Frank Bruni’s recent New York Times op-ed, “Trump Isn’t Fixing America’s Campuses. He’s Bleeding Them Dry.,” was only the latest example of a genre that has become familiar.

Thoughtful commentators — Bruni, Harvard University’s Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker and others — acknowledge academia’s failures, admit the reality of ideological capture, and even highlight the corrosive effects of antisemitism and enforced orthodoxy. Yet after conceding all this, they retreat into the same solution: more conversation, more dialogue, more reflection.

This posture is comforting but wholly inadequate. Bruni is right that universities have promoted a progressive orthodoxy at odds with free discourse. He is right that antisemitism was tolerated during campus protests in ways no

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