 If you think back 30 years ago, 30 ish years ago, um, late 80s, early 90s, that's when we were first seeing coming out of the universities, uh, the whole idea of the diversity, multiculturalism. Remember that term? We don't hear that as much now. Um, and that was all being pushed from the universities, but back then, late 80s, early 90s, it was funny, right? That's when Dave Chappelle can make jokes about it, right? And the late night talk show hosts, they were all, we were all making fun of it. Um, but now 30 years later, now nobody's laughing, you know, and every body, every major corporation, uh, in the country, maybe the world has required diversity training for, uh, all their employees. I know at my university, we have to take, uh, these, uh, classes, training. Um, it seems like every six weeks now, I know it's not, but it seems like that we have to watch the indoctrination training, um, about, uh, all the different we are having that we have to be careful about protecting. Um, so you may think that it's, uh, really bad. And, and you're probably right, uh, we hear tons of crazy stories coming out of the universities all the time. Just recently at MIT, you probably heard about this. There was a, um, a scientist from University of Chicago was invited to give a guest lecture on climate change. His lecture got canceled because of his view. Some people found out about his, his views and this was canceled not before his views on climate change. But for his views on, um, affirmative action, he had been publicly critical of race based hiring practices, um, which is really a very, uh, I would say mainstream view. But MIT said, no, we can't have that. We can't have this guy come speak on climate change. Um, so this, so this talk was canceled. So, um, we do see a lot of, uh, a lot of really just pure garbage and we might say evil coming from the universities and it is having transformative effects on our culture. So the question is this morning, are they gone too far? Is there any redeeming qualities that we can find in them? You know, we do have, uh, we, we do have some alternative institutions. Of course, the Mies Institute now offers a master's degree in Austrian economics that is coming along. Of course, Tom Woods has Liberty classroom and that's for, um, that's for younger kids homeschooling, but we could certainly, um, have something like that. We could imagine something like that going forward. Um, also, you know, Murray Rothbard talked about the vision that he had for winning was a very long term approach. Um, and it was going to be on multi fronts, right? We had to have a lot of different groups involved, but he always said the scholars were very important in that. So, um, and a lot of the speakers here today are professors. So maybe some good can come out of our, just our classrooms. So anyway, so I'm going to turn it over to the panelists. They're going to give us some prepared remarks on, uh, you know, should we scrap the universities? Is there hope for a positive path going forward? Okay. Hello. Hi, everyone. Again, um, so I'm, I'm, I'm Patrick Newman and I'm delighted to be on this panel, uh, cause I, I'm always up for a challenge. Particularly, I want to try and give as honest of opinion as I can without losing my job at, at, at, at my, at my own university. But in all seriousness, it's a very important, uh, topic because I'm someone who my whole life has been very education driven. I still almost consider myself in school. I'm in K 30 at this point. I've lost track. I've, I've, I've, I've never had an actual job, so to speak. I have worked part time jobs, but I've always been in some sort of university, uh, training or working for the, uh, for, for, for organizations, uh, such as the Mises Institute. And this is something that, uh, I'm very deeply, uh, concerned about because, you know, we, we asked the question, are, are, are, are the universities too far gone? You know, are the universities, uh, worth saving? So when I think about the, the state of universities right now, I, I think that, well, uh, are the universities too far gone? No, because we still have Mises University, right? So we still have the good, the, the, the good university, the alternative source of, of education. So I'm someone who's always been very big on alternative education. That's how I got interested in Austrian economics. When I was interested, uh, found out about Ron Paul and libertarianism, et cetera in high school, uh, I had not learned any of that in high school. I had learned it by reading on my own, reading independently. Uh, I was, uh, such a supporter of this approach that my, uh, high school yearbook quote, uh, was by Mark, uh, Mark Twain. So this is an actual quote. I was, you know, he did say this, he said something along the lines of, I never let my schooling interfere with my education. Okay. And it's a very important quote because I think that's very true that for many of us, we, uh, we've gotten interested in Austrian economics. We've gotten interested in the ideas of the free market, et cetera. It has not been through traditional education. We might have had a professor or a teacher that, uh, told us to read a book or it caused us to, you know, just think outside of the box. And then we, we did most of the learning on our own. Okay. It wasn't through the traditional education, uh, in the university system, right? Because I think where we are as a university, the university system now in 2021, it's in, it's important to realize that, well, there's, there's a fair amount of cronyism involved. I've, I've, I've got a book on the subject on the, on the history of the subject, at least, you know, universities used to be much better back in the day. In the 1800s, you had small liberal arts colleges. These were privately funded. The professors, particularly the political economy professors, uh, were generally very free market. And it was actually hard for, uh, supporters of government intervention to actually get a foothold at these universities that have sources of outside funding. Uh, they were blocked away because there's just going against the current economic, uh, doctrine, right? One of the first notable instances of this was actually the Wharton School of Business, Joseph Wharton, uh, in Philadelphia. He was a noted protectionist and he had, uh, provided the foundation, you know, the, the, the funding for, uh, his school of business, uh, contingent on, uh, the school teaching the doctrines of protectionism in the 1870s and the 1880s. He's saying, well, there's too many free trade economists in our universities. They're not teaching students about the free market. So this is an issue I want to, I want to establish this school. So I've always thought there's some connection between Joseph Wharton and Donald Trump. They're both, you know, very, very big protectionists. There must be something going on there, right? But when we look at the evolution of the university system, we, we've seen that there's been a tremendous rise in the state university, all right? As well as the, uh, teachings at the universities have become much less, uh, free market and much more interventionist. Okay. And this is something that started in the progressive era and it has steadily increased as, uh, Sandy mentioned, uh, particularly over the past, uh, 30 years, uh, we're no longer teaching, you could say economic Marxism, but we're now we're teaching cultural Marxism in the university system in various, uh, ways. And this is a big problem because the university, uh, has changed tremendously, I would say, uh, from, from, from, even when I was a student, uh, in the, in the university system, I went to Rutgers university as an, as an undergrad, uh, and I was there about 10 years ago. I graduated in 2013 and I think it'd be a completely different experience if I were to go there now. This was even be if I was giving this talk in 2019 before COVID COVID, of course, has only made, uh, it worse. Okay. Cause if we think about what the university system was before or the original goal of say a liberal arts college or a, uh, you know, degree in higher learning, and it was supposed to be higher learning. It was supposed to be you are choosing to, uh, subject yourself to greater rigor, to learn more about a particular discipline so you can become a more informed and educated citizen, uh, in the, in the business world, in the political world, in the intellectual world, et cetera. Right. It was, it was very rigorous. It was not for everyone. Right. There were standards. You had to, uh, be a good student in high school. You had to show that you wanted to apply your, uh, your knowledge to the, uh, to, you know, to the present to change the world around you. Okay. So it was a very different sort of model. It was also much cheaper. Okay. And this allowed for the, you could say the traditional liberal arts degree where you want to learn about philosophy. You want to learn about history, political science, economics, et cetera, some of the physical sciences, the natural sciences, and so on. So you get this holistic education. Okay. And you're going to submerge yourself into this rigorous education. Okay. It's, it's not the same anymore. Okay. Uh, it, the, one, the cost of, of, of universities has tremendously gone up. And of course the reason for that is the government continues to subsidize, uh, more and more people to go to college. So they give out more student loans and grants. And as I teach my students, I'd say, well, that increases the demand curve and then the price goes up. You know, a lot of people think that why is the price of healthcare rising, the price of college rising? Well, it's due to some mysterious forces. And no, it can be explained by supply and demand, uh, like everything else. Uh, but apparently that's too different, you know, that's, that's too inconvenient of an explanation now, but the cost has gone up. It's not as rigorous as it used to be, right? There is something known now increasingly the, the term K through 20, uh, has been used for the ideas that, well, now the first couple of years of college are to transition students to get students from high school better acclimated to the college environment. And that's just a really nice way of putting it. Well, students in high school, they're not coming out with as many skills as they, uh, previously had as much knowledge. So now we need to, uh, basically, uh, play a little catch up, right? So some of the traditional learning in the undergrad years is now basically being pushed off to the graduate years. Okay. And it's, it's, it's, it's not as difficult. Okay. Now the idea is everyone needs a college degree, right? Everyone needed a high school degree back back in the day. Now everyone needs a college degree. Everyone needs an undergraduate degree. And pretty soon everyone's going to need a graduate degree, right? And then we're going to have, everyone's going to have a PhD. Okay. And everyone's going to be, uh, you know, have, have a terminal degree in, in some sort of field. And when everyone has a terminal degree in some sort of field, that means no one has a terminal degree in some sort of field. Cause then the signal does not work. Okay. Uh, my first, uh, college experience, teaching on my own, uh, after I graduated, I got my PhD. I was a visiting professor at Florida Gulf Coast University. And I taught a summer class in preparation for becoming, uh, the visiting, uh, the, the visiting assistant professor. I taught a principles of, of microeconomics class. And I had an older student in my class. She was very nice. She was in her sixties and she had come from, uh, the USSR and she actually had a doctorate. She had a doctorate in the garment industry, I believe, because the USSR was, was very, uh, they had granted a lot of degrees. Okay. And of course those degrees turned out to be worthless. So now if you want to, uh, you know, you want to leave the USSR, you want to go to, uh, America, et cetera, the degree was in anything. So later on, she decided to get a, uh, an undergraduate degree at, at, at, at, at Florida Gulf Coast, which would have basically been, uh, more important on the job market than, uh, this terminal degree, uh, at the USSR. So I, I think we could be approaching that moment, right? Where the average college degree, in a sense, uh, matters less and less. Okay. Now these were just tendencies that were occurring outside of COVID. Okay. Um, an additional problem regarding the state of higher education is that, and this is going to be a serious issue is that throughout the 2020s, student enrollment will actually start to decline. And this is just from declining birth rates. Okay. And this is going to put, uh, along with the rising costs, this is going to put tremendous pressure on, uh, various, uh, liberal arts colleges, private colleges, et cetera, where you're going to just see more and more people switch to the state colleges. Okay. And the state systems are generally more, uh, pro government intervention, anti-free market. Why? Because they're getting money from the state. They're getting money from the government. This is not a, uh, a complicated, you know, uh, explanation. I teach this to my students. Why are intellectuals anti-free market? Well, because their services would not be valued on the free market. So instead, they have to go to the government to get their services. Uh, excuse me, to get a nice, a nice job working at a, a state university, you know, the demand for English professors on the free market is very low. Okay. Um, so that, that, that's how that system works. COVID, I think has, is one of the most, uh, depressing facts about COVID, I would say, is that it's really affected student learning. And I mean this objectively, the people who thought that learning online or learning remote would provide the same level of, of educational experience. It's just, that's just not true. And with the COVID policies, we've seen a tremendous, uh, transfer of, of wealth, you could say in human capital from the younger generations to the older generations, right? And these policies, the lockdowns, et cetera, uh, supported the most by the elderly and so on, but it's coming at the expense of younger people. So COVID has, has really accelerated this process because, uh, especially if you finished your high school years, uh, learning remotely, that has affected, uh, learning and that's really increased the tendency for K through 20, so to speak, or K through 2022, right? Where now there's more of a coddling mentality. There's more of a, well, everyone, uh, you know, everyone learns at a different pace. Now we need to slow down the material more, et cetera. There's less of an emphasis on reading books, uh, outside of class, where if you didn't get something in the, in the, in the class, then well, you can look up the, but you can look up, uh, what you missed in the, in the book. This is now increasingly sort of this, this arcane way of learning. It's, uh, I've spoken with many students and, uh, you know, if they didn't do good on the test, I asked them and I say, uh, you know, did you read the book and they say, no, I don't learn by reading. And I say, really, you know, yeah, how do you learn? So in conclusion, I think that the average university system is, is, is too far gone. We need to have increasing emphasis on alternative sources of education, such as the Mises Institute, Mises University, the graduate program, et cetera. This is, this is how I learned about Austrian economics, mainly on my own. And this is the type of, uh, alternative education that we need to continue to provide to young people and other people who, uh, may shun the university system, which is something that I think is a healthy development. All right. Thank you, Patrick, Kimberly. Good morning. I'm happy to be here. It's great to be here, isn't it? Okay. So today, um, I just have eight slides to show you because one of the slides you had to see for yourself. So that's why I'm doing the visual here. The question we seek to answer, um, are universities too far gone and Sandy and, um, Patrick both think so and I, um, emphatically think so. Um, and so, so what I'd like to do is just address two areas of why they're too far gone. And I would like to focus on the social justice agenda and the administrative apparatus and then just provide a couple of short-term strategies and long-term strategy strategies that we can implement. So yes, universities are too far gone. Although it took many years to implement, a progressive coup d'etat has occurred within academia. And so the university experience isn't the same as it was when we went to school 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. There's been a major paradigm shift. Academia has become radicalized and now we're using social justice, which dominates higher education. It's accomplished through diversity, equity, and inclusion. And on the campus, you'll hear that phrase over and over again. It's almost like a religious thing. Any sort of internal document, any time we send out a press release, they're using those terms. And I thought, oh, okay, we're going to move on. Well, it's after a year and we're still using the same term. And so I want to hopefully give you some insight into what's going on. So these are different examples of how we are taking higher education and we're changing it. And the public doesn't realize what's occurring. Here's one example. The Alice Paul Center. Many of us know that Alice Paul was a feminist who fought for the right for women to vote. And so we had Alice Paul Centers all over the country. Well, the name's being changed now. And at University of Pennsylvania, you may have read in the newspaper that it's now called the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgendered Studies. And as libertarians, we're fine with that. People make their own individual decisions. But should we be using taxpayer money for that? At Colorado College, there's a course you can take called Language Power and White Supremacy. And this course addresses the role of language in shaping and maintaining unequal relationships of power in societies with an emphasis on the ongo and impacts of colonialism and white supremacy. And we know that white supremacy is a big issue because the Department of Justice told us that it's one of the biggest threats that we have in the country right now. A couple more examples. I'm always looking, seeing what jobs are out there for sociology. That's my field. And I would have to go through probably 30 jobs today before I'll find one that doesn't make some sort of reference to diversity, inclusion, and equity. So Georgetown, a great university, you have to describe your potential contributions to diversity and inclusion. When you apply for a job in academia, you submit a research statement, which describes your past research and what your future possibilities are. You also have to submit a teaching philosophy, which makes sense. Well, now in order to get a job, you have to submit a statement regarding your perspective and your potential of being able to contribute to diversity and inclusion. University of Chicago, they're looking for an assistant professor. That sounds good. But they have a preference in environmental justice or environmental racism. Sounds scary. Hunter College, the last one, they offer a course called abolition of whiteness, feminist blogging, and the title doesn't even seem to make much sense. There are trendy courses at every university, including my own, the problem with whiteness, American misogyny. Could you imagine going for 16 weeks, taking a class in American misogyny? I know, it sounds painful. Government capitalism and racism are also courses that students can take. Related to all of this is the administrative apparatus. These people seek self-preservation. And what they do is they go from university to university, and every time they go to a university, they usually go a step up within the apparatus. So at my university, I've been there 20 years, I started working there at 16. I've been there 20 years, and we've had six university presidents, seven provosts, and seven deans. So there's no institutional memory. If you've done good things, let's say you wrote a grant, they don't remember that sort of thing. And so they do that on purpose, I think also to keep their distance from faculty. So the corruption there is extensive. Now this is tied to the social justice agenda, okay? Because now we have deans for diversity inclusion. We have provosts for diversity and inclusion, and we have even chancellors for diversity and inclusion. And so there's this infrastructure set up where they can really carry out what they seek to be the strategy and the goals for the university. Okay, this is what I wanted to show you. This is one university. This is University of Michigan. 80 different positions for diversity and inclusion, okay? So, and you could see the vice president, he's making 400,000, more than 400,000. And you do wonder, you know, he's making as much as the president of the United States, how do you get that gig? And things like we have the chief diversity officer of research. We have a diversity officer for nursing. We have a diversity officer for distance ed. So you can see the rest of them. But $10.6 million just for diversity. And I thought to myself, I got the calculator out, and I figured out that 650 students could go to school free there each year if they got rid of this. You would wonder, how could they possibly manage without these 80 administrators, okay? And the aspect of this that makes it even more insidious is they look for problems, these administrators, because they have to justify their position. So even if there isn't any sort of inequality occurring, they're going to frame things in such a way that look at this huge problem we have, it's worth paying me $400,000. Okay, I'm going to go to the next slide. Okay, I'll end in this. This is a good slide to end with because most of the programs use the acronym DEI, Diversity Inclusion Equity. While some universities use the acronym DIE, okay? And at Luther College and many small liberal arts colleges, they're experiencing financial struggles related to declining enrollments. Part of the solution, they believe, lies within their willingness to die, our willingness to prioritize diversity, inclusion, and equity. And I question this thinking, they're going to save money by spending more money on bad programs. The lack of self-awareness is amazing, and this goes across academia. Thank you.