The top universities can’t keep out of national news. Just in the past few months, there have been several high-profile stories about Yale and Harvard. Harvard is being sued for discrimination against Asians. Yale is being sued for not admitting women into its fraternities.
These scandals have been framed as a consequence of the culture wars. Left versus right. Political correctness versus free speech. Empathy and inclusion versus economic realities. Students fighting for social and racial justice against morally bankrupt faculty and administrators. But after attending Yale for some of the larger scandals in recent years, these dichotomies ring hollow.
Over the past decade, elite colleges have been staging grounds for what Matthew Yglesias has termed the Great Awokening. Dozens of scandals have illustrated a stifling new ideological orthodoxy that is trickling down into the rest of society through HR departments, corporations, churches, foundations, and activist organizations. The nation is becoming polarized and its parts disconnected. The right is evil, and the left is stupid. Or is it the other way around?
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I find it utterly ridiculous that a rap album can be substituted for actual academic work. A rap album is in no way equivalent to the rigor involved in creating a screenplay, novel, or poetry collection.
“…honor my identity and my struggle at Harvard.” I wish my generation wasn’t so self entitled and spoiled that we feel what we have to go through in 2017 is equal to a true struggle. Richard Theodore Greener had a true struggle paving the way for other blacks to attend Harvard. You on the other hand have it quite easy. I really don’t understand this kind of collectivist rhetoric which intends to amalgamate all black Harvard struggles into one neat bundle devoid of the nuances of individual struggles. Not every blacks experience is the same at Harvard so what are these shared struggles? I’m guessing that by nobody mentioning them they are either A) trivial under scrutiny or B) they are incapable of articulating this “struggle.” I have no issues with groups wanting to have a special graduation ceremony but please don’t try to hide this under celebrating your particular minority group. Just own up to the fact that you are in favor of identity politics but only when it suits you. Moreover these ceremonies based on identity only server to perpetuate the growing divides between students. If these students came from low socioeconomic backgrounds and went to a school not nearly as left leaning as Harvard then I would have more empathy. This just comes across as pretentious college kids going off the deep end again.
Acerbity [əˈsɜːbɪtɪ] 