The end of the Ivy League
Recent antisemitic displays on Ivy League campuses, including an actual shutdown of Columbia University, underscore not only the proposition that these institutions’ sky-high tuition is a waste of money, but also the fact that their diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) programs are virtue-signaling quackery or even worse. High school students should be steered away from these institutions in favor of much cheaper, and just as effective, community colleges and state universities.
Are Columbia Students Entitled to Tuition, Room, and Board Refunds?
Due to Columbia’s inability to ensure order on campus and the safety of its students, “[m]ost classes at Columbia will be hybrid for the rest of the spring semester, the university announced Monday, as students grapple with tensions over the war.” If you are a Columbia student whose family has paid $68,400 for tuition, or if you have taken out student loans for the same amount, might you regard Columbia as having reneged on its advertised virtues? “This is a place unlike any other — where Columbia College and Columbia Engineering students form a community of bright, curious individuals living and learning together in a truly one-of-a-kind environment.”
The web page in question adds additional benefits of being at Columbia, none of which can now be enjoyed because Hamas-supporters have infested the campus with the support of many faculty members.
I cannot give legal advice, but perhaps the entire student body should talk to an attorney who can. Why are you paying an additional $16,800 for housing and food when you could take online classes from your own home? Multiply $85,200 (less the price of the online courses) by about 8,000 undergraduates — graduate students may be on stipends — and we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Ivy League is a Waste of Money
Columbia’s tuition is $68,400 a year. Cornell, where Jewish students were threatened with violence last year while faculty members expressed support for Hamas’s cause, charges $68,380. What do you get for your money? If you’re a freshman or sophomore, you probably sit in the same lecture hall with hundreds of other students to listen to a lecture by a professor to whom teaching may be of secondary importance, because professors must get research grants to gain tenure. Graduate teaching assistants do not progress toward their own doctorates by teaching; they also must perform research and publish papers.
About all that remains of Cornell’s famous law school, meanwhile, is its name, noting that its former dean, Eduardo Peñalver, used a Cornell web page to attack Professor William Jacobson for denouncing Black Lives Matter. “In light of this deep and rich tradition of walking the walk of racial justice, in no uncertain terms, recent blog posts of Professor William Jacobson, casting broad and categorical aspersions on the goals of those protesting for justice for Black Americans, do not reflect the values of Cornell Law School as I have articulated them. I found his recent posts to be both offensive and poorly reasoned.”
Woke pigeon chess means the pigeon knocks over the pieces, says its opponent’s statements do not reflect what Peñalver calls the values of the law school, and claims to have won.
The facts are squarely against Peñalver because Black Lives Matter did in fact incite violence and civil disorder all over the country. It also self-identifies as black nationalist (and thus racist by definition) and denies the right of Israel to exist, which is antisemitic. Patrisse Cullors made the latter statement in 2015, which means Peñalver knew or should have known this before he wrote what he did.
I would personally not hire an attorney whose ability to argue a case consists solely of calling the other party a racist, as some Cornell law students and other faculty members did to Jacobson. If Cornell law students graduate with the idea that they can, and try it in a court of law, they will soon learn the hard way what “contempt of court” means.
Cornell’s president, Martha Pollock, and the Board of Trustees failed to take any action regarding Peñalver’s use of a Cornell web page to attack another faculty member, which makes the entire university responsible for the web page in question and, as I see it, puts Cornell’s name behind a racist and antisemitic entity that has also glorified a convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur and calls for Fidel Castro to “rest in power.”
In-state tuition for the State University of New York (SUNY) is $7,070 a year. One year of Cornell or Columbia tuition is therefore more than enough to send two students to SUNY for four years, and they will get roughly the same education if not a better one. In-state tuition for, as an example, Dutchess Community College, is $4,800 a year, and instructors are selected entirely for their ability to teach as opposed to pursuit of research grants and “publish or perish.” New York students can complete their first two years of college, and quite possibly while living at home, at community colleges.
Harvard’s tuition is meanwhile $56,550 a year, while that of the University of Massachusetts is $17,772, less than a third of Harvard’s. Yale is $64,700, while the University of Connecticut is $17,010.
DIE Stands Exposed as a Virtue-Signaling Fraud
The recent events at major universities have exposed DIE as a colossal failure and university DIE “professionals” as virtue-signaling quacks who get six-figure salaries for spewing whatever leftist ideology crosses their minds. Students and faculty are often required to attend DIE training, and the fact that those who have done so spew openly their hatred of Jews and support for Hamas shows that this training is useless or even worse. I say “worse,” because some DIE people have themselves promoted antisemitic canards about Jewish power.
When demonstrators feel free to tell Jews to “go back to Poland,” this differs little from the Ku Klux Klan telling black people to go back to Africa. This is acceptable in Columbia’s so-called learning environment. Of course, if these DIE “professionals” were even halfway competent, they would know that Israel is the only place in the region with equal rights for people of all religions, women, and LGBT people.
Stanford’s DIE people have even gotten their own university sued for an allegedly hostile workplace. “The complaint, which was announced for the first time today, alleges that Stanford University’s Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) division has created and fostered a hostile and unwelcoming environment for Jews in its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) program, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act.” Columbia’s Jewish students should meanwhile ask a good attorney about a class action cause for Title VII violations and EEOC violations for a hostile learning environment.
Once prospective students and their families wake up to the likelihood that all that remains of the once-proud Ivy League schools is their fancy and expensive designer labels, they will choose better schools at a fraction of the cost.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. The author is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to “cancel culture” for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.
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