Higher ed has 99 problems — and the New York Times is one

New York Times' lefty-punching op-ed page ignores real problems in academia

Published March 9, 2018 6:58PM (EST)

 (Getty/vm)
(Getty/vm)

Over the past few years, a certain class of nominally centrist white op-ed writers have poured forth vast gouts of ink attacking anti-racist progressive college students. As I’ve argued repeatedly, this vast array of coverage sends the message that sometimes un-nuanced critiques from left-wing students soars among the greatest problems facing American academe today.

But as the song goes, it ain’t necessarily so.

One of the latest examples came this week from New York Times op-ed writer and commissioning editor Bari Weiss. The piece is bizarre and sloppy. She uses a fake Antifa troll account as an example of “PC-run-amok” from students, which prompted a Times editor's note and update to the story. She suggests that University of Chicago students should have protested Rick Santorum over complaining to Dan Savage about his use of anti-transgender slurs (as if she wouldn’t have then complained about snowflake students protesting Santorum). She ignores the complex history of author Christina Hoff Sommers, including her appearance on a white supremacist podcast and her support for Gamergate, and simply calls her a “self-identified feminist and registered Democrat.” Weiss then attacks students at Lewis & Clark for calling her a fascist. You’d never know from Weiss that Sommers in fact was not de-platformed but gave her talk and answered questions.

And then David Brooks struck again, deploying his “not-mad-just-disappointed” dad voice to gently chide “kids these days” for valuing perspective (and identity) over reason and caring about structural inequality. Bizarrely, he dates this shift from rational Enlightenment values to identity politics to the failure of Barack Obama to end racism. Clearly, in this era of global chaos, nothing deserves two op-eds at the paper of record more than students at an elite university being rude to Christina Hoff Sommers.

Here’s the worst part. The focus on “PC-run-amok” is working. As a former professor and current academic advisor, I encounter people outside academe who constantly bring up left-wing protests as their major concern. They’ve read about it, after all, in The New York Times! To be sure, sometimes college students conflate the merely bad (i.e. Charles Murray, the phrenologist) with the truly terrible (i.e. Nazis). Students can be uncivil. Protesters can, it turns out, protest. Alas, either by intention or by accident, the centrist focus on these protesters fuels the broader right-wing assault on the very ideas of the university, academic freedom and the need to educate future citizens.

So before we see yet another high profile column on snowflake students or campus political correctness, I have assembled a list of some other problems facing higher education, to which very serious centrist pundits might consider drawing the attention of their readers. Because academia has at least 99 problems.

99 Problems Facing Higher Education more significant than left-wing students being a little rude sometimes (not wholly in order of importance):

  1. Tuition
  2. Student Loan Debt
  3. Housing Costs
  4. Hunger
  5. Exploitation of Adjuncts
  6. End of Tenure
  7. Homelessness
  8. Alcohol Abuse
  9. Rape
  10. Rape Culture
  11. Sexual Abuse of Students
  12. Sexual Abuse of Faculty
  13. Domestic Violence on Campus
  14. Soaring Administrative Costs
  15. Racism
  16. Sexism
  17. Ableism
  18. Nazis on Campus with Guns
  19. Nazi Recruitment on Campus
  20. Prejudice in Academic Hiring
  21. Textbooks
  22. Especially Math and Science Textbooks
  23. Predatory Lenders
  24. Department of Education Defense of Predatory Lenders
  25. Predatory For-Profit Colleges
  26. Department of Education Defense of Predatory Colleges
  27. Betsy DeVos
  28. Scott Walker
  29. Defunding the Humanities
  30. Legislators Censoring Professors
  31. Legislators Firing Professors
  32. Social Media Censorship
  33. Social Media Harassment
  34. Specifically Racist and Misogynistic Intersecting Harassment
  35. ICE
  36. Lack of Support for Dreamers
  37. Undergraduate Business Degrees
  38. Accessibility
  39. Especially in Housing
  40. Lack of Mental Health Supports
  41. Laptop Bans
  42. EdTech Companies
  43. Surveillance Pedagogy
  44. Racist Professors
  45. Racist Mascots
  46. Corrupt Sports
  47. Brain-Damaging Sports
  48. Rape and College Sports
  49. Graduation Rates in College Sports
  50. Joe Paterno Fans
  51. Larry Nassar Enablers
  52. NCAA Comparing Athletes to Prison Labor
  53. University of Chicago’s Economics Department
  54. Charlie Kirk
  55. Tucker Carlson
  56. Campus Shootings
  57. Conceal Carry on Campus
  58. Attacks on Affirmative Action
  59. Metrics
  60. Assessment
  61. Student Evaluations (When Used for Tenure)
  62. Accreditation
  63. Elsevier
  64. Predatory Journals
  65. Open Access Fees
  66. Academia.edu
  67. The REF
  68. The TEF
  69. Library Budget Cuts
  70. Cuts to Basic Science
  71. Brilliant Academics Leaving
  72. The Postdoc Crisis
  73. Big Data
  74. Service Loads for Associate Professors (Especially Women)
  75. Bad Advising
  76. Police Brutality
  77. Outside Offers
  78. Closing Colleges
  79. Right-Wing Indoctrination
  80. First-Generation Students Struggling
  81. Rural Students Struggling
  82. Bad Donors
  83. Especially the Koch Brothers
  84. Collapse of Public Funding
  85. Deferred Maintenance
  86. Hazing
  87. Staff Excluded from Academic Freedom
  88. No Child Left Behind
  89. Overly litigious students
  90. Censoring Environmental Research
  91. Censoring Gun Research
  92. Attacks on the NEH, NEA, NIH
  93. In-Class Tests
  94. Plagiarism and Online Essay Sales
  95. Legacy Admissions
  96. The Prestige Economy
  97. Academics Who Over-Use Reply-All
  98. Meetings that Should Be Emails
  99. New York Times Op-Ed columnists who write a lot about left-wing students but rarely about the other 98 items on this list.

By David M. Perry

David M. Perry is a freelance journalist and academic advisor at the University of Minnesota. He writes about politics, disability, parenting and more. He blogs at How Did We Get Into This Mess? Follow him on Twitter @Lollardfish

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Academia Bari Weiss David Brooks Editor's Picks Education Higher Education Higher Ed Media New York Times