Over the past week, and over the past several months, elite colleges and universities across the United States unmasked themselves for what they have been doing for years. They hate conservatives. They discriminate against them. They also hate Israel and since the October 7th attack by Hamas, they are showing their outward hatred and disgust for anyone who is Jewish or anyone who objects to terrorists inflicting pain on Israel.
I read with interest this
article this morning on how Jewish students are abandoning elite colleges for schools in the South. Reading through the comments, it’s not only Jewish kids looking South but all kids.It’s not because of the weather.
The focus shifted due to Covid policy. Northern schools were quick to instill totalitarian regime policies to shut down everything at their schools. Southern schools stayed open.
However, I have seen the underlying trend for years on the difference between the South and the North. My father’s family is from Mississippi. I spent a little time down South growing up in Mississippi and Tennessee. There has been a radical change in the way the South was in 1970 and fifty years later.
There are a lot of reasons for that change. Businesses moved south. Cities in the South grew. Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, and Nashville are good examples. Texas grew exponentially. It’s not because of Austin, it is in spite of Austin. As my friend from Texas told me, “Those are government people there. The capitalists live in Dallas and Houston.”
People in the South started going to college in greater numbers. People from the North moved south to get jobs and found they liked it.
Underlying all of this was a big switch. The South since the time of Abraham Lincoln was run by Southern Democrats. They started and enforced Jim Crow. In the 1970s, things started to change and now the South is mostly Republican-dominated. That changed Southern culture too.
The South used to be very insular. Southern hospitality sure. But, unless you were from there you couldn’t get on the inside. That’s different now. Plus, they aren’t fighting the Civil War anymore.
Another friend of mine says Dallas business culture is very much like NYC. Great people. Civic-minded. Go-getters.
As a person that grew up and worked in Chicago, I didn’t have the same opinions of the South that most of the people I knew did because of my familial roots. I had spent time there.
My kids went to one of the most elite private schools in the Midwest for middle school and high school. They went to schools in the South. Their classmates looked Northeast when they started assessing where they wanted to go to school. In classes of 87 kids, 20% or more got into what we would call elite colleges. Stanford, Harvard, Duke, Chicago, Yale, Northwestern, Columbia, Penn, etc.
If they didn’t go there, they went to the mini-Ivies. Amherst, Wesleyan, Colgate, etc.
The hate and viciousness we are seeing on many college campuses is not new. It’s been fermenting for decades.
Will the hate boil over and cause changes where it matters? I don’t know. The reason to go to one of those schools hasn’t been to get a better education since the 1990s. The reason to go was the network you were in when you graduated. That’s why Harvard can charge what it does, and some “lesser” school charges what it does.
Look at the following. Where did the senior partners or CEOs go to school, either undergrad, graduate, or both?
Big Banks
Big Law
Big Accounting
Big Consulting
Private Equity Firms and Venture Capital Firms
Institutional Investors that Allocate money to PE/VC/Hedge funds
Hedge Fund managers
Supreme Court justices and Federal court justices
Leaders of the largest non-government organizations
Large percentages of them have a pedigree from an elite institution. The Stanford/Harvard/Yale/Penn/Columbia mafia is strong in Private Equity and Venture Capital. Funds and capital allocators are littered with people who only have degrees from those schools.
If a fund performs poorly, LPs can’t say, “Well it’s because you hired from State U.”
Big Law recruits heavily from the US News and World Report Top 10, and down to 15 law schools. Corporations somehow feel “safer” when they deal with someone who went to Yale vs someone who went to State U Law.
On and on.
Those places are big power centers regarding influence, decision-making, and the way cash flows through the US economy. Until that changes, the elite colleges will still have power and sway.
Also, by many measures, the fastest growing population for the Roman Catholic Church is Texas. Not just because of organic growth or even Latino immigration. It is because of orthodox Catholics moving out of places like Chicago and into places like Dallas.
So if you are a Cardinal in Chicago with dwindling Church attendance, you might want to ask yourself, why is my flock leaving? Answer is easy,...the flock is leaving the obnoxious hierarchy but staying with the Church.
As a director for Opportunity Network, in more than 130 countries with 72,000 CEOs worldwide as clients and a half trillion dollars in deal flow pending on our platform at any given time, I am in touch with a lot of executives around the world and their opinions in the past 6 months about our so-called elite academic institutions have changed dramatically.
Former clients of mine from The Exchange floors have also experienced a dramatic change in their thinking.
I have had multiple dozens - not just three or four - multiple dozens, tell me that their organizations will no longer hire students from schools such as Harvard and Penn and MIT and Northwestern because it shows flawed judgment on the students' part for being willing to attend a university that promotes hatred and discrimination against Jews and against conservatives and for that matter, anyone who is not on the left.
These men and women are tremendous success stories and their words carry much weight.
Do not underestimate Bill Ackman's actions against Harvard months ago and the growth in Jewish alumni groups forming around the world to take action against these schools.
When these schools see, and the results are just beginning to show up in their published statistics, the drop in donations and the ability of students to gain employment after graduation in the next two to three years, they will have a choice to make.
The various Alums For Campus Fairness groups from around the country stand up to discrimination and foolish conduct by administrations turning a blind eye to the blatant ignorance displayed by their students and professors and other administrators.
Admittedly, I have a healthy skepticism about the lasting impact of these actions by these various groups, but I have heard the change in tone of voice and commitment by many of these people and it is very encouraging.
The ultimate irony may become that the United states, a very young Nation, has a second Civil War in which the deep South fights for the freedom for all against the oppressive regime of those in the north and that would not surprise me in the least in the next 20 years.