BOOK REVIEW: ‘Poisoned Ivies’
by Anthony J. Sadar · The Washington TimesOPINION:
In “Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities,” congresswoman and Harvard 2006 alumna Elise Stefanik observes that “it simply does not register to many faculty and administrators that their view of the world is wildly to the left of the American mainstream, or that this could be a problem. Yet the left-wing monoculture of the university today has an immiserating effect on intellectual life.”
For example, she writes, a “pro-Israel student who wants to study the Middle East at an elite American university can expect to have to run a gauntlet of anti-Israel politics, antisemitism, propaganda, misinformation, and even harassment. They certainly cannot expect that their views be respected, taken seriously, or even entertained. This is a recipe for increasing narrow-mindedness and bigotry and for a suffocating educational atmosphere.”
Ms. Stefanik continues: “What’s true of these departments is true, to greater and lesser degrees, for others. As conservative students and faculty at universities across the country will tell you, this is just what you should expect if you step onto an American campus, especially an elite campus. This is the climate that the progressive intelligentsia has established at America’s elite universities.”
This wretched situation is documented in painful detail throughout “Poisoned Ivies.” The book was inspired by Ms. Stefanik’s questioning of Ivy League university presidents on Dec. 5, 2023, “in the most watched congressional hearing in history.”
The hearing arose from the appalling protests (often violent) against Israel and Jewish students on college campuses across the U.S. after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel by brutal terrorist groups, primarily Hamas.
Numerous college administrators and professors downplayed (and thus encouraged) the frequent riotous conditions. Some faculty even participated in the campus uproar and held classes within the protester encampments.
This is unacceptable and demonstrates that antisemitism is alive and well and flourishing on college campuses. The events, attitudes and fears documented in “Poisoned Ivies” are unmistakable reminders of the situation in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. This is reality, not hyperbole, as when so many flippantly make such comparisons.
“Poisoned Ivies” does not pull punches on higher education’s regressive liberalism and rightly targets diversity, equity and inclusion: “The grab bag of rules, programs, slogans, and dogmas that went under the banner of [DEI] overran American campuses so easily because the ground had already been softened by years of progressive assaults on free speech and academic freedom. … DEI segregates people by race, quashes voices it dislikes, and expels viewpoints it disagrees with. … DEI is racism under the guise of opposing racism, sexism under the guise of opposing sexism, and antisemitism under the guise of opposing hatred.”
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In the chapter “What Went Wrong,” the book offers reasons for the awful resurgence of campus antisemitism, including the DEI agenda, along with the preponderance of radical left-wing political ideology and the increase of certain international students with their ingrained prejudices.
The immense foreign contributions to university coffers also can have a nefarious influence.
Ms. Stefanik offers workable solutions, such as completely dismantling DEI and reforming and revamping the tenured faculty system. In the chapter “How We Fix It,” she details successful free speech approaches, welcoming campuses and alternative educational avenues.
The appendix to “Poisoned Ivies” contains key verbatim portions of the “House Committee on Education and the Workforce Hearing ‘Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism’” from Dec. 5, 2023, April 17, 2024, and May 23, 2024. These were inquiries confronting university presidents from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia and Northwestern University on their abysmal handling of campus protests.
Students must be exposed to honorable pedagogy that embraces discovery from a place of tolerance and humility, enabling considerate engagement with opposing viewpoints.
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For peak educational performance, opposition to alternative perspectives and heritages via intimidation and violence must be permanently recessed.
As “Poisoned Ivies” asserts, return to the scholarly summit for elite universities “will take vigilance, rigor, and dogged accountability for years to come to dig out of decades of this academic and moral decay.”
• Anthony J. Sadar is an adjunct associate professor of science at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, and a co-author of “Environmental Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry” (CRC Press).
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Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities
Threshold Editions, $29, 256 pages