UCLA has made headlines in the past few months for all the wrong reasons: from the school’s failure to protect Jewish students from a pro-Hamas mob, a university-funded magazine endorsing furries as a sexual kink, and a student government leader imploring students to take up arms against the LAPD when law enforcement arrested those who led an assault on a synagogue.
These instances are not isolated flukes, or simply the misconduct of a few bad apples ignored by the university. Rather, this behavior, and the totalizing mindset that encourages violent, unthinking action, is learned and abetted by UCLA’s academy. Instead of empowering students to critically engage with ideas, learn from great texts, or become citizens invested in the public good, my university now serves as a finishing school for unreflective activism. This fervor isn’t unique to UCLA, but is a reflection of larger trends of activism replacing rigor within American higher education.
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