SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 2015 • THE BULLETIN
F3
OMMENTARY
mericanuniversi ies e an odern American universities
usedtoassume four goals. First, their general education core taught students how to
reason inductively and imparted an aesthetic sense through acquiring knowledge of Michelangelo, the Battle of Gettysburg, "Medea" and"King Lear," Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" and astronomy and Euclidean geometry. Second, campuses encouraged edgy speech and raucous expression — and exposure to all sorts of weird
ideas andmostlyunpopularthoughts. College talk was never envisioned as boring, politically correct megaphones echoing orthodoxpieties. Third, four years of college trained students for productive careers. Im-
plicit was the university's assurance that its degree was a wise career investment.
Finally, universities were not monopolistic price gougers. They sought affordability to allow access to a broad middle dass that had neither federalsubsidies nor lots ofm oney.
The American undergraduate university is now failing on all four counts.
A bachelor's degree is no longer proof that any graduate can read critically or write effectively. National
college entrance test scores have generally declined the last few years, and grading standards have, as well. Too often, universities emulate greenhouses where fragHe adults are coddledas if they were hothouse
orchids. Hypersensitive students are warned about "micro-aggressions" that in the real world would be
imperceptible.
VICTOR
didates or they have failed to ensure
Diversity might be better rede-
that such bedrock majors can, in fact,
fined in its most ancient and idealistic sense asdifferences in opinion and
speak, write and reason well. DAVIS The collective debt of college students and graduates is more than $1 HANSON trillion. Such loans result from astronomical tuition costs that for decades Apprehensive professors ar e have spiked more rapidly than the sometimessupposed to offer"trigger rate of inflation. Today's campuses have a higher warnings" that assume students are delicate Victorians who cannot han- administrator-to-student ratio than dlelandmark authors such as Joseph everbefore. Thosewho actuallyteach Conrad or Mark Twain. are now a minority of university em"Safe spaces" are designated areas ployees. Various expensive "centers" where traumatized students can be address student problems that once shielded from supposedly hurtful or were considered either private matunwelcome language that should not ters or well beyond the limited reexist in a just and fair world. sources of the campus. One might have concluded from all Is it too late for solutions? this doting that 21st-century AmeriFor many youths, vocational can youth culture — rap lyrics, rough school is preferable to college. Amerlanguage,spring break indulgences, icans need to appreciate that training sexual promiscuity, epidemic drug to become a master auto mechanic, usage — is not savage. Hip culture paramedic or skilled electrician is seems to assume that its 18-year-old as valuable to society as a cultural participants are jaded sophisticated anthropology or feminist studies adults. Yet the university treats them curriculum. as if they are preteens in need of viThere are far too many special carious chaperones. studies courses and trendy majorsUniversities entice potential stu- and far too few liberal arts surveys dents with all sorts of easy loan of literature, history, art, music, math packages, hip orientations and perks and sciencethat for centuries were such as high-tech recreation centers the sole hallowed methods of instilland upscale dorms. On the backside ing knowledge. of graduation, such bait-and-switch Administrators should decide: Do attention vanishes when it is time to they see students as mature, indepenhelp departing students find jobs. dent adults who handle life's vicissiCollege often turns into a six-year tudes with courage and without need experience. The unemployment rate for restrictions on free expression. of col lege graduatesisatnear-record Or should students remain perennial levels. Universities have either failed weepy adolescents, requiring conto convinced employers that English stant sheltering, solicitousness and or history majors make ideal job can- self-esteem building?
thought rather than just variety in ap-
pearance, race, gender or religion. The now-predictable ideology of collegegraduation speakers should insteadbe a mystery. Students should not be able to guess the politics of
their college president. Ideally, they might encounter as many Christians as atheists, as many reactionaries as
socialists, or as many tea partyers as Occupy Wall Street protestors, reflecting the normal divisions of soci-
ety at large. Colleges need to publidze the employment rates of recent gradu-
ates and the percentage of students who complete their degrees so that strapped parentscan do cost-benefit
analyses as they do with any other major cash investment. A national standardized exit test
should be required of all graduates. If colleges predicate admissions in part on performance on the SAT or ACT,
they certainly should be assessed on how well — or not so well — students score onsimilar tests after years of
expensive study. Finally, the federal government should hold universities fiscally accountable. The availability of federal grants should be pegged to a college's ability to hold annual tuition increas-
es to the rate of inflation. At this late date, only classically
liberal solutions can address what have become illiberalproblems. — Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
NICHOLAS
KRISTOF
Wage an effective altruism M
att Wage was a b r i lliant, earnest student at Princeton
University, a star of the dassroom and a deep thinker about his own ethical obligations to the world.
His senior thesis won a prize as the year's best in the philosophy department, and he was accepted for post-
graduate study at Oxford University. Instead, after graduation in 2012, he took a job at an arbitrage trading firm on Wall Street.
You might think that his professor, Peter Singer, a moral philosopher, would disown him as a sellout. Instead, Singer holds him up as a model. That's because Wage reasoned that
ifhe took ahigh-paying job in finance, he could contribute more to charity. Sure enough, he says that in 2013 he donatedmore than $100,000,roughly half his pretax income. Wage told me that he plans to re-
main in finance and donate half his income. One of the major charities
Wage gives to is the Against Malaria Foundation, which, by one analyst's calculation, can save a child's life on
averageforeach $3,340 donated.All this suggests that Wage might save more lives with his donations than if
The pizza shop lesson about freedom By Jay Ambrose
and others have clearly convinced a majority of Americans that gay marriage is fair marriage. It
Tribune News Service
t
sn't it interesting how, in today's America, some
now seems likely to become a nationwide reality.
of the most outspoken critics of bigotry turn out themselves tobe manifestly intolerant and deter-
But, as some of those activists concur, it hardly follows that those still objecting as a matter of sincere moral belief should be compelled through the risk of onerous fines to participate inthe institutional transformation. Should the owners of a bakery committed to gay marriage be compelled to supply a cake for a group of citizens rallying against gay marriage? No. Thatwouldbe equallywrong.
g)
mined to visit cruelty on others because they har-
bor different opinions'? These inquisitors often parade their outrage as a morally superior defense of rights, and it's sometimes surelythe case that iniquities theythemselves experienced or witnessed reside at the heart of their fury. But that's no excuse for some of what happened during a fierce, bullying attack on a new Indiana
(/)
Allowing choice in such cases is not the same
as allowing oppression. What would be mostly at stake for the cake-deprived gay couple is the inconvenience of having to find a willing bakery from a vast majority hardly proclaiming their abhorrence of making money that way. Compare that to
law that aimed to protect crucial liberties. Particu-
larly objectionable — and a notable object lessonwas the threat to the very existence of an Indiana business because of nothing more than an owner
the mighty slam at Memories Pizza in Walkerton,
voicing her religious scruples. The law in question, Indiana's Religious Freedom
he hadbecome an aid worker. Wage is an exemplar of a new movement called "effective altruism,"
aimed at taking a rigorous, nonsentimental approach to making the maximum difference in the world. Singer has been a leader in this movement, and in a new book he explores what it means to live ethically.
The book, "The Most Good You
Can Do," takes a dim view of conventional charitable donations, such as
supporting art museums or universities, churches or dog shelters. Singer asks: Is supporting an art museum re-
ally as socially useful as, say, helping people avoid blindness? After all, an American aid group, Helen Keller International, corrects blindness in the developing world for less than $75 per patient. It's difficult
to see how a modest contribution to a church, opera or university will be as transformative as helping the blind see again.
law around since 1993 and as laws in 19 other state
Indiana. A TV reporter doing a story on the Indiana law asked an owner if she would sell pizzas for a gay wedding, and she said no, describing the establish-
laws. It says that, when the government is faced with a conflict between freedom of religion and
ment as Christian. Then came the terror hounds with their snarling threats of death, of arson, of
ers of the field of animal rights, Singer is skeptical of support for dog rescue organizations. The real suffering in the animal world, he says, is in industrial agriculture, for there are about
Restoration Act, is basically the same as a federal
Even though he's one of the found-
another public value, it should dent that freedom to
destroying the business, all of it sufficient for the
50 times as many animals raised and
the least extent necessary and then only if the other
owners to figure the shop's days were done and that
*y+ 0 N 4@20 I value is of compelling state interest. That was enough to send some into a frenzy of error-plagued screeching that the law fostered anIs that OK? Does a baker or anyone else have no ti-gay apartheid. It didn't. Guess whateveryou want right to worry about the fundamental redefining about the motives of the legislators, but nothing in of an ages-old institution, to believe something sa-
theirs might be, too, if they did not stay out of sight. Ah, but some worthy souls then quickly raised a Memories Pizza gift of more than $840,000 using an Internet website appealing to contributors who clearly subscribe to something vital to our Ameri-
slaughtered in factory farms in the UnitedStates each year as there are
this law permitted discrimination against someone
cred is being violated and that any means of abet-
can future. It's basically the idea that it is not per-
because the person is gay. It is not even dear that the original law would have allowed the much-discussed possibility of a bakery refusing to cater a gay marriage. A legislative rewrite enacted under media duress does make itdearer thatthe cake
ting the change would be a violation of his deepest missible to try to ruin lives because of someone convictions? saying something you do not like, that hate is vile
must be baked.
True, something like that would be a minori-
whichever direction it comes from, that argumenta-
ty view these days, and even many church-going tion is one thing and cowing others something else, Christians would disagree. A number of emotion- that freedom and kindness matter. ally persuasive, reasonable-sounding gay activists — Jay Ambroseisa columnist forTribune News Service.
CIA's real women say good riddance, Mathison
dogs and cats that are pets in Amer-
ica. The way to ease the pain of the greatest number of animals, he says, is to focus on chickens.
GiveWell, a website reflecting the ethos of the effective giving movement, recommends particular char-
ities for cost-effectiveness. Its top recommendations at the moment are Against Malaria Foundation, GiveDi-
rectly (transferring money directly to the very poor), Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (inexpensively combating a common parasite) and Deworm the World Initiative (deworming children). Singer himself donates about onethird of his income to charity, he says, and I admire his commitment.
WASHINGTONhe co-creatorof "Homeland" on Showtime revealedrecent-
T
ly that when the new season
starts, Claire Danes' Carrie Mathison
estly, about some of the minor things does that same thing," Caldwell said. that are everything in your teenager's Matthews was excoriatedby her
MAUREEN DOWD
will no longer work at the CIA. Her real-life counterparts can't wait for her to clean out her desk.
The CIA sisterhood is fed up with the flock of fictional CIA women in moviesand on TV who guzzle alcohol as they bed hop anddrone drop, actingcrazed andemotional, sleeping
wereblownup in2009bya Jordanian double agent in Khost, Afghanistan. Agreed Sandra Grimes, a perky 69-year-old blonde who helped unmask her CIA colleague, Aldrich Ames, asa double agent forthe Rus-
sians after noticingthat he had traded "The problem is that they portray up from a battered Volvo to a Jaguar: most women in such a one-dimen- "I wish they wouldn't use centerfold sional way; whatever the character models in tight clothes. We don't look flaw is, that's all they are," said Gina that way. And we don't act that way." Bennett, a slender, thoughtful mothIndeed, when I ask Bennett if she is er of five who has been an analyst in wearing a Tory Burch dress, she rethe Counterterrorism Center over the plies, "I couldn't afford anything like with terrorists and seducing assets.
course of 25 years and who first be-
that. It's probably Burlington Coat
gan soundingthe alarm about Osama Factory." bin Laden in 1993. For Bennett, 9/11 "lasted 10 years." "It can leave a very distinct un-
She said that when you are holed up
mmd.
"I deal with people who are trying for the agency, for leaving her three to kill lots of people in horrendous, young kids in Virginia with her huspainful ways. So I have a wall; it's re- band to be chief of the CIA base in ally tall. Unfortunately, though, what Khost. It is a sore point for the Band happens with time is you can't click it of Sisters, as the women who hunton or off. You just block the sensation ed Osama were called, that in "Zero of feeling." Dark Thirty," Matthews' character Carrie Mathison is so strung out acted giddy. As in life, she baked that she contemplates drowning her a birthday cake for the Jordanian, baby daughter. But Caldwell said that who turned out to have explosives when she was in the counterterror- strapped to his body. Her friends say ism unit, looking at graphic images it was a distorted picture. of childrenbeingkilled, she would deBennett, who bonded with Matcompress on the way home by calling thews when they were both pregnant her mom and stopping to shop or eat and throwing up in the bathroom tosushi. gether, said the Band of Sisters had a There has been progress made favorite crime fighter. Elastigirl from "The Incredibles." since the macho days when women were labeled "a bad investment" When the topic of settling down because they could get pregnant. comes up, Elastigirl exclaims: "I'm at There's a day care center at Langley the top of my game. I'm right up there now and flex time, and the agency with the big dogs. Girls, c'mon. Leave
derstanding of women at the agency in a windowless office for days at a — how we function, how we relate time trying to unravel and stop a terto men, how we engage in national rorist plot, "to turn and be present security — that is pretty off," Bennett and compassionate andpatient with a said. She was sitting in a conference spouse and children is very hard and room at Langley decorated with pho- does take a toll. And I'm not brilliant tos of a memorial for the seven CIA at it." Tracking the virulent march of officers — induding Bennett's dose the Islamic State, she said, "it's hard
recently recruited at a Miami LGBT conference. Bennett said CIA moms
friend Jennifer Matthews — who
as more normal than when a woman
to turn around and then care, hon-
uncle, who had done covert work
the saving the world to men? I don't
think so." "The entire concept for her was might look forward to overseas trips — "I took to calling Kabul 'spa-bul,'" flexibility; she became a mom and a she said, but there was criticism. superhero at the same time," Bennett "The truth is, when a man takes an said. "Just think of us as a workforce overseas assignment and leaves his of Elastigirls." family, indudinghis children, it's seen — Maureen Dowd is a columnist for The New York Times.
Still, I wonder about three points. First, where do we draw the line? If we're prepared to donate one-third of
our incomes to maximize happiness, then why not two-thirds? Whynot live
in a tent in a park so as to be able to donate 99 percent and prevent even more cases ofblindness? Second, humanitarianism is no-
ble, but so is loyalty. So are the arts, and I'm uncomfortable choosing one cause and abandoning all others completely. For my part, I donate mostly to h umanitarian causes but a lso t o
my universities, in part out of loyalty to institutions that once gave me
scholarships. Third, I flinch at the idea of taking a job solely because it's high-payingeven if the money is to be given away. Bravo to Matt Wage, who says that
he relishes his work as an arbitrage trader (now based in Hong Kong), but I'm not sure this would work for everyone. Still, Singer's argument is powerful, provocative and, I think, basically right. The world would be a better place if we were as tough-minded in how we donate money as in how we makeit. — Nicholas Kristofis a columnist for The New York Times.