficult to generalize about. How do the statement’s sweeping generalizations apply to business majors at small state universities? To researchers in particle physics? To analytical philosophers offering courses on Wittgenstein? To medical students learning to treat asthma? To engineers working on Defense Department contracts? Or to me, teaching an ideologically diverse (sorry!) set of undergraduates about the Enlightenment by making them read Voltaire, Rousseau and Adam Smith? Of course, Rufo and his allies could respond by insisting that there is a climate of fear that prevents all of us from speaking our minds, a DEI bureaucracy that discriminates against white men, and a general ideological stranglehold that keeps “the universities” voting massively to the left.

But what sort of evidence do they have for such charges? When it comes to the universities’ ideological capture by the left and a climate of “tyranny,” they principally repeat the same individual stories about deplatforming, intimidation and “woke” excesses that cycle endlessly between right-wing publications like the City Journal (Rufo’s regular outlet), Fox News, and social media. But as the adage goes, “for example is no proof,” and even if every single one of these stories were entirely true, it still would not substantiate the generalizations they are making about American universities as a whole, or even about the elite universities which are their principal targets. It’s worth noting that fifteen of the statement’s forty-four signatories list an affiliation with US universities, including mine. If, over the next few months, all of them are stripped of tenure and fired for signing it, I will grant their point. If not a single one of them is fired, they themselves might want to reconsider their stance, although of course they won’t. (And yes, my former colleague Joshua Katz was stripped of tenure and fired by Princeton—if anyone wants to revisit the serious and credible charges against him, be my guest). As for DEI, well, first of all, affirmative action is hardly a far-left radical idea, whatever Rufo may claim. It is a policy that was consistently advocated by both of the country’s major political parties for decades, and, as anyone with eyes to see can testify, universities are still hiring a lot of white men. And as for the ideological imbalance among university faculty, it is up to Rufo and his allies to prove that it is a result of discrimination, and not self-selection. As far as I can see, they have so far failed to do so.

It would still be easy enough for me, as a congenital moderate, to say “yes, there is a problem, but…” But no. There is a difference between an understandable overreaction to a real problem and derangement, pure and simple. The Manhattan Institute’s statement, with the incendiary, idiotic, and dangerous suggestion that “the universities” have “declared war” on Americans is the latter, not the former. And there is no arguing with derangement. There are plenty of conservative thinkers out there, in places like Compact magazine, who have made serious and sensible and often deservedly harsh critiques of tendencies within the American university system. With them, I’m happy to talk. With a ranting deranged person (and I’m a New Yorker—I have plenty of experience in this department), you need just to walk away.