The Wall Street Journal ran an article by Jillian Kay Melchior entitled, “The Scourge of Diversity.”  The column is about Heather Mac Donald, a one-time liberal who now believes identify politics threatens higher education and civilization itself.

You may recall that it was Heather Mac  Donald who was chased away from invited scheduled speeches by “collegiate mobs.”  Ms. Mac Donald sees the university experience as “four precious years to encounter human creations that you’re otherwise – unless you’re very diligent and insightful-  really never going to encounter again.”  There is time enough for things of the moment once you graduate.

It’s one thing if those following things of the moment were actually students protesting than hired thugs assigned to disrupt the free speech of others.  We saw this at California schools where those in black set fires broke down doors and stopped opposing views.  We also saw the effort during the recent Supreme Court nomination and confirmation hearings.  Regardless how the “fake news” frames the opposition, it is not normal citizens going to town to say their peace.  They are hired hands who could kill or maim you with their weapons.

In Ms. Mac Donald’s new book, The Diversity Delusion, she explores how identity politics has diverted higher education from more elevated subjects.  She warns of this ideology’s spread to other cultural institutions and industries, Hollywood, Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Ms. Mac Donald aspired to teach and studied literature at Yale University.  After that she obtained a law degree from Stanford.

Ms. Mac Donald’s desire for the classroom drifted away.  “I realized things in the humanities had gotten worse and worse, that identify politics has taken over, I couldn’t go home again.”

When it comes to race, Ms. Mac Donald’s views are more conventionally conservative.  She opposes all forms of affirmative action.  She opposes the University of California’s guaranteed admissions plan, which admits the top nine percent of students from every California high school regardless of the school’s overall performance.

At some of those schools, it doesn’t take a whole lot to be an honor student, you basically show up.

These type of preferences, set up their intended beneficiaries for failure.  They’re suddenly expected to perform beyond their proven capabilities and to compete with peers who earned admission through merit.

If you don’t make it to Harvard or UC Berkeley, “life is not over for you.”  To escape poverty (for all of us), you just need to graduate from high school, hold a job, any job, minimum wage or full time and wait until you get married to have children.  Nearly three-fourths of all people who follow those simple rules are not poor.”

To accommodate affirmative action beneficiaries, Ms. Mac  Donald says universities have lowered standards and established majors focused on identity and oppression.  One can certainly see this at the University of Oklahoma in hiring practices and with the majors of black and women studies that provide no true path to a living wage.

Ms. MacDonald recalls the night in April 2017 when she needed a police escort and spoke to an empty hall at Claremont McKenna College.  What worries Ms. Mac Donald more than the mob is the destructive power of its animated ideas.  If the university continues its decline, how will knowledge be passed on to the next generation or new knowledge created? Ms. Mac  Donald needs to be heard.

Then there’s the tragedy of individual students, those who wallow in victimhood yet enjoy an extraordinary privilege.  They have at their fingertips what they are not using is knowledge.