One of the benefits of being the editor-in-chief of a
libertarian-conservative magazine is that I am almost never invited
to an American university. Thus when I do find myself on one of
those lush fields of flamboyant poppycock it is as an explorer
looking into pristine wilderness and for the first time
—Christopher Columbus spying the natives of the Caribee, Ponce de
Leon observing Florida. The campus’s bizarre wilds strike the eye
with intense vividness and leave a deep impression. What dialect is
it that these profs employ? Could anyone in the outside world
understand them?
Last week I spent two days at one of the Nation’s most famous
law schools, where what is called a “reunion” was being held. It
was a memorable occasion.
Rarely have I been in such a lewdly self-congratulatory
ambiance. Never have I witnessed such ravishing self-love, and I
have been to Hollywood, California. Our Nation’s educators tell us
of the incalculable importance of instilling self-esteem in their
students, and it was a pleasant surprise to see that they extend
this practice to themselves. Though let me add, that after spending
two days with such obvious ignoramuses I developed a pretty good
feeling about myself too. This self-esteem mania might be
contagious.
Anyone familiar with how far university alumni publications
depart from the reality of campus life when they depict it to
potential financial supporters knows that for many years
universities have been boldly deceiving outsiders. Most
universities are, at least when it comes to educating
undergraduates, merely delivering what was once thought to be a
high school education. Moreover those undergraduates are living in
conditions not unlike those of a slum; the facilities might be
relatively new but the petty crime and hygiene are deplorable.
Yet if my two days on campus are any indication, universities
have now gone beyond deceiving outsiders. Today their leading
personages deceive each other, and no one seems to mind. At the law
school reunion that I attended I sat in on an evening
panel-discussion of Brown v. the Board of Education, that
1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing “separate but equal” schools.
It could have been a very interesting panel. The panelists, all
alumni, had clerked for the Supreme Court justices involved in the
case.
Actually it turned out to be another instance of university
people blithely deceiving each other and everyone in the audience
— at least I heard no complaints. I might have if I stayed for the
whole potlatch, but I tired from all the cloying self-reverence and
the many howlers. To take the assembled at their word segregation
was such an obvious wrong so easily uprooted, some in the audience
might have wondered why these clerks from yesterday did not just go
down south and announce the practice suspended forthwith.
The most blatant deception practiced that night was by the
panel’s moderator, whom I later discovered is also one of the
campus’s most egregious left-wingers, a paradigmatic left-winger
among left-wingers. He beamed with pride and introduced panelist
Charles Reich, author, the moderator told us, “of The Sorcerer
of Bolinas Reef.” But wait. Reich’s most famous book was that
1970 classic of failed prophecy and foolish analysis, The
Greening of America. Why was Prof. Reich not introduced as the
author of that stupid book? Why mention Sorcerer? As I
heard more nonsense from the other panelists the answer became
apparent. The world has turned out to be an utterly different place
from the hippie paradise Reich had prophesied in 1970.
Thus it was prudent to identify the distinguished prof only with
this minor book, Sorcerer, which hardly anyone had read
and which would cause Reich no embarrassment. Actually I read both
books. The minor book is worse than Greening. Prof. Reich
— he who in the late 1960s celebrated libidinous excess, drugs,
and hippie youth — had lived a monkish life before
Greening appeared, a life made dull by an abstemious diet
and nerve-wracking celibacy right into middle age. Then he
discovered that his male member was not meant solely for urination.
It was actually, as we say these days, a dual-use technology.
Eee-yow what a mid-life crisis he had after that, and he
was foolish enough to write all about it. In fact, many of us from
the 1960s thought the old boy had croaked in a haze of controlled
substances and perspiration. But no, he has returned to an Ivy
League law school faculty and dresses like a salesman at Brooks
Brothers, an establishment he once associated with Rotary Club
fascism.
There were other absurdities on “reunion” weekend, but already I
have been too rude. I may never again be allowed on any campus in
North America. My picture may appear on campus bulletin boards,
right next to the warnings about the campus rapist and CIA
recruiters. And I do so like to visit a campus at least once a
decade, about as often as I visit zoos.
(Note: The name of the university I visited has been withheld to
protect the innocent.)
