After that, progressives should extirpate the entire Ivy League.
Should Claudine Gay have resigned as president of Harvard? Are conservatives right that a rabidly pro-Hamas left has captured Harvard? Are liberals correct that the fascistic right has launched an all-out assault on academic freedom, at Harvard? The New York Times has explored these questions (about Harvard) over the course of almost 17,000 articles.
These are indeed fascinating topics. However, they ignore a key issue: That for anyone with a progressive perspective, Harvard should neither be reformed (to eliminate its wokeness) nor protected (from the forces of reaction). Rather, it should be razed to the ground.
Then, after Harvard has been razed, we must salt the earth, Carthage-style, so a new Harvard does not grow in its place. Next we have to destroy the rest of the Ivy League. Finally, anyone with enough energy left over should sail an emissions-free ship through the Panama Canal to California and obliterate Stanford.
Let’s start with a story that explains why I’m so personally committed to this cause. Then we can move on to a more rational explanation of why you should be too.
read more: https://theintercept.com/2024/01/06/claudine-gay-harvard-university-ivy-league/
TL;DR - I downvoted because I think the article is dangerous. The title is inflammatory and actionable, and the real intent isn’t clear until the end (promote public schools).
It’s easy to point to a symptom and rally around it, but the result is that the symptom will just change and adapt. Don’t focus on the Ivy Leagues, that’s like killing the golden goose because we’re jealous of the gold. We should instead invest in our own golden goose and have it out compete the other.
I’ll give a few details with quotes from the article (not sequential):
This isn’t a conspiracy. Rich people go to expensive schools and network with other rich people. Politicians are generally well connected rich people, so chances are very good that they went to an expensive school. They even discuss this later in the article, so the title is inflammatory at best.
Biden is an anomaly. He won partially because Trump was so disliked, and partially because he served as a Vice President under Obama. His political career is incredibly interesting because he wasn’t wealthy, just really scrappy, and he worked his way up the political ranks by being in office for a super long time.
Trump was also an anomaly. He gained fame through his TV appearances and essentially became a household name before running. He then set himself apart by being so belligerent that he got more media time than his opponents. So he didn’t need to be well connected because he was able to create his own momentum.
But in general, you get and keep office by being well connected, and that’s a lot easier if you’re wealthy and go to school with other wealthy kids.
If Ivy Leagues are destroyed, rich people will just make a new one or shift to other private organizations. The problem isn’t with the institutions, but with the process that rewards wealth and connectedness. Attacking a symptom won’t solve the problem.
This isn’t a thing that can really be done, even figuratively. The wealthy will always want a place away from the rest of the public. Instead of trying to eliminate the institution, we should change the systems that reward such exclusivity.
This isn’t at odds with the Ivy Leagues. If we want the best teachers to teach at public universities, we need to pay them appropriately. Private university professors make ~33% more than public school professors, so professors will likely gravitate toward private schools. Likewise for public K-12 school teachers. And the better the pay, the more people are interested in becoming teachers, so the more selection we have.
For connectedness, I think we start by eliminating FPTP. People are hesitant to vote for someone who the party doesn’t approve of because they’re worried about the spoiler effect. So we need to fix our voting system to exceptional candidates can have a shot (e.g. Joe Biden probably would’ve lost his County Council and Senate campaigns if he had to compete against a well-connected Democrat that the party liked).
You’ve correctly identified the tone of the article as hyperbole, but the solutions you’re proposing are somehow more unrealistic than the actions suggested by the article. If you could merely vote away the problem, countries that have implemented FPTP voting would have already solved it.
Building an alternative power base implacable to capital is the only way out of this crisis. Your votes have no effect on policy.
The periods when countries had “good” government were also the periods where capitalists felt threatened. We’ve had bad government for so long, the only realistic solutions left are radical ones.