Where has the time gone?

In 1990, when I was Literary Editor of National Review, I suggested that we do a college guide. It had the obvious title with a less obvious subtitle, “America’s Top Liberal Arts Schools.” I recruited Charles J. Sykes to help with the project. He’d recently published a fascinating book, ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education. We then recruited five conservative scholars, flew them to New York, and developed, with them, criteria for evaluating American colleges and universities. William F. Buckley Jr. wrote the Introduction.

I insisted that at the end of our endeavors, Charlie and I choose the school we’d want to attend were we 17 again. He considered the University of Chicago, University of the South, and St. John’s College (the 2-campus liberal arts school), opting for the last. I titled my squib, “Somewhere in Indiana,” and made the case for Wabash College and Notre Dame, opting for the Irish.

The second edition of the book came out exactly 40 years ago. My, how things have changed!

Of course, the term “politically correct” was very much in the air in the 1990s, so prophetic commentators might have seen our current (then future) madness coming, although even the most Isaiah-like seer couldn’t have imagined the extent to which higher education would become subordinated to indoctrination. Transgenderism? Really?

One hears and reads a great deal these days about the rise of repressive leftism on campuses – of the kind that demands ideological conformity and rejects intellectual diversity: promoting LGBTQ-ism and refusing to allow dissenting voices on campus – or shouting them down if they try to speak. I’ve wondered if this is statistically valid or just the repetition of anecdotes blown up into a faux crisis.

For insight, I turned to the 2024 College Free Speech Rankings from College Pulse and FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education).

The rankings are not prophecies, of course, so the 2024 date is meant to suggest what students (and their parents) should expect to encounter on campuses in the next school year. The survey is based upon responses to a battery of questions from 55,102 students enrolled in 254 colleges and universities. That’s a small number of the nearly 4,000 institutions that might have been surveyed, but it’s certainly enough to indicate trends and differences.

I’ll concentrate here just on Catholic schools. Out of the several hundred in America, the present survey looked at just 13. You may find it interesting that, overall (religious and secular), the best school for free speech is the Michigan Institute of Technology (score of 78.01) and the worst is poor, beleaguered Harvard (0.00).

Here are the Catholic schools listed in the FIRE report:

            (Rated) Average:

DePaul (Chicago, IL) 53.18

            Slightly Below Average:

University of San Francisco (San Francisco, CA) 40.84

            Below Average:

University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN) 39.92
Creighton University (Omaha, NE) 38.58
Santa Clara University (Santa Clara, CA) 38.47
Loyola University Chicago (Chicago, IL) 38.09
University of Dayton (Dayton, OH) 33.83

            Poor:

Boston College (Boston, MA) 29.94
Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI) 29.60
Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA) 25.25
Fordham University (Bronx, NY) 21.72

            Very Poor

Saint Louis University (St. Louis, MO) 18.74*
Georgetown University, Washington, DC) 17.45

            [*Saint Louis is a school that “clearly and consistently state[s] that it prioritizes other values over a commitment to freedom of speech.” With 5 others, it was “excluded from the rankings and. . .scored relative to” only those 5 others.]

Take all that as you will, but one thing in the FIRE overview struck a nerve:

More than half of students (56%) expressed worry about damaging their reputation because of someone misunderstanding what they have said or done, and just over a quarter of students (26%) reported that they feel pressure to avoid discussing controversial topics in their classes. Twenty percent reported that they often self-censor.

         This is not progress, nor is it “progressive.” It’s hard not to think of Voltaire’s message to the writer (one Voltaire considered inconsequential) whose book was publicly burned by people who objected to the writer’s opinions: “I wholly disapprove of what you say – and will defend to the death your right to say it.”

         Half of all students – Christian or conservative or otherwise – are surely not cowards, although one might suppose they are, given that more than half say they bite their tongues rather than speak their minds. But clearly, they have reasons for being. . .judicious in debate. Left-liberals can be vicious and vindictive. Nothing may be allowed that impedes the forced march to diversity, equity, and inclusion!!!  Jacobins.

         Given the temper of the times, I suppose a pro-life Catholic at Harvard might feel frightened asserting that human life begins at conception and, therefore, that abortion is wrong and sinful.

         So, what do we learn from all this? Is there nowhere your faithful Catholic daughter can go to college without being mercilessly hectored into becoming a lesbian Marxist?

         Since The National Review College Guide is out-of-print and wholly out-of-date, I suggest you download a copy of the Catholic Herald’s guide to 100 Catholic Colleges and Universities for 2023-2024.

         It’s very kind of our English cousins to have produced this guide for us. (They may be forgiven for including on the cover a somewhat dated image of a football game between Notre Dame and Ohio State – played in 1995. The Irish lost.)

         Of course, The Herald’s guide acknowledges the breaks with tradition. Jamie MacGuire, Special Report Editor, writes:

In pursuit of the top applicants and retaining their academic and sporting status, many are making “uneasy compromises” with their Catholicity. They trade “Jesuit university” for “school founded in the Ignatian tradition.” They promote the call to service more than the “call to holiness.” Admissions departments claim that American universities are “only as Catholic as you make them.”

I guess incoming students had better bring their rosaries – and make their schools Catholic.

         Oh, and I’d still choose Notre Dame – even over Ohio State. And I would not allow my cat to attend Harvard.