“Man On Deathbed” © DL Polonsky

 

Merit, Mediocrity, and the Manufactured War on Universities
How Populist Politics Undermines Excellence and Elevates Resentment in Higher Education

The men in the administration were not proud. That was clear. They sat in their suits—too large at the shoulders, too tight at the neck—and spoke in a way that made words sound like apologies. They did not smile when Harvard produced another Nobel. They barely blinked when MIT made fusion news again. They chewed ice from plastic cups and whispered things about wokeness like it was a weather condition.

They were not proud. They were confused. And worse—they were afraid.

 

The Ivy Drips with Guilt

The universities were here before the administration. They were here before planes, before pasteurized milk, before America was embarrassed by its own thinking class. They were made from stone and sin and funded by men who owned too many railroads and not enough humility. They were named after other men who wrote in Greek and sometimes owned other men. But still—they were made to think.

Now the administration wants them gone. Or changed. Or humiliated.

They say: “These are elite institutions.”

Of course they are. That’s the point.

But what they really mean is: They think they’re better than us.

And they are not wrong. The universities do think that. Because sometimes they are.

 

Anti-Intellectualism: A National Pastime

The trouble, as Richard Hofstadter noted, is that “intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege” (1963, p. 51). And in a country where folks are taught that feelings are stronger than facts, any institution that traffics in abstract thought becomes a threat.

So the administration, committed to populist optics and electoral calculus, decided that the real enemy wasn’t poverty, or war, or healthcare—but rather the sophomore at Yale who just learned about Foucault and wants to abolish chairs. That kid became a cultural emergency.

To many in power, the idea of thinking as a profession is unsettling. Because it cannot be measured with a poll or monetized by a PAC. It cannot be campaign-sloganed.

And so, the universities are made into villains. Their excellence rebranded as arrogance.

 

Cultural Capital and the Politics of Esteem

Pierre Bourdieu might have laughed if he weren’t so French. He argued that elite education functions as a gatekeeper of symbolic power—that universities distribute “cultural capital” (Bourdieu, 1986). But even he would admit: tearing down the gate won’t build a better house.

The administration isn’t wrong to critique how elite institutions reproduce inequality. But that is not what they’re doing.

They aren’t attacking structural elitism. They are attacking epistemic authority.

It’s not the exclusivity that bothers them. It’s the excellence.

If the Ivy League was merely rich and mediocre, there’d be no issue. But it remains both elite and intellectually ambitious. And that is unforgivable.

 

Meritocracy Makes Bad TV

Michael Sandel (2020) argued that meritocracy breeds arrogance at the top and humiliation at the bottom. It tells the unsuccessful that their failure is their fault.

But what the administration has done is worse. It’s not a critique of meritocracy. It’s a critique of merit itself.

When a professor publishes peer-reviewed research on climate change, they are called “political.” When a university produces experts, they are told to “stay in their lane.” When a student protests for justice, the institution is branded Marxist.

This isn’t about humility. It’s about fear. Fear of being out-thought.

 

Wokeness, That Terrible Mountain

The word “woke” does not mean anything anymore. It has become a cargo word, heavy with everything some Americans don’t want to understand.

It means: Black. Queer. Critical. Female. Coastal. Academic. Bilingual. Multicultural. Unapologetic.
It means: Not you.

The administration says: “Our children are being indoctrinated.”
Into what? Reading?

They call for “viewpoint diversity” while silencing scholars. They say “cancel culture” but cancel research grants.

And when pressed, they retreat to one line:

“They just think they’re better than us.”

And again: they are not wrong.

But something is lost in the noise. The adjunct professor driving Lyft between lectures, the first-generation student who now censors herself in seminars, the high school teacher quietly pulling banned books off her classroom shelves—these are the quiet casualties of a culture war waged against thought.

It’s not just universities under siege—it’s the fragile human desire to understand the world more deeply.

 

Disagreement Is Not Disqualification

A strange thing has happened. People now believe that disagreeing with a university means it shouldn’t exist.

You can hate Berkeley’s politics and still admire its neuroscience. You can despise Harvard’s endowment and still respect its epidemiology.

Disagreement is the fuel of education—not the fire alarm.

But the administration doesn’t want disagreement. It wants submission. It wants obedience dressed in GPA robes.

 

The Rise of Mediocrity as Rebellion

There is something perversely poetic in what’s happening. The administration has romanticized the average. Mediocrity has become a kind of rebellion.

They say: “Why celebrate schools that think they’re smarter than us?”

The answer, of course, is: Because they are.

That is their job.

We do not go to surgeons for humility. We do not go to pilots for relatability. We do not go to universities for comfort.

We go to be challenged. And changed. And sometimes, confused.

Confusion, after all, is the first step toward real thought.

 

Who Are the Real Elites?

It is not the adjunct professor on food stamps who is the elite.

It is not the first-generation student reciting Audre Lorde who is the threat.

It is not the ethnomusicologist with three kids and two fellowships who must be stopped.

It is not the librarian tearfully resigning because her town no longer trusts her shelves.

The elites are the ones holding press conferences while suppressing funding. The ones who dine on shrimp while blaming students for inflation. The ones who pretend to hate Harvard while hiring its graduates as consultants.

They sell resentment. And they do it well.

 

Let the Kids Read Proust, Dammit

There is no dignity in pretending stupidity is patriotic.

There is no strength in suppressing complexity.

Let the kids read Proust. Let them argue about pronouns. Let them write essays that will embarrass them in five years. That is how thinking works.

Let the young lecturer collapse in the hallway because her course load doubled again. Let the first-year student panic in silence because his town said college would make him a traitor. Let them feel it. Then let them write through it.

To learn is to be temporarily insufferable.

And it is also to become something more.

 

After the Administration Fades

Someday, the administration will pass. The slogans will grow stale. The memes will die. The think-tanks will be replaced by other think-tanks with slightly different fonts.

And the universities?

They will still be there. Old and mossy and imperfect.

In a dorm room at MIT, a student will code something that saves lives.

In a seminar at Yale, a student will challenge a canon.

In a lecture hall at Howard, a new idea will form like thunder behind the eyes.

And somewhere in Washington, a man will grumble:

“But isn’t that too woke?”

And a quieter voice, one we no longer fear, will say:

“No. It’s just better than you.”

 

References

          Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). Greenwood.

          Hofstadter, R. (1963). Anti-intellectualism in American life. Vintage.

          Sandel, M. J. (2020). The tyranny of merit: What’s become of the common good? Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

 

Grady VanWright is a poet, author, and playwright based in Houston, Texas. His creative work engages themes of identity, introspection, and social consciousness through a distinctive blend of stream-of-consciousness and moderate surrealism. With over 25 years of writing experience, VanWright draws from lived history, independent scholarship, and a fascination with the psychological and cultural dimensions of the human condition. His poetry and prose have appeared in Washington Square Review (2025), The McNeese Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Mayday Magazine, Oddball Magazine, Blood+Honey, Querencia Press, The Genre Society, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Sheila-Na-Gig, and The ManifestStation Magazine. He is a member of The Authors Guild and The Poetry Society of New York.

DL Polonsky is a Boston area artist, writer, and filmmaker. His caricatures have appeared in The Boston Herald and His written work includes the children’s book The Letter Bandits from T.B.W. Books.