After the violence that shut down the speech of the provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley, the University has come under substantial criticism—including from President Trump, who tweeted a threat to defund it. Many have trotted out the old yarn that the University is nothing more than a hotbed of liberalism and political correctness and not a serious academic place. One article in particular, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times, by Heather Mac Donald, a Stanford Law School graduate now employed by the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, attacks the University, asserting it has declined “from a place of learning to a victimology hothouse” and is a “cultural reeducation camp.” These attacks on the University are unwarranted and tarnish the many attributes of this most important institution—and tarnish other colleges and universities across the country and undermine their mission. In a time when it is particularly important to speak about phony facts and other libels, the record needs to be set straight.
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