University, Heal Thyself

Hardly a week has passed of late without news of an insurrectionary event in an American college or university. How could it happen that so many of "the best students from the best families in the best universities" have turned upon the institutions that have nurtured them? Such a series of events can no longer be regarded as merely local freaks, like a sudden tornado that on a beautiful spring day strikes a single farmhouse and passes on. How, then, did it happen that in the very halls of learning, where specialists in the understanding of people, institutions, and society are not lacking, there had been so little foreknowledge? Perceptions of these events and reactions to them, both on and beyond the campuses, can perhaps suggest, post hoc, frames of mind within which answers to both questions may be sought. At any rate, we, the academicians, have not been notably wise before the events.