Dartmouth Trustee Pulls a Coulter: Academics “don’t believe in God, don’t believe in country.”
Recently surfaced on YouTube: Dartmouth trustee Todd Zywicki at this year’s John William Pope Center for Higher Education conference, discussing his Dartmouth-leadership peers:
Those who control the University today, they don’t believe in God and they don’t believe in country. University is their cathedral. Their entire being, both those who fund it and those who teach within it, are tied up in the universities. It is basically their religion.
This should make for good small talk at the next trustee/administration cocktail party.
Zywicki, who is also a law professor at George Mason University, was part of the alumni-trustee power bloc that precipitated recent changes to Dartmouth’s constitution. His massive CV includes titles like “Deadbeats Cost All of Us Dearly” and “Is Tony the Tiger Making Kids Fat?” (answer: yes, but it’s worth it, because obese babies have extra-chubby-wubby cheeks!) Even worse, however, than fat kids and lazy people are liberal pansies and their Catholic-but-not-in-the-good-Jesus-way doctrine:
The establishment within these universities is vicious. They are vicious people. They have their own dogma. … There is a new dogma that is environmentalism, feminism, and, uh, that is the dogma. And they will enforce it viciously. We have the Spanish Inquisition, and you can ask Larry Summers whether or not the Spanish Inquisition lives on academic campuses today.
Does that make Drew Gilpin Faust the pope? Or maybe she’s Jesus, whom Zywicki namedrops later. Either way, it’s a riot. Videos and partial transcript from the anti-Dartmouth and diatribe after the jump.
What I think you have to understand is, those who control the University today, they don’t believe in God and they don’t believe in country. University is their cathedrals. Their entire being, both those who fund it and those who teach within it, are tied up in the universities. It is basically their religion, and it is supported by those who, the Medicis of the earlier age, built, academic buildings rather than cathedrals today, and they called the shots.
…those who bankroll these institutions basically use this to buy indulgences for being rich. Which is that they are fully embracing, and happy to embrace, all the multiculturalism and all the other stuff because this is their way of getting forgiveness, of showing how virtuous they are despite the fact that they make a lot of money. They have no quibble with the apparatus because they either don’t care about it — they only care about the reputation of the institution — or they’re happy with it because it allows them to deal with their conscience.
The third way that it’s a religion … The establishment within these universities is vicious. They are vicious people. They have their own dogma. If it were the case that there was no morality and no values being taught in the academy, that would be better than what we have, which is, there is a new dogma. There is a new dogma that is environmentalism, feminism, and, uh, that is the dogma. And they will enforce it viciously. We have the Spanish Inquisition and, um, you can ask Larry Summers whether or not the Spanish Inquisition lives on academic campuses today.
So, that’s why, the first point is, either we’re all in or we’re not. It’s going to be a long and vicious trench warfare, I think, if we’re serious about taking the academy back.
Secondly, I think we need to think about investing in alternative institutions simultaneously or alternatively. That is, we need to start thinking about creating and supporting alternative institutions. Elite institutions matter, absolutely. That’s where the leaders of society are disproportionately going to be found, but we need to find the shining lights elsewhere and start nurturing these. I’ll just tell you about George Mason Law School. George Mason Law School: We are a top-25 faculty. There was a profile of us in the National Review a little while ago that was very good. We are leaders in law and economics. We now have a new compulsory class that first years have to take on the founders’ Constitution, where they have to read Madison and Hamilton before they’re allowed to read Brennan and Ginsberg. We take seriously the principles of a free society and the way in which the role of law intersects with that. Our faculty are willing to engage on the leading issues of the day — the second amendment, affirmative action, those sorts of things. We were the ones who supported a brief supporting the military. We wrote the brief supporting the military in the Fair v. Rumsfeld case which we were then vindicated, eight-to-nothing, in the Supreme Court. All the other law schools were on the other side of that issue. What we lack, though, is resources. You know, ten million dollars or a million dollars is chump change to Dartmouth. That’s a transformative gift to a place like Dartmouth or– I’m sorry– a place like George Mason Law School or the George Mason Economics department or these other pearls, these other places around the country that are these alternative institutions that I think need to be supported. Why? Because if reform is going to come I think it’s going to come from these new institutions, not from those that are already within the elite institutions. People like Michael Munger and Robby George, these people are sui generis, right? You can’t replicate them. If they come along, grab the opportunity in writing. But you have to invest in people, and not just programs.
Having said that, the third point is, institutions do matter. Institutions matter a lot. Which is that, what we’ve done, is build institutions around the periphery, like these centers, which again I think are very, very important and very, very useful. But fundamentally, institutions matter, right? Jesus was great, but Peter was just as important, right? That, yes, it’s great to have people out there doing these things but institutions is where the action are. Institutions is where you draw kids in and educate them with a fundamental curriculum and that sort of thing. People don’t want to invest in overhead, for instance, but you’ve got to start thinking about getting institutions like George Mason Law School or wherever, and building those institutions and investing them if it’s going to be a multi-generational project, bringing them up to prominence so that they can compete.
The final thing is, and I can be brief on this because Candace made the point, which is, the trustees have to take a leadership role in this. When trustees don’t act, the void gets filled by the permanent constituencies on campus which are the faculty and the administrators.
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November 19th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
What he’s saying makes sense somewhat. Secular individuals dominate university faculty because intellectuals tend to dismiss religious dogma. There’s a reason why religion is more prevalent in rural Alabama than at Ivy League universities.
November 19th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
EVEN THOUGH most Ivies were founded for religious reasons.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Zywicki is an embarrassment. I hope that those who voted for him are regretting their decision, now. He obviously cares very little for Dartmouth and would rather that you donate and give your support to George Mason University and the National Review.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
if I wanted political commentary, I’d go to a political blog.
November 19th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
The comparison is apt. The guy is making the exact same points as Coulter, only not for the sake of sensationalism or to push a million books, but because he truly believes our schools would benefit by incorporating right-wing views into their curriculum. Therefore, he deserves ridicule.
So what if more professors donated to Obama than Romney! There is nothing left-leaning about Kirchhoff’s laws, or Pythagoras’ theorem. Keep your “fair and balanced” sophism out of our school system, thank you.
November 19th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
You, my fair idiot, don’t have to worry about the school system being “fair and balanced” anytime soon. Liberal fucktards dominate universities all across america (just look at the idiots at columbia). Zywicki is correct. Also, it’s no surprise Maureen wrote this post; she’s increasingly sounding like an tortured atheist who’ll die trying to shove her views down others’ throats.
November 20th, 2007 at 12:00 am
d alum wishes he went to dartmouth university and not dartmouth college, and he’s doing everything he can to rectify that.
November 20th, 2007 at 12:31 am
It’s dogmatic, irrational, biased people like you that make me cringe every time I classify myself as a conservative. And furthermore, yes all atheists are tortured, despondent, depressed individuals who probably got raped as a child by their dad. Oh yea and they eat babies for breakfast. And it’s atheists shoving their views down others’ throats uh? We’re the ones dominating Congress, forcing prayers at graduation ceremonies, including the ten commandments in courtrooms, trying to shove religious ideas into biology class, forcing our children to attend Sunday school at fucking 4 years old, creating more and more religiously based tv networks, proselytizing on street corners, and demonizing anyone that disagrees with our viewpoints. Note extreme sarcasm please.
November 20th, 2007 at 12:56 am
“they don’t believe in God and they don’t believe in country”
Do they believe in Yale?
November 20th, 2007 at 12:57 am
@Sasha: Columbia only has the illusion of being a liberal institution. The Ivies are not as liberal as they’re portrayed to be. The Ivies are ultimately still for the well-bred, well-fed, and well-wed.
Is anyone going to remark how utterly terrible of a speaker this guy is?
November 20th, 2007 at 1:15 am
Or how stupid these comments have been?
November 20th, 2007 at 4:17 am
Kindly go take your atheistic views elsewhere. 90% of America disagrees with you, so deal with it while we pray at graduation. Welcome to the USA.
November 20th, 2007 at 4:26 am
Torch the gays! I support Ann Coulter for VP in ‘08.
November 20th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Zywicki is 100% right. anyone who has spent time at upper-level universities and is not a militant secularist knows that comments like these hold a lot of water.
November 20th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Zywacko precipitated changes in the Charter, not the alumni association constitution as the post implies.
What’s strangest about his deluded rant is that it was uttered by him, not fellow trustee Stephen Smith — who’s even more conservative. Smith clerked for Clarence Thomas and wrote an anti-evolution piece for the Federalist Society journal, for heaven’s sake. Stephen Smith, where are you?
Zywicki and Smith have proven once and for all that the board’s recent reduction in power of alumni-nominated trustees (from 4/9 to 4/13) was not only wise but necessary, pronto. Why anyone thought these two cranks could be trusted to look out for the interests of the institution (rather than their own personal interests or reactionary delusions regarding the “reform” of American higher education) is beyond me.
November 20th, 2007 at 10:40 am
It doesn’t matter whether you agree with the guy or even whether he’s right. Criticizing his own institution in public is not part of his job. He and the other trustees all promised the college they would promote its interests and represent it positively; Trustee Zywicki has let us all down.
His use of his Dartmouth position on behalf of the movement would be a clear breach of his fiduciary duties as a trustee.
November 20th, 2007 at 10:42 am
sasha: I’ve lost any respect I might have one day developed for you. The facts you learn in, let’s say, biology (have you taken science? you should) are just that, facts, and as such have no political bias inherent in them. I’m sorry if you have trouble distinguishing between facts and political ideology, which you clearly have because everything you write comes through as a sad effort to win daddy’s approval. Try thinking for yourself sometime, it’s liberating. Or does that sound too much like liberal? It’s emancipating? No, too Martin-Luther-Kingy. It’s like that feeling you had when you found out sodomy was banned in Texas because for some reason that’s important to you.
November 20th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Todd’s not working for Olin or the Federalists, he’s working for the Phrygian Society.
November 20th, 2007 at 11:09 am
@ d10: so you think Zywicki’s selective reinterpretation of the Charter to allow alumni a right to elect trustees — which isn’t written anywhere in the document, by the way — is more likely to make Dartmouth collegiate rather than to universitize it? Do you support Zywicki’s “living Charter” or do you prefer to give alumni only the rights that are spelled out in the text? Once you open that door, how do you keep out other “rights” that would tend to harm Dartmouth’s independence in other ways?
November 20th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
@sasha and @d10: what in the hell are you talking about? Listen to yourselves. Instead of bothering to formulate anything that even closely resembles a cohesive or remotely thoughtful argument, without even feigning an empty gesture towards collegiality or the spirit of intellectual debate, you bellow emotional slogans and cling to ideological dogma. What the fuck is Dartmouth University? Could it be that institution that has one of America’s oldest medical schools, a fine engineering school, and its oldest and best MBA program? How do you think Tuck or DMS or Thayer students and faculty feel when you stubbornly trumpet the stupid and unfounded notion that undergraduate and graduate education are mutually exclusive? In any case, I went to Dartmouth College and I am damn proud of it. I consider it to be one of the finest undergraduate programs in North America, even if it occasionally admits numb-nuts like you.
God forbid that the Academe maintain a sense of skepticism. They should simply support tradition and inculcate students with Rousseauist civic dogma. Like Plato’s philosopher-kings, our intellectuals must shelter us from thinking for ourselves, teach us that America is great and that Christ is our Lord, and show us how we can best unquestioningly carry out our duties as citizens. We all know that this noble lie is so fragile that even the slightest skepticism is enough to cause an avalanche and topple the Republic, so it’s simply dangerous and stupid for “liberal fucktards” to suggest that curious and critical minds are not only acceptable but praiseworthy.
Finally, you two fuck-wits–have you considered that as a Trustee of the College, Zywicki is betraying his pledge to the College by trashing it in public and by asking people to support not it but his own employers?
November 20th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Fuck yeah! Well said “d alum.” You put the “dart” in Dartmouth.
November 20th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
There are nuts at Brown with the same problem. Why do people think graduate education and undergraduate education are opposed to one another?
November 22nd, 2007 at 3:34 am
Do you feel bad you wasted so much time on IvyGate to write that?
November 22nd, 2007 at 4:22 pm
No, it took less than a minute. Does it take you that long to point out a few obvious things in a couple of paragraphs?
November 26th, 2007 at 7:39 am
d alum- i think your use of the term ‘fuck-wits’ slightly undermines your exhortations to collegiality? Don’t you?
November 26th, 2007 at 8:43 am
@D ‘09: It’s really quite brilliant of you to point that out. To answer your question, no, I do not think that it undermines anything that I said. I’m not interested in engaging in civil discussion with an idiot, and I think that it’s preposterous to suggest that I should. I think that I’d lead a very boring and frustrating life if I attempted to intellectually engage every blathering fool with a persecution complex. Don’t you?