This is the introduction to “Conformity Colleges: The Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America’s Universities,” by David R. Barnhizer (Skyhorse Publishing, 2013). It takes on new relevance given events at Harvard and what they reveal about who rises and who falls within the ranks of elite academia and why.
COVID feels like a turning point, a time when universities fully embraced the ideology of control, censorship, and compulsion, represented by universal quarantines, masking, and vaccine compliance, all rooted in symbolism rather than scientific realities. And yet this period might be more correctly seen, as it is in this brilliant book by David Barnhizer, as a codification of deep problems that already existed.
