The mythology of elite higher education.

Tents are set up inside an pro-Palestinian encampment on the UCLA campus Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Go to Merriam-Webster.com and look up the word, “myth.” You’ll see six definitions. Events in the current news cycle cause the definition marked “2a” to pop off the page. It reads:

…a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially: one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society.”

Consider this definition as you look upon the mayhem at our elite universities. The esteem in which American society holds top-tier universities has truly attained mythic status. Schools such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia and rest of the “Ivies” on the east coast, and schools like USC, UCLA and Stanford on the west coast, are generally perceived as among the best universities in the world. At one time that perception may have been rooted in reality. At one time, the selectivity of these schools and the academic rigor meant that their graduates could count themselves among the best of the best.

But five decades of incremental leftist takeover of these top-tier schools have exacted a heavy toll. To an alarming degree, the academic rigor and institutional commitment to honest and open debate that once defined our elite universities has been corrupted by tenured faculty committed to leftist indoctrination.

The result can now be seen in the antisemitic chaos that has engulfed schools like Columbia and UCLA and that has left the administrations of these institutions looking feckless and weak.

That state of play now calls our attention to definition “2b” of the word, “myth.” It reads:

an unfounded or false notion.”

To the extent that schools like Harvard, Yale and Columbia were at one time among the very best in the world, here in 2024 such is no longer the case. If you doubt me, turn on your TV and watch as privileged, coddled, mostly white liberal kids are allowed to make idiots of themselves even as they are aided and abetted by their unaccountable leftist professors.

Certainly, there are still great professors at these schools teaching really bright kids really important things. Certainly, these schools continue to offer rigorous course material that prepares students for success at the highest levels. But that remaining healthy academic tissue is being crowded out year-by-year, semester-by-semester by the metastatic advance of radical leftism.

It’s no coincidence that the craziest of the crazy protests are happening on the most elite of our college campuses and that those campuses are in the most liberal precincts in the country.

Which means that if you aspire to have your college-aged son or daughter attend one of these elite universities, you are aspiring to a myth.

A diploma from Harvard, Columbia, Yale, etc. will cost about $350,000 yet won’t carry the cachet it once carried nor be the evidence of a superior education that it once was.

Or, put another way – there have been no antisemitic protests at schools in the heartland of the country such as UT Tyler, Wichita State or Kansas University.

No sir.

Those kids are too busy getting ready for finals.