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It is comforting to suppose that the resentment and anger we provoke arise from misunderstandings on the part of others. We like to believe that if only those who shun, reproach, or despise us grasped our good intentions, steadfast efforts, and harsh circumstances, their hostility would rapidly dissipate and their hearts would swell with admiration for all we endure and accomplish.

On occasion we are misunderstood. But to assume that we incur disapproval and censure because of erroneous perceptions – and not owing to fair assessment of our words and actions – thwarts self-examination. It also spurs disregard of self-correction and self-improvement in favor of manipulating appearances and managing impressions.

In recent years, colleges and universities have indulged in such blame-shifting and image-burnishing. If only the public understood the academic requirements and political necessities that drive their decision-making, professors and administrators tell themselves – and one another and their boards – the rising tide of public opposition to higher education would abate. 

The public increasingly sees through the righteous image that American higher education wishes to project. Professors and administrators say that they curtail only injurious and hateful speech despite their tendency to equate injurious and hateful speech with conservative opinions. They maintain that they promote diversity, equity, and inclusion to rectify injustice and enhance education and not, as evidence suggests, to reward minorities and women whose thinking conforms to progressive orthodoxy. And they offer an undergraduate curriculum that allows students to fashion a slate of classes that suits their individual needs, tastes, and skills but which – typically lacking a mandatory and coherent core – leaves graduates destitute of that basic knowledge of America, the West, and other civilizations that informs the judgment of responsible citizens.

Professors’ and administrators’ tendency to dismiss criticism of their institutions as springing from flawed perceptions of campus life is worse than the tendency among individuals to insist that they have been wrongly judged and unfairly maligned. That’s because higher education supposedly specializes in fostering thoughtfulness by inquiring, weighing evidence, and considering arguments from multiple sides.

Then again, professors, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, have long promulgated the idea that “narrative” reigns supreme. If facts are inextricably bound up with arbitrary theories, if knowledge is socially constructed, if the truth is determined by exercises of power and schemes of domination – then what counts is who........

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