America’s elite universities are bloated, complacent and illiberal 

THE STRUGGLE over America’s elite universities—who controls them and how they are run–continues to rage, with lasting consequences for them and the country. Harvard faces a congressional investigation into antisemitism; Columbia has just been hit with a lawsuit alleging “endemic” hostility towards Jews. Top colleges are under mounting pressure to reintroduce rigorous test-based admissions policies, after years of backsliding on meritocracy. And it is likely that the cosy tax breaks these gilded institutions enjoy will soon attract greater scrutiny. Behind all this lies a big question. Can American universities, flabby with cash and blighted by groupthink, keep their competitive edge?

The origins of the turmoil lie in extreme campus reactions to Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th. They led to a blockbuster congressional hearing in December. In it politicians accused three college presidents of failing to curtail antisemitism. The University of Pennsylvania’s then president, Elizabeth Magill, stepped down just days later. Claudine Gay, formerly Harvard’s president, resigned from her job in January amid twin furores over antisemitism on campus and plagiarism in her scholarship (which she contested).