We must restore ‘veritas’ at our universities

According to a survey done by the Harvard Crimson in 2022, 80% of the faculty at Harvard University self-identified as “liberal.” Thirty-seven percent self-identified as “very liberal.”

Only 1% self-identified as conservative.

This snapshot of the politics of the faculty at the nation’s oldest and leading university is not exceptional. Surveys of most university faculties show them overwhelmingly on the left.

If we think about it, it can help us understand why the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, had such a hard time making a clear statement condemning the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians.

And it can help us understand demonstrations by students at Harvard, and other universities, accusing Israel, the victim of these atrocities, as their cause.

As one Wall Street Journal columnist put it, one can hardly imagine demonstrations at Harvard against human brutality in China, Iran, North Korea, Russia or Syria.

But somehow atrocities against Israelis are not only justified in the eyes of these left-wing university elite but caused by their Israeli victims.

What is the sickness of the soul that has captured America’s elite of higher education?

To start our inquiry, we must look at Harvard’s founding. John Harvard, who provided the college’s first endowment, was a clergyman.

Read the language on Harvard’s seal.

“Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae.”

“Truth for Christ and Church.”

How many of Harvard’s administration today, of those teaching at Harvard today, of those learning at Harvard today can identify with these words from the earliest days of their university?

I don’t know the exact number, but I think if we guess zero, we’ll be close to the truth.

America was founded and built by Christians who sought truth and worked to make a better world.

Were there flaws, mistakes? Of course. They were men.

But the way to improve is to get closer to the truth, not to throw it in the trash.

Those administering, teaching and learning at Harvard and our other leading universities are not consumed by scholarship and truth-seeking, but by ideology.

Ideology is strikingly similar to another word: idol. Something man builds for himself and worships.

It is the product of egotism and pride and not the product of humility, which comes only from knowing there is a truth bigger than you, of which you are part.

Claudine Gay condemned hate and said her university is about bringing people with differences together.

This is a university president who does not see “veritas,” truth, and good and evil in the world, as embodied and conveyed in the message on her university seal and its history.

The job of universities is to pursue truth. But this is impossible when they do not believe truth exists. Thinking that the point is bringing together people rather than pursing truth is an exercise in ideology, not scholarship, and leads only to the social, cultural and spiritual degeneration we are experiencing.

If we want to save our country, let’s save our places of learning. Let’s purge the sea of ethnic, political and ideological clubs that dominate social and intellectual life at what are supposed to be our institutions of learning.

The terrorists are financed by the sale of oil. That oil was found, developed and is worth mega-billions because of Western technology. A disproportionate contribution to the development of that science and technology has come from the very people whose homeland is Israel, against whom the terrorists commit atrocities.

The United States grew and became great with the values that brought forth the miracle that is the modern State of Israel.

The moral relativism and hedonism of America’s left is now obliterating these truths.

A new birth of freedom in America means a new birth of truth and learning at our universities.

Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show “Cure America with Star Parker.”