The Ivy League: A Mirror of the World

From Crisis:

One might argue that we were misguided in thinking so well of such institutions, since supposed sages and wise men have too often been exposed for frauds. Collegiate faculties, it seems, are increasingly crammed with intellectual dwarves very neatly dressed up in robes. However, we need only appeal to a rudimentary sense of history, to know that scholars were not always to be mistrusted, and learned men had sometimes really been learned. It is not the case that universities or colleges inevitably devolve into this sort of intellectual dissipation and moral degeneracy. Even in a world where the credentialed Doctor or Magister seems utterly unable to teach, still someone must know something, and someone will be seeking to be taught. The point is, when the best minds, or best academies, have no articulate answer to the deepest questions of human life, you can be certain that a horrible filth and rot has drilled through the very core of an entire society.

That the wealthy, or educated, or influential classes of the twentieth century increasingly found civilization too heavy a burden to uphold is not a thing to be celebrated. That the strongest man was cut down, or the finest actor laughed off the stage, is simply the stuff of tragedy. It is undoubtedly true that many erstwhile decent souls, enraptured by fads and fashions, have followed supposed elites into the riot and confusion of libertinism; every day so many Western eyes turn with mockery and scorn away from the saving cross of Christ. Yet, in every experience of life, when the noble beacons are put out and the highest citadels fall, it is much the worse for the good man, since he is the one left bereft and alone. (Read more.)

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