‘No elite university is driven by left-wing politics’? Um …

Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, Leif Weatherby tries to debunk the notion that US universities today are dominated by left-wing orthodoxies and the suppression of freedom of speech, especially points of view that disagree with those orthodoxies (“Universities are left-wing hotbeds? Nonsense,” Ideas, Jan. 7)

First, Weatherby states “the simple truth [that no] elite university is driven by left-wing politics.” As supposed proof, he offers the example of two influential conservatives, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Representative Elise Stefanik, graduates of Yale and Harvard, respectively. Someone who accepts this argument might also believe the claim that most New York City baseball fans root for the Boston Red Sox because someone saw two fans at Yankee Stadium wearing Sox hats.

Weatherby confuses things further by conflating progressiveness on social issues with Marxism. Perhaps he does this so that when he goes on to note that slightly more than half of Harvard graduates go into well-paying fields such as finance, consulting, and technology rather than, say, into community organizing, this somehow disproves the charge of a lack of viewpoint diversity on campus.

I politely suggest that these elites prefer to make a lot of money so that they can live comfortable lives while they pontificate about the injustices perpetrated by society’s greedy oppressors.

DAVID ASKIN Methuen

Leif Weatherby’s portrayal of universities as capitalist wolves dressed as woke sheep may be accurate as far as their management of endowments and real estate is concerned (“Universities are left-wing hotbeds? Nonsense,” Ideas, Jan. 7). But it sidesteps the widespread concern that an overwhelmingly left-leaning faculty is unlikely to provide students with a balanced outlook.

A prominent example of this cancel culture was the pressure on Lawrence Summers to resign from the Harvard presidency in 2006 after he suggested that there might be gender differences in math or science aptitude. It mattered little that such differences have been studied by respected psychologists at wellknown universities. Nor was there much attempt to defend Summers’s freedom of speech. What could have been a teachable moment showed instead that academics are as good as creationists and climate change deniers at suppressing inconvenient evidence.

To show leadership in diversifying the intellectual environment at universities, Harvard might consider choosing a prominent conservative scholar as its next president.

PETER FOUKAL Nahant