“A small, but telling example of this failure is the report’s self-description as an “an ethnography of an academic culture, its worldview, customs, and values.” It’s actually nothing of the kind. The report is based on considerable research in public documents and some interviews with students. But it includes none of the direct observation or explicit reflection on the way that observation can influence outcomes that characterizes academic ethnography. There is no more effective way to tick off professors than to misuse a technical concept. That’s especially true when that concept is supposed to describe the study’s relationship to the faculty itself.”

Indeed, would it surprise you or your readers to see what subjects are actually taught in the History Department at Bowdoin?
http://www.bowdoin.edu/history/courses/fall-2012.shtml

Or that Victor Davis Hanson is on the syllabus of “War and Society (History 140)”?
http://www.bowdoin.edu/faculty/p/prael/pdf/140.pdf

As to “no one being the least bit shocked,” I’d refer you to Chapter 5 of the misguided NAS study-for-hire: report:http://www.nas.org/images/documents/What_Does_Bowdoin_Teach.pdf

These are among the many ways in which the manifold flaws of the report are relevant to the discussion at hand, which, if you were to actually read it and its hyperventilating tone (sex among coeds!), I’m sure you’d agree.

Lastly, you talk of fighting this decades old problem, but you offer no suggestions or avenues for action. Bowdoin occupies a market niche, catering to liberal parents who wish for their children to receive a “liberal” education. Do you wish to tinker with that, to mandate a state (or federal, shudder) oversight above and beyond what already exists? Another layer of bureaucracy to be captured by the liberal nanny statists? Or do you advocate what has also existed for decades as a market option: conservative colleges with more traditional curriculums?

I’m curious as to what sort of “fight” you have in mind.

And no one here is the least bit shocked. No one who has looked at academia in recent decades (or has read Allan Bloom’s book, published in 1987) ought to be the least bit surprised, much less shocked.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to see the uses the president of Bowdoin made of Klingenstein’s exchange with him (and the distortions the president made thereof, according to Klingenstein). And the report was not meant to be a scholarly dissertation on Plato, it was meant to be a study of the situation at Bowdoin (and unless those “remarks” were in quotes, those words were not meant to be actual quotes from Plato).

I am sure there were some ways in which the report (like almost any report) could be criticized. Same for Klingenstein’s letter. Not important to the points being made here (and I think actually you’re aware of that). The point is the makeup of the Bowdoin faculty and the point of view of the school’s academic selections in general, and the fact that this is not unusual but typical, and that this has been true for decades (getting worse over time). And wanting to do something about it, in particular to alert people as a first step, has nothing to do with “pining” for some lost era which of course will not return. It has to do with improving what our educational institutions have become.

The left—a group you yourself may or may not be part of—would like to see the right lose heart and say, Oh, all is lost, why bother to fight it? But although the hour is late and getting later, these things need to be fought.

“The problems begin to emerge in the opening pages, which include a foreword by Bill Bennett and prefatory letter by Thomas Klingenstein, a board member of NAS and the Claremont Institute whose encounter with Bowdoin president Barry Mills inspired the report. In different ways, each contribution signals that the report is a sermon for the faithful rather than an attempt at conversion.

Bennett begins by asserting that “Plato… remarked that the two most important questions in society are ‘Who teaches the children?’ and ’What do they teach them?’” Unfortunately, Plato “remarks” no such thing, at least in any of the works known to me (I invite readers to correct me if I’m wrong). I suppose that the phrase could be a reasonable, if rather simplistic summary of Plato’s thought about education. But the actual source appears to be a Michelle Malkin column. The phrase also appears, without a specific citation, on a number of cut-and-paste quote sites. Misquotation happens all the time, of course. But it’s a bad start for a defense of traditional education—particularly one that claims that Bowdoin students aren’t learning enough about Greek philosophy.”

Goldman notes just how narrow the audience Klingenstein is aiming for:

“Klingenstein’s letter reflects a more serious problem. It is addressed to “to all Bowdoin alumni, but in particular to those over the age of, say, fifty to fifty-five, a line that more or less demarcates old Bowdoin from new.” I cannot imagine an appeal more likely to alienate readers outside movement conservatism. By appealing explicitly to nostalgia for mostly white and (until 1971) all male “old Bowdoin”, Klingenstein places the report right in its critics’ crosshairs.”

I’d say Klingenstein might even have missed by a decade or two, as much of what NAS “discovered” has been present on liberal art colleges since the early 70s (sex among co-ed adults! light drug use! adult material available to adults!). The pretense of shock at this very old news can only be maintained within a culturally isolated blogging community. The American Conservative isn’t buying, neither are libertarians (“College sex! Who knew?”), and the center-left finds the vanity project of a venture capitalist rich parody:
http://gawker.com/5994430/conservative-scholars-investigation-says-bowdoin-college-is-awesome

Neo-neocon, when did you attend college? For you are not 85 years old, and pining for a culture that vanished decades ago and can’t return speaks of social isolation and political irrelevance.

They evaluated Bowdoin according to the basis of the three majors offered at King’s. These majors are compatible with what one finds at a smaller private parochial school.

The report is a joke. But it was the best thing Klingenstein could come up with without hiring a mob hit-man from NJ.

The Klingenstein family achievements date back a century and more. This lesser Klingenstein is probably having trouble measuring up.

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Those engaging Paul in discussion, seem to understand this quote. I’m sorry, Paul does not and unfortunately I suspect never will.

This is the difference between PostModern Liberalism and Classical Liberalism. The latter revels in the accomplishments of our forefathers, and seeks to further the expansion and depth of its understanding of the world around us. In a sense, it seeks to bring us closer to God (or insert preferred Source of Nature here. This is not a Christian-only notion) by assisting us in understanding everything made and why. We aren’t capable of reaching that pinnacle, but that does not mean we should not try to get as far along as we can, each individual among us.

By claiming that all things are relative, that there are no absolute truths, by ignoring rhetorical and scientific methods (and even working to derogate both in the public eye), and, in general, keeping people in that brute, superstitious state that man is borne into, they hope to destroy The West.

That they do so from inside it is what makes it, and them, a cancer.