What happens when universities abandon the pursuit of truth and instead....

...are "securing brutalism in the world that they were founded to oppose?"

It's a question raised by Jeffrey Tucker in an article in the Epoch Times titled, What Happened to Intellectual Life? In view of the investment parents make in the higher education of their children, it's an important question and Tucker's analysis is spot on.

He begins by mentioning a hoax in a "prestigious journal" about cellular function. "The authors were entirely fake," he tells us and the "text and images were generated by artificial intelligence and packed with unbearably obvious gibberish." And yet, it got by the "expert scientists" vetting the journal's submissions. Hmm...gives you some insight into the experts, eh?

Tucker and a friend were discussing the problem and pulled up an AI site. He submitted the first thing that came to mind asking for a paper proving that humans should live in refrigerator boxes. (Check out the street people in any major city and you'll probably find real life examples.) At any rate, "within seconds" Tucker had a "compelling paper with complete arguments and citations and every accouterment of scholarship in modern academia." Yes, we should all live in refrigerator boxes (and eat bugs I suppose).

Tucker's experiment illustrates the "great meltdown of elite academic culture" and the statistics back it up. Last year, over 10,000 published papers on medical research had to be retracted due to scientific fraud. (Source) Many of the bogus studies come from "paper mills" and the peer reviewers who are often paid large sums, simply pass them by. According to the source:

The products of paper mills often look like regular articles but are based on templates in which names of genes or diseases are slotted in at random among fictitious tables and figures. Worryingly, these articles can then get incorporated into large databases used by those working on drug discovery.

Tucker calls once famous and respected universities like Oxford and Salamanca "living ruins of what we used to call intellectual life." The high ideals of earlier ages in  these "sanctuaries set up with internal freedom for its scholars and security from corruptions of the outside world" with a desire to pursue truth has almost totally disappeared. Instead "The university is expanding and securing brutalism in the world." Judging from attacks on pro-life and conservative speakers in recent years, the search for truth is dead on campus. Embrace the woke agenda of abortion, transgender mutilation of children, etc. or face silencing and violent pushback. Check this out!

It isn't just conservative speakers invited to campus being attacked; it's professors who don't carry water for the woke agenda. Tucker addresses that as well. 

Many [professors] have been forced out in the past few years -- railroaded out by the cancel brigade....What remains is an idealogical red guard that has captured most of professional academia, imposing an orthodoxy that fails every test of rationality....The world has every reason to fear the hegemon of the university and its imperial ambions to wreck the idealism of the people on the outside.

What is the sad situation at present? "The world is starved for high ideals, truth-seeking, and intellectual courage." The university system that was founded over a millennium ago to enlighten a dark world is in free fall. Rather than encouraging the search for truth, it attacks and silences the majority. That movement is led by the elitists. Joe Biden reflected it in his ranting rage during the state of the union even insulting and attacking the Supreme Court Justices sitting in front of him. Biden the Barbarian epitomizes our rude and ruthless oligarchs. And they are doing all they can to make sure the academies serve their purpose and create little barbaric clones in their own image.

The good news is that the universities are in decline. According to a 2020 Hechinger report hundreds of colleges and universities are in financial stress. Of course, ivies like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton with their multi-billion dollar endowments don't have to worry much, but many other universities are in trouble. COVID exacerbated the problem. With luck, many of those polluting the minds of students will fail and disappear. No loss there!

But what's the real solution? Tucker says, "Everything we once called academic civilization needs to be rebuilt from the ground up." He doesn't tell us how, but assures us that it won't come from "established academia." Rather, it "will take place within new institutions." 

What are they? Where will they come from? Tucker doesn't say, but I think we're seeing the tiny roots sprouting around the country. 

The tree of knowledge will grow from the seeds planted in new, small colleges and universities that are combining academics with teaching trades and others like the solid Catholic schools embracing and fostering the faith. Then there are the academic movements at the lower level like the K-12 Chesterton Academies and the Hillsdale charter schools focused on classical education. Also, homeschool families are growing self-reliant kids with critical thinking skills who are challenging the ridiculous assertion that they lack social skills by achieving incredible success in a variety of areas.

This is not the time to wallow in gloom and doom but to do all we can to foster the healthy young plants that will feed us in the future with trees bearing rich fruit: the true, the good, and the beautiful. Let's pray for it!