Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the progressive long march through the institutions has culminated in the collapse of the Ivy League’s reputation. We have all smelled the stench of rot emanating from them for a while. Moreover it’s long been known that the majority of professors are captured by the ideology of central planning. They often disguise themselves with euphemisms like socialist, progressive, or Marxist. Even the “conservative” professors appear to favor central planning through regulation. So while this was only an odor and an idea, they could get away with it. Now that a professor has left Harvard and exposed the rotting corpse at its center, the reek is identified. The Ivy League used to offer a great education. Then that became great connections and reputation. Now it has become connections only.
When ninety-plus percent of the faculty and staff of an institution vote Democrat or Republican, there is a problem of ideological capture. Institutions are hierarchical systems that are organized to achieve a goal. They are therefore, a means to an end. An institution then doesn’t exist to serve itself. If we accept that definition of all institutions, then we have to also accept that the optimal path to any end is to approach it with an open mind. The closed mind is utterly unsuited to finding optimal paths, why, because many potentially ideal paths are simply unthinkable. So when an institution is captured by an ideology, it becomes stilted. It has hobbled itself. Once the capture has reached a crescendo, that institution is trapped in a trap of its own making.
The goal of a university is to prepare students to succeed in life. The Ivy League used to do just that. By providing excellent educations, connections to future captains of industry, and a reputation to go along with that sheepskin. These things are great legs up in life. A quality education is a skill that cannot be taken away. In life, skills are the most important things to have. Drop a caveman and Wall Street trader in the jungle and the caveman will thrive while the broker will die, due to asymmetric skills. The connections alone can be the difference between a life of poverty and a life of prosperity. Two people equally intelligent, with equally great ideas, but if one has connections and the other doesn’t… means one will certainly succeed while the other probably goes bankrupt.
If ideological capture has eroded the institution’s ability to educate, then reputation and connections are all that are left. The trouble with that is once education is gone, reputation soon follows. All that’s left then is connections. However, once the education and reputation are destroyed by ideological capture, that institution will no longer serve the elite’s kids… so the connections go away as well. This is a feedback loop that is self-reinforcing. It starts with ideological capture, escalates with indoctrinating into that ideology instead of educating. Once that phase has passed the reputation erodes. Firms hire the graduates because of momentum. Once they see the poor performance, self interest takes over and firms stop hiring half-wits, even if they have great connections.
In the case of Harvard, their reputation has been slowly dropping bit by bit. The reek emanating from that Ivy League university has been getting worse by the year. Meanwhile, polls of staff show close to one hundred percent vote Democrat. That’s as close to ideological capture as it gets. Then there’s the example of the professor who recently left and didn’t close the door behind him. Leaving it open for us to peer in at the mess on the floor. This all tells me Harvard has begun a death spiral that even a multi-billion dollar endowment can’t solve. Oh there will always be people who want to go to Harvard, Yale, and so forth… but as the quality of education declines so will the student. Eventually Harvard will have the status of Goddard College in Plainfield Vt. A place for half-witted rich kids. Maybe it already is?
Sincerely,
John Pepin
