The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Sunday, June 07, 2015

Inequality of Another Kind

American Universities are bastions of progressive and often far-left thinking. Their faculties generally occupy the left end of the political spectrum. Their professors and student activists accuse others of "micro-aggressions" against people of color, and women, among others. They happily censor speakers who present a more (dare I say it) balanced or (heaven forbid, opposing) view of the world, they wear Hamas garb in solidarity with a vicious, genocidal, terrorist organization because, well, the Palestinians are "oppressed" after all. They shout down anyone with the temerity to suggest that climate change might require a bit more scientific validation before major policy changes ensue. They scream that "income inequality" is a scourge, to be corrected by a massive redistribution of income. Leading the pack of Universities that take these positions is the Ivy League.

Hmmm. Let's consider another form of inequality—endowment inequality. Turns out that the Ivy League along with a few other elite universities (dare we call them the 1 percent) controls the vast majority of all endowment money, while other colleges and universities scrounge for the remaining scraps of donations.

Kellie Woodhouse summarizes the situation:
Moody’s reported in April that of the 500 financially sound universities it rates, the 40 richest receive two-thirds of the donations. Prior to this most recent $400 million donation, Harvard received a $350 million donation to its public health college, which was renamed the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
Harvard has to have committed a "micro-aggression" of some kind, no? Or at the very least, Harvard and/or its donors committed an act that encourages "inequality," and we certainly can't have that. Where are the activists at Harvard? Why don't they demand that the money be redistributed among the 20 percent of smaller Universities with the lowest endowments? Where are the boycotts by future applicants? Where are the accusations of "oppression (of the smaller universities)? Where is the "fairness" that modern American universities demand of everyone with whom they disagree?

We'll keep looking until we find it, hidden behind a impenetrable pile of hypocrisy.