Higher Education after October 7: Drain the Swamp

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks of October 7, and now again during the spring, coordinated protests have spread through colleges and universities. The rapidity with which normal functioning was disrupted and the initial helplessness of administrators both point to fundamental weaknesses in higher education: I doubt that there can be a return to a pre-October 7 normalcy. Public dismay with universities was already pronounced before these events, and the campus chaos has triggered memories of the lawlessness of the George Floyd riots.

There are certainly deep and substantive problems inside academia that explain these events—and I will turn to them in a moment—but it is important first to take stock of what really transpired and not surrender to sensationalist overstatements. It is true that demonstrations have taken place at many colleges, but the number of participants at each has been limited when measured against total enrollment. There were 119 arrests at Columbia, where the student body totals some 36,000. It is also true that antisemitic discourse has emerged, but the extent of its spread is unclear. At Stanford a student vote calling for divestment won 75% support—which is disheartening—but only about 25% of eligible voters took part, so the result only documents an anti-Israel sentiment of 18% of the student body. We need more data.

From the arrest records, we learn that many of the protestors were not students or faculty but came from outside activist organizations. At Columbia, 32 of the 119 were outsiders; at CCNY, 102 of the 173 were not from the university. There is enough evidence to point to a coordinated plan by groups to promote disruption, to commit crimes, and especially to radicalize the discourse. For example, a well-meaning student attracted to the logic of a two-state solution—hardly an extremist position—might well show up at an encampment but then be pushed into supporting Hamas or the elimination of Israel, indisputably extreme stances. That radicalization has gone unquestioned. There are no signs of internal debate between, say, supporters of Palestinian national self-determination on the one hand and, on the other, proponents of “global intifada” and “smashing” capitalism. Those are two very different programs, but radical leadership has managed to establish the latter as the norm in the protest camps. It has also left previously unorganized students facing the consequences of arrest and the career damage of a criminal conviction.

Everyone has free speech rights to protest, but no one has the right to conspire to commit crimes or promote violence against property or persons. The FBI should be investigating—not the speech, but the crimes.

But let’s not make this too easy. This outside agitation has only been effective because of weakness on the inside of universities. We need to take a closer look. Where exactly is the problem? The media have reported on demonstrations especially at elite institutions, but journalism has its own selection bias, preferring to ignore the less well-heeled. Nonetheless, it is those elite institutions that have historically served as trendsetters, so students at some less selective institutions have naturally jumped on the bandwagon. What started at Harvard and Stanford spread to University of San Francisco and Humboldt State. Still there seems to be a special connection to the so-called educational elite. Do students at elite institutions feel most entitled?

We also need to explore whether the activism is distributed across the full internal breadth of universities or whether some parts of the university are more rotten than others. Here we do have data:

At one point in the autumn, two competing faculty petitions circulated at Columbia. The anti-Israel document, in which faculty declared support for the pro-Hamas students, attracted signatures primarily from the humanities, while the statement that tilted toward the Israeli side found support in STEM and medicine. Similarly a recent letter from Indiana University decrying campus antisemitism showing 56 signatures has only 12 from the humanities, half of which are from Jewish studies faculty, only one from philosophy and none from English. In contrast, supporters of the Indiana letter came from STEM, medicine, social sciences, and business. This discrepancy shows how the dissemination of radical activist views is especially rooted in the culture of the humanities disciplines. Scientists are less prone to ideology than are scholars in interpretive fields. The further you get away from science, the greater the propaganda quotient, although elsewhere there are disturbing signs that medical schools have also become vulnerable to ideological bullying.

Yet that sort of evidence only tells us about the political orientation of faculty. We can surmise that some humanities instruction—surely not all—generates adversarial attitudes among students—anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, etc.—underpinning activism. This makes intuitive sense—anti-Western historians, Middle East studies professors, and some literary scholars are probably the worst contributors to this process. It does not follow however that the student demonstrators necessarily major in those fields—since the number of majors in those fields is small anyhow—but it is fair to say that the adversarial culture is introduced via the humanities rather than through the hard sciences.

There can be no doubt that antisemitism plays a role in the mobilization. For now, one can leave aside the familiar question of whether anti-Zionism is necessarily antisemitism, but simply dwell on the shouts of “Go Back to Brooklyn” heard at Stanford and “Go Back to Poland” reported from New York. “Brooklyn” obviously stands for a venue presumed to have a large Jewish community, and the reference to Poland involves the false claim that all Israelis are of East European origin or that Poland is all of Eastern Europe. It also carries the implication of going back to the extermination camps, like Auschwitz, that the Germans set up in Poland. The protestors have to own that. Moreover this “go back to” rhetoric from the notional left is revealingly indistinguishable from the posture of the anti-immigrant right with its own hope that undocumented aliens go back to their countries of origin: no one likes immigrants these days, not even the Hamas fans. In any case, it is not a stretch to treat those tickets-to-Poland as indisputably antisemitic.

We can only speculate on the source of this antisemitism. Some of it may involve a resurgence of latent tendencies in Western culture, while some certainly involves antisemitic strands in various Muslim cultures. It is likely that the process of radicalization in the protests involves an intentional breaking through conventional cultural taboos, including the articulation of antisemitism: the excitement of doing the previously forbidden. In addition, the deleterious impact of DEI ideology, which vilifies all whites and then identifies all Jews as white, provides a vulnerable scapegoat for the mob.

Yet the campus responses to October 7 do not only promote anti-Israel or antisemitic predispositions. The protestors make this clear. The arguments criticizing Israel are typically framed by denunciations of Western imperialism and, especially, the United States. The anti-Israelism in higher education is a transparent cover for an anti-Americanism. No wonder then that the vilification of “genocide Joe” long ago surpassed the personalization of antagonism toward Netanyahu. Viewed from this point of view, elite higher education has not only regressed to its historic norm as an environment for no longer genteel antisemitism; it is now a breeding ground for a principled hostility toward the United States, toward capitalism and Western values, linked via intersectionality to patriarchy, heterosexuality, and climate change. You can’t just support Gaza—you have to buy the whole package.

The rhetoric of the protests demonstrates how campuses have normalized hostility to the United States and to capitalism. This dissemination of anti-American indoctrination has led to physical and violent disruptions, on and off campus. This means that higher education has become a national security risk in multiple ways.

• First, in case of a U.S. involvement in a war in response to a threat to the homeland, campuses will serve as staging grounds for disruptive resistance, such as blocking highways or airport access. The recent demonstrations have been dress rehearsals for that kind of fifth-column activism. If a threat were to emerge that required direct U.S. engagement—for example, an October 7-style assault along the southern border—we can count on university radicals to try to undermine military mobilization “by any means necessary.”
• Second, the ideological anti-Americanism in higher education offers cover for illicit technology transfer from the sensitive STEM sector to international adversaries. Maintaining American superiority in technological innovation is vital for national security. The more anti-Americanism dominates the universities, the more likely that technology espionage takes place. Higher education is ill equipped to manage this vulnerability.
• Third, the anti-American and anti-capitalist mindset dominant in parts of academia will direct some compliant students toward careers that involve cooperation with foreign adversaries. No doubt some future Kim Philbys are already on the path to eventually work for Iran, China, Russia, or the DPRK, or for Islamist networks. No one would describe contemporary college curricula as providing an education to patriotism; the only question is how quickly indoctrination will lead to treason.

What is it that has transformed parts of higher education into systemic miseducation?

• Part of the answer involves the set of pseudo-ideas that is now entrenched in higher education curriculum, the melodramatic misrepresentation that human existence is always only the opposition between oppressors and oppressed. The intellectual lessons drawn from uncritical readings of Marx and Fanon are amplified by the DEI administrative apparatus, which spreads the Manichaean struggle between good and evil, racialized into the fairytale of people of color embattled by demonized whites. Cast as whites, Jews become targets. Higher education promotes the habit of vilifying whole groups. This is miseducation.
• A second matter involves a geographic decentering. Appreciative attention to the legacy of Western culture is long gone, just as there is no longer any expectation that education address American history, culture, or self-governance. Universities pretend that they do not inherit the tradition of the Western university because they insist that they have a global, not a national, mission. The internationalization of the student body means a de-Americanization: look at the admissions data.
• In the culture wars of the 1980s, Allan Bloom bemoaned how the reception of Nietzsche had led to cultural relativism and nihilism: no values were binding. In contrast, we now face a new age of dogmatism in which—contra Nietzsche—good and evil reappear as absolute and nonnegotiable, as if universities had reverted to an old-fashioned moralism. Nuance has been banished.

Universities do remain vital venues for STEM innovation, but outside of the schools of engineering and medicine, what universities have to offer has dwindled dramatically. Things were once different in the humanities and the social sciences. Only a few decades ago there was much excitement around challenges posed by the thought of John Rawls and the prospects for democracy, or the credibility of behavioralism, or psychoanalysis and culture. All that is ancient history now, and the academic vacuum has been filled by the pieties of anti-Westernism that inspire the Red Guard among the students. Like liberal democracy itself, the university faces its own version of the Böckenförde dictum: it lives off former values it cannot itself reproduce.

Structural problems also fuel the toxic processes that generated the responses to October 7. Academic freedom and tenure are important principles of our intellectual life, but they did not have to lead to the current situation in which hiring and promotion decisions take place largely in the ideological bubble of departments with little institutional oversight. It is irresponsible that ideological departments are left free to hire their clones. Currently the administrative ladder, deans and provosts, restricts itself to procedural rather than substantive review of departmental appointment decisions. The result is that faculty hiring and the enormous resources associated with it have been surrendered to ideologues.

The campus rush to embrace Hamas, the professors who were “exhilarated” by the reports of rape, and the harassment and physical attacks on Jewish students and staff did not only have to do with the appeal of antisemitism or with the real conditions on the ground in the Middle East. Nor was it only a matter of anti-Americanism or even the intellectual vacuum that works against thought. Instead these demonstrations were irrational eruptions of mob violence that emerged from the supersaturated solution of university malaise and students’ anxiety that their diplomas may not land them jobs equivalent to the prestige they fooled themselves into thinking their costly degrees would guarantee.

Can this be fixed? I hope so, but only if ambitious reforms such as these are undertaken:

Administrative Oversight of Hiring: Responsible administration must oversee hiring and promotion closely. The university may not be able to fire an antisemite due to structures of tenure, but no dean has to sign off on hiring one, even if a department supports it. Assertive leadership has to protect institutions from bad promotion and hiring decisions, even against the will of departments. Shared governance is not a suicide pact.

Management of Units: Facing an excessively ideological department or program, a dean has the capacity to reduce or eliminate its funding, e.g., for graduate fellowships. The net result would be a slow but inexorable attrition of the unit. Meanwhile the administration also has extensive latitude in its choice of unit leaders, program directors, or department chairs. All this would depend on the willingness of the leadership to make tough qualitative decisions. Put the rotten unit in receivership.

Deradicalization: Some institutions have begun to use their authority to punish demonstrators who break clear rules. Refund the campus police. Maintaining campus order so that learning can proceed means establishing limits and enforcing them, including through the prohibition of masks at protests. But deradicalization also has to include dismantling the DEI hegemony over university processes that promotes generalizing stereotypes and hatred of groups. Pursue equal opportunity by all means, but roll back the group hostility. Eliminate “diversity statements.”

Promoting Civility: Message clearly that civil behavior is expected. Develop pedagogy that promotes open-mindedness and respectful exchange of opinion. Ensure that representatives of the university, whether in classrooms or residence halls, promote civility and do not abuse their positions of authority to impose their personal political agendas. No misuse of the lectern to advocate for your preferred candidate.

Admissions: Meritocratic admissions processes have to be restored. Eliminating the SAT in the name of social justice has been a catastrophe. If institutions want to hold on to their elite reputation, admissions have to be elitist. Select against dogmatic closed-mindedness. In addition the generalized anti-Americanism on campus tracks the growing number of wealthy international students whom institutions covet because admitting them is more lucrative. This is a bad business model. A proposed alternative formula: the number of international students on campus should always be less than the number of U.S. veterans who would arrive having previously made an existential commitment to U.S. national interest in a way that international students do not. Promote veteran admissions. This implies that universities in America should understand themselves as American universities that benefit from the largesse of the American tax code. Foreign donations should be made public and scrutinized for any strings attached.

Development: The donor class has to demand reforms. Those who have the means to make large grants to universities have to face the fact that once they make an endowment, they lose control. Sooner or later the resources given are likely to be directed toward ideological goals the donor does not support. Universities are certainly not obligated to follow the will of donors, but neither is any donor obligated to give to a particular university.

Rule of Law: Colleges and universities should face civil rights sanctions if they have allowed a hostile environment to flourish. Board members should bear personal responsibility if they fail to oppose policies that endanger the institutions. Foundations that fund protests where criminal acts transpire should be held responsible and treated as co-conspirators. The FBI should investigate conspiracies to coordinate disruptions and support for terrorist organizations. Anyone arrested should be prosecuted.

Will these fixes be enough? Maybe not: the End of the University as We Know It

There is a lot of anger inside universities: they cost too much, and the instruction often disregards student learning needs. The institutions promise elite status and lucrative jobs, which too many students believe they may not find—only debt is guaranteed. Fixing that misalignment between the high price and real job opportunities may be too heavy a lift. Dropping clear meritocratic admissions criteria, such as standardized testing, has undermined the institutional reputations, and the brand has been further ruined by this season of cosplaying protest.

I hope a reform program will be effective, but it may be insufficient.

The university as we know it may have outlived its historical moment. The model is too expensive, and the student loan bubble hangs over the nation’s economy. We need new strategies to deliver professional qualifications more effectively and efficiently. The chaos after October 7 has made the dysfunction of the current model clear to everyone. The dry rot throughout the structure enabled the collapse. The old university is ending; what can higher education look like in the future?

Analogies to other cultural sectors may be useful. The grand Hollywood studios of the past are gone, even though film production continues, just with a different format. Similarly the gatekeeping legacy media have lost much of their status in the contemporary public sphere, even if they survive in a reduced capacity, as they face competition from social media. In the same vein universities need to find ways to evolve.

One way that evolution is already taking place is in the personnel. In the past most college instruction was carried out by professors on tenure tracks, but now some 75 percent of instruction belongs to lecturers and adjuncts, with less job security, lower compensation, and no or little research expectations. This is the real end of tenure, taking place before our eyes.

Meanwhile, greater interest in career outcomes, especially after the 2008 financial crisis, has led to a shift toward STEM majors and a concomitant denigration of traditional liberal arts education. Why not just focus on STEM and related fields, like medicine, especially if the liberal arts departments are the source of political indoctrination? Even Rachid Khalidi, a prominent promoter of Palestinianism at Columbia, concedes that it is in the college, not the professional schools, where the faculty promote activism. So is it time to close the college?

The obvious conclusion to draw is that the legacy university should be unbundled. Its different functions could be pulled apart, and those worth saving could be rebuilt in new structures. Most prominently: a primary function of contemporary higher education has become training in STEM, programming, CS, IT, AI, and related business practices. This could be carried out in dedicated academies. Packaging STEM together with required ideology courses is the equivalent of a cable TV offering with lots of channels the customer does not want to watch.

The United States is engaged in a great power competition with China and Russia, especially involving the pursuit of technological superiority. We are at a new Sputnik moment, not (only) in a space race but in an AI race as well, to which we should respond with new educational structures. It is unproductive to embed technological learning in a comprehensive university, especially one that acts as an indoctrination center. We do not need liberal arts colleges to win the technology race. We do need dedicated technology training—and we should find alternative structures for humanities learning, whether in high schools or in options afforded by new media, such as podcasts or substacks.

One even more radical step: put all the instruction online, across all fields, and establish qualifying processes through testing as a substitute for degree conferrals. Make it free—and call it democratization. The campus experience—which most Americans do not benefit from anyhow—would disappear, but the educational mission could take place at much lower costs, i.e., a more efficient allocation of resources. Online education enhanced by AI may yet do to the traditional college what Amazon did to the old-style bookstore. The October 7 aftermath indicates that it is time to put aside childish things. We need a new model.

In sum, this year’s campus chaos has shed light on objective tendencies pointing toward a far-reaching reordering of higher education: astronomic tuitions, the student debt bubble, public disaffection, the shrinking of the tenured professoriate replaced by lecturers and adjuncts, and the seismic reorientation of student interest away from the core of liberal arts education, which at many institutions has already been eviscerated by the faculty. The traditional structure of college education seems like a relic of another age, no longer affordable and insufficient in the face of the international power struggle.

I am myself not gleeful about the end of the traditional university. Perhaps a reform-minded leadership with enough backing from boards and regents and support from Congress will forestall the demise of the legacy institutions. The necessary reform steps were outlined above. Otherwise the country will need to move on to a more effective organization of teaching and research. The demonstrations in response to October 7 have shown how existing structures are probably not up to the task. It may be time to drain the swamp.

Russell A. Berman is the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he co-directs the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. He previously served as Senior Advisor on the Policy Planning Staff of the United States Department of State and as a Commissioner on the Commission on Inalienable Rights. He is currently a member of the National Humanities Council. He is the Editor Emeritus of Telos and President of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute.

This post is part of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute Israel initiative. For more information about this initiative, please visit the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute website.