Sunday, March 11, 2007

Words from Higher-Ed Cynics

Some delightfully satirical lines from a multiple-book review on elite universities, "Scandals of Higher Education":
I'm sorry for what my people did to your people
It was a nasty job
Please note the change of attitude
On the bumper of my Saab.

[...]

"In the transformed world of what was once an old boys club, "feminism," he[Walter Benn Michaels] writes, "is what you appeal to when you want to make it sound as if the women of Wall Street and the women of Wal-Mart are both victims of sexism."


Some sections of Ross Douthat's Privilege cover similar material as this essay. In both accounts, the elite university is a meritocrat's Potemkin Village festooned with diversitarian iconography and financed by Brideshead-level prodigality.

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