Education: America's Separation of Its Mind and Soul

Much debate is going on over Ward Churchill, Lawrence Summers at Harvard, the cost of higher education, NCLB, the lack of conservative freedom in US universities, and overall public policy for education. The best summary statement of the seriousness of the situation so far is today in David Frum's Diary on National Review Online:
"The corruption of the universities is a terrible shame upon the United States and a cause of profound sadness among American conservatives. When we complain about the abuses on campus, it is not out of glee at scoring a point against an ideological opponent, but out of terrible regret that some of the most essential institutions of this great country - the institutions at which learning and inquiry ought to be honored and served - have so often perverted their best natures to serve bad causes.

America suffers from a dangerous separation of its mind and soul. Its elite intellectual institutions are too often hostile to the country's culture and founding values. As the Journal reporters mention, Harvard continues to ban ROTC from campus for fear of offending the university's militant gay lobby; as Samuel Huntington details in his important book, Who We Are, elite institutions like Harvard regard themselves as multinational, multicultural enterprises independent of the nation and the people that created, sustain, and defend them.

This separation serves nobody. It makes places like Harvard effete and irrelevant. I had lunch a little while ago with a representative of another prestigious school. 'We see it as our mission,' he told me, 'to train leaders.' But how can you do that, I asked, when you are instilling your leaders with an ideology that is despised and mistrusted by their potential followers?

At the same time, it badly disserves America to lose the services of places like Harvard. Despite the health and strength of its soul and sinew, a country cannot thrive in a dangerous world with a diseased mind."

Think about how serious this really is for America's future.