Many are the cultural illnesses spawned in the contemporary university: critical race theory; the insanity that says men can be women and women men, if they will it; radical feminism; oikophobia—the hatred of one’s own society; and lots more, including the anti-Semitism fueling the campus protests targeting Israel for its military actions in Gaza after October 7, 2023. Add the high cost of earning a degree, leaving many American students in debt without compensatory gains in long-term earnings, and it’s no exaggeration to speak of a university crisis. In our symposium, City Journal gathers a group of distinguished commentators—including historian Wilfred M. McClay, social scientist John J. DiIulio Jr., investor Joe Lonsdale, and our own Christopher F. Rufo—to assess the current state of the American university and advance ideas for reform.
Women have ruled the Hamas-friendly campus protests, notes Kay S. Hymowitz in “The New Girl Disorder”—but why? Part of the explanation, she says, is that today’s academy is disproportionately female, with women constituting a majority of undergraduate and graduate students, holding half of professorships, and filling school bureaucracies, and they’ve proved susceptible to radical politics. The female-heavy presence introduced striking power dynamics into the upheavals, Hymowitz explains, limiting their physical violence while mixing protester victimhood with in-crowd exclusion—in this case, of Jewish students.
In “Girling the Boy Scouts,” Heather Mac Donald laments how the Boy Scouts of America have surrendered to the progressive Zeitgeist: allowing females to join; requiring Eagle Scouts to earn a badge in diversity, equity, and inclusion; and even removing “boy” from the name of the parent group, which is now Scouting America. At a time when boys suffer from widespread fatherlessness—both real and symbolic—the loss of an organization that modeled the traditional virtues of masculinity is tragic.
A happier development is what’s happening in El Segundo in Southern California: an explosion of startup activity in aerospace engineering, much of it targeting military applications. As Michael Gibson chronicles in “The Next Arsenal of Democracy,” hardware entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and patriotic employees have come to the “Gundo” to build the future of American defense.
We could unleash even more innovation if the lessons of Ronald Reagan–era economic reforms were recalled, contends Judge Glock in “A New Supply-Side Agenda.” After all, many of the problems the U.S. economy faces today are similar to those of the 1970s and 1980s, though they take different forms: growing government intervention in the economy by micromanaging consumers and businesses; corrosive inflation fueled by deficit spending; and welfare payments creeping up the income ladder as middle-class entitlements (and disability payments, writes Steven Malanga in “Unemployable,” which examines the growing proportion of working-age adults, especially men, out of the labor force). Glock outlines a program that could fire American prosperity for decades to come. A more efficient delivery of government services would help, too, says Danny Crichton in “United States of Algorithms”—and artificial intelligence can achieve that.
For New York City to thrive, its vast network of subways needs to throng with passengers. Unfortunately, the Covid disaster wounded the system, with ridership dropping to just 8 percent during the 2020 lockdowns. Four years on, it has 25 percent fewer users than it did pre-pandemic. Deterring riders are a worrying rise in disorder and crime and the threatening presence of mentally ill homeless people on many trains. Former NYPD commissioner William J. Bratton and Rafael A. Mangual show “How to Get the Subways Under Control.” It’s doable—but do city and state leaders have the will to make it happen?
—Brian C. Anderson
