Elizabeth Grace Matthew is an Ivy League graduate and has taught at the college/university level.
She is also a disillusioned Democrat who – as seen in her article for thehill.com via msn.com – feels, to quote Ronald Reagan, that she has not left the party, the party has left her:
I am a political moderate and registered Democrat who, like many of my fellow centrist and left-leaning millennials, became politically homeless in practice when the party moved left in the 2010s and then was driven off a leftward cliff by Gen Z in 2020.
Ms. Matthews goes on to accuse our colleges and universities of forgoing conventional education to indoctrinate students to the so-called “Gen Z” set of beliefs. She provides two major examples: the hard-left stances toward Israel’s war with hamas and the “I am transexual so you have to pretend I’m actually the other sex” movement.
Here are a few key excerpts about the Israel/hamas issue…
Since Oct. 7, Americans of various political persuasions have seen a sizable group of undergraduate and graduate students attending the nation’s most elite universities profess sympathy with Hamas, the terrorist group that slaughtered over 1,200 Israelis in an unexpected attack on civilians, including women and children.
Many alumni of these institutions who self-identify as liberal — and have mixed and, in many cases, critical opinions of the Israeli government — are no less surprised than horrified to learn that students at their alma maters, as well as the leftist flank of their (and my) Democratic Party, apparently find the rape and murder of girls and women, the slaughter of grandparents, and the beheading of babies justifiable under the dubious banner of “decolonization.” What manner of people could accept and even endorse such obvious evil?
… the apparent zeal for antisemitic terrorism among so many of today’s most elite learners does not surprise me.
Not because I learned, over my nearly two decades in the academy, that students are bad people or indifferent to suffering. Quite the opposite. Most students (and most faculty and staff) are kind and empathetic — so indiscriminately empathetic, in fact, they can become genuinely incapable of considering facts when reality conflicts with a narrative about oppression.
To acknowledge Israel’s suffering at the hands of those that took innocent civilian lives, its right to defend itself and its people from terrorism, and the ethical superiority of its democratic government to Palestine’s militant one, requires an acceptance of moral truth over prescribed oppression narrative.
…and about the transsexual issue:
All variable gendered norms of attire and behavior aside, there is no longer-standing or more indisputable truth than that of sexual dimorphism among human beings. Nor is it in scientific dispute that adult males are on average far larger, faster and stronger than adult females. Women run races against other women rather than against men for the same reason that 6-year-olds run races against other 6-year-olds rather than against 16-year-olds: to provide a forum for genuine competition.
Yet, when a male swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania decided to compete as a woman, claiming a marginalized gender identity, the entire academic establishment — from his university, to the other universities, to the NCAA — accepted this individual’s narrative over and above the scientific truth that exists irrespective of any person’s self-understanding. As a result, female athletes lost roster spots, trophies and privacy.
There is a lot more worthwhile material in Ms. Matthews’ commentary, which I hope you use the link I’ve provided and read. But her central point – that colleges and universities have become less educational and more incubational – i.e. incubators of hard-left indoctrination at the expense of conventional learning that would prepare them to function in the real world/not the world of screamed protests and street theater – is right up there for anyone to see.
Thank you Elizabeth Grace Matthews. You get it. How I hope many of the people you reference in your article will eventually get it as well.
