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The Tragedy of the Ivies

As classical literature teaches, hubris is leading to a fall.

What is happening right now in the Ivy League, involving some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, is nothing less than a tragedy. And I mean that literally, in the classical sense.

In his masterwork The Fall of Princes, the 15th-century English poet John Lydgate explores the sad fate of numerous noteworthy figures throughout history, from Adam to King John of France—the idea being that, to experience a truly stupendous and historic fall, an individual must be of high station to begin with. Shakespeare echoes this sentiment in his great tragedies, featuring such high-born characters as Hamlet, Lear, and MacBeth.

For more than two centuries, the Ivies have stood at the pinnacle of American higher education, veritable “princes” among universities. If we apply the same standard to institutions, the universities of the Ivy League clearly qualify. For more than two centuries, they have stood at the pinnacle of American higher education, veritable “princes” among universities. That’s why their precipitous fall, which began a couple of decades ago but has accelerated in recent years, is worthy of note. If they hadn’t been so great to begin with, the loss of their ideals and erosion of their mission would be of little consequence. No one would care.

If they hadn’t been so great to begin with, the loss of their ideals and erosion of their mission would be of little consequence. Before I document that decline, let me first address a common criticism leveled at people like me who work at “lesser” universities: How dare I attack these lofty institutions when I never even attended much less taught at one? And that is true. Growing up in a small Southern town in the 1970s, even with excellent grades and SAT scores, it never occurred to me to apply to an Ivy League school. A Harvard or Yale education seemed completely unattainable.

But that is precisely the point. In relation to those institutions, I was for most of my life like one of the townspeople in E.A. Robinson’s modern tragic poem, “Richard Cory,” gazing upon the good and great with wonder, awe, and envy:

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

The fact that so many of us have romanticized these institutions for so long, ascribing to them almost mythic qualities, is what makes their decline so tragic—if not, indeed, inevitable. Consider Robinson’s closing lines:

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Note the regal imagery in the poem, words such as “crown” and “imperially.” Even the name of the title character is a clever allusion to the 12th-century English king and crusader Richard the Lionheart, aka Richard Coeur de Lion. The Richard Cory of the poem is clearly a “prince,” at least figuratively speaking, whom everyone admires but who ultimately takes his own life. That is quite a fall.

When it comes to the Ivies, what does it mean to talk about their “fall”? In what ways have they, like Richard Cory—or MacBeth or Hamlet—essentially brought about their own demise? Because that is another characteristic of the tragic hero: hamartia, the “tragic flaw.” It is usually linked, in classical tragedy, to hubris or “overweening pride”—the hero’s almost god-like belief in his own superiority to the vulgar masses. Ironically, this flaw is often the very quality that makes him great to begin with, taken to extremes. For example, brainy Hamlet’s flaw is his misplaced faith in intellect or reason; for MacBeth, the bold man of action, it is his driving ambition.

To say that the Ivies are in decline is not just a matter of opinion, an attempt to cast aspersions on my betters. To say that the Ivies are in decline is not just a matter of opinion, an attempt to cast aspersions on my betters. It is an observation from someone “on the pavement,” to borrow Robinson’s phrase. And I am hardly alone.

Indeed, a June 2024 article in Politico magazine noted that, among the American public, “elite colleges are increasingly unpopular.” Earlier the same year, a Gallup survey found that only 36 percent of Americans have any significant level of confidence in higher education overall, while support for Harvard in particular hit a record low.

What most of us “on the pavement” see is a university that has gone off the rails, defending and even valorizing supporters of terrorism. To figure out why, we need only look at the press coverage from the past two years—specifically, going back to October 2023, after Hamas terrorists massacred nearly 1,200 Israeli citizens and took dozens of hostages. The reaction to that event, at places such as Harvard and Columbia, is indicative of the moral rot that has been festering at those institutions for years but has only recently come to light.

After all, what made them great to begin with was a commitment to excellence that served as a model for the rest of the country. That reputation is now in tatters, as our oldest academic institutions have replaced free speech with incitement to violence, academic integrity with blatant cheating, merit with identity politics, and fairness with discrimination—all while decreeing, in their infinite wisdom, that these are now the correct values that everyone else must adopt.

At Columbia, for example, students and faculty not only held pro-Hamas rallies, set up “encampments,” and harassed Jewish students trying to get to class; to be fair, that sort of thing was happening on campuses across the country. But Columbia students took matters a step further, taking over the library and another academic building while chanting pro-Hamas slogans. Following the May commencement, graduates filmed themselves destroying their diplomas in protest.

Meanwhile, the university was harboring anti-American foreign students such as Alistair Kitchen, an Australian citizen who was deported after writing in support of pro-Hamas agitator Mahmoud Khalil and calling the U.S. “a fascist state.” And of course there is the now rather well-known story of Khalil himself, the self-styled “chief negotiator” of something called the “Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” Basically, he was the one inciting most of the mischief on campus until the State Department, under Secretary Marco Rubio, called him on it and revoked his visa.

That case is still ongoing, as Khalil’s supporters have sued on First Amendment grounds and a judge has temporarily stayed his deportation. But what most of us “on the pavement” see is a university that has gone off the rails, defending and even valorizing supporters of terrorism while turning a deaf ear to rampant antisemitism on its campus. That does not exactly instill confidence in supposedly “elite” education.

The situation at Harvard is, if anything, even worse. Like Columbia and many others, Harvard had its issues with antisemitism in the wake of the Hamas atrocities—so much so that the university’s president at the time, Claudine Gay, was called in front of Congress to explain, along with the presidents of Penn and MIT (not technically an Ivy, but close enough). None of the three presidents acquitted herself well, making headlines by waffling on the question of whether calls for Jewish genocide were a violation of their schools’ policies. That, they insisted, depended on “context.” Within two months, both Ivy League presidents had resigned.

In Gay’s case, however, it wasn’t even her congressional testimony that led to her ouster. She might have survived that, so intent was Harvard on protecting its first black woman president. But shortly after that embarrassing incident, journalist Chris Rufo revealed that Gay had plagiarized large portions of her dissertation. The university tried once again to gloss things over, officially clearing Gay of wrongdoing in a report that suggested she hadn’t really plagiarized—she had merely committed “research misconduct” by using “duplicative language” without attribution or citation. In essence, to protect Gay, Harvard attempted to define plagiarism out of existence.

If it can happen to Harvard, it’s only a matter of time before other top schools see similar cuts. Eventually, though, Gay had to go—as president. She was allowed to resign and return to the full-time faculty, with a cozy, endowed chair and her entire nearly seven-figure salary.

Since then, things haven’t exactly smoothed out for the Crimson. Earlier this year, the Trump administration decided to make an example of the university—in recognition, no doubt, of its preeminence—by threatening to withhold federal funding if it did not take steps to get its antisemitism problem under control. The current president and the faculty told Trump to pound sand, at which point the administration followed through and cut or froze over $3.2 billion in grants and other funding. If that can happen to Harvard, it’s only a matter of time before other top schools, including Ivy League institutions such as Columbia, see similar cuts.

“Elite” institutions cannot continue openly discriminating against Jews, whites, and Asians without losing more than funding. And it’s not just about antisemitism. Harvard and company have been exposed, by Rufo and others, as long-time bastions of racism under such guises as “affirmative action” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” They have systematically discriminated against white and Asian students in admissions while historically lowering the bar for “students of color.” That, as the Trump administration has pointed out repeatedly, is against the law, a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It is also an unsustainable path. “Elite” institutions cannot continue openly discriminating against Jews, whites, and Asians while tacitly supporting terrorism without losing more than funding. They are quickly losing the confidence of the American public and, with it, the stature they have worked so hard to attain. In their hubris, believing themselves absolutely to be the best and brightest, they have decided that whatever they do must be right simply because they do it.

That is a level of pride worthy of the original tragic “hero,” the one Milton wrote about in Paradise Lost. And it will likely, in the long run, have the same effect.

Rob Jenkins is an associate professor of English at Georgia State University-Perimeter College. The views expressed here are his own.