Although I do not often agree with Dennis Prager, I must acknowledge that this short essay of his is excellent. Its title is: "Why Do People Still Donate to Universities?" And his answer, if I can put words in his mouth, is, "Don't do it, if you love our country." He concludes his note with this statement: "But if you love America, among the worst things you can do is contribute to 95 percent of the country's universities. America would better off if you burned that money." I heartily concur with him on this.

As a person who has spent almost his entire professional career in academia, I can attest that colleges and universities have become dens of intellectual iniquity, based on cultural Marxism (it is no longer only the bourgeois who are oppressing the proletariat; it is now, also, white males who do so, to pretty much everyone else) and political correctness (safe spaces, trigger warnings, and all the rest). Here is an instance of this of which even I was not cognizant, thanks to George Leef in his op-ed:  "How American Higher Education Turned into a False Promise." He gives this example: "Perhaps the most telling is the nasty treatment a 79-year-old UCLA professor, Val Rust, received for his 'microaggression' of correcting grammatical errors in the papers of Ph.D. candidates. Among other 'offenses' against these students, he "changed the capitalization of 'indigenous' in one of the papers," which allegedly signaled  'disrespect for the student's ideological point of view.' A few of Professor Rust's students defended him, one writing that the protest was merely 'a cheap way of arousing public support.' But instead of telling the students to behave like adults, the UCLA administration overreacted by appeasing the protesters and sending an email to all staff and students declaring that this  'troubling racial incident' required that the university community  'work toward just, equitable, and lasting solutions.'" There you have it: a professor doing a reasonable job of editing, a culturally Marxist student, and an administration which supports the latter, not the former.

As grateful to Mr. Prager as I am, and as I think we all should be, I cannot go along with several of his suggestions. First, he recommends that if we must donate to an institution of higher learning, we choose Hillsdale: "And if you give to a college, give to one that actually venerates America and the life of the mind (Hillsdale College, for example)." At one time I would have actually agreed with him on this. But that institution has long since gone the Abraham Lincoln-worshipping, neo-conservative, war-mongering, route. A far better choice would be in my opinion Grove City College, where my Austro-libertarian friends and colleagues Jeff Herbener and Shawn Ritenour are the mainstays of their economics department.