{"id":3701,"date":"2021-06-12T13:02:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-12T13:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/?p=3701"},"modified":"2021-06-12T13:03:30","modified_gmt":"2021-06-12T13:03:30","slug":"why-i-stopped-hiring-ivy-league-graduates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/2021\/06\/12\/why-i-stopped-hiring-ivy-league-graduates\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Even those who aren\u2019t woke seem damaged by the experience, and they\u2019re deprived of role models.<\/u><\/u><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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By\u00a0R.R. Reno<\/p>\n

June 7, 2021 5:56 pm ET<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m not inclined to hire a graduate from one of America\u2019s elite universities. That marks a change. A decade ago I relished the opportunity to employ talented graduates of Princeton, Yale, Harvard and the rest. Today? Not so much.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

As a graduate of Haverford College, a fancy school outside Philadelphia, I took interest in the campus uproar there last fall. It concerned \u201cantiblackness\u201d and the \u201cerasure of marginalized voices.\u201d A student strike culminated in an all-college Zoom meeting for undergraduates. The college president and other administrators promised to \u201clisten.\u201d During the meeting, many students displayed a stunning combination of thin-skinned narcissism and naked aggression. The college administrators responded with self-abasing apologies.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

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Haverford is a progressive hothouse. If students can be traumatized by \u201cinsensitivity\u201d on that leafy campus, then they\u2019re unlikely to function as effective team members in an organization that has to deal with everyday realities. And in any event, I don\u2019t want to hire someone who makes inflammatory accusations at the drop of a hat.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Student activists don\u2019t represent the majority of students. But I find myself wondering about the silent acquiescence of most students. They allow themselves to be cowed by charges of racism and other sins. I sympathize. The atmosphere of intimidation in elite higher education is intense. But I don\u2019t want to hire a person well-practiced in remaining silent when it costs something to speak up.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

The traditional Islamic world exhibited a modicum of tolerance. Christians and Jews were\u00a0dhimmi<\/em>, allowed to exist, but on the condition that they accepted their subordinate role in society. While studying this arrangement, sociologists coined the term \u201cdhimmitude,\u201d which refers to the mentality of those who have internalized their second-class status.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Haverford, like Harvard and other top tier schools, graduates fine young people, no doubt many with well-adjusted personalities and sensible views of the world. But in the past decade, dhimmitude has become widespread. Normal kids at elite universities keep their heads down. Over the course of four years, this can become a subtle but real habit of obeisance, a condition of moral and spiritual surrender.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Some resist. They would seem ideal for my organization, which aims to speak for religious and social conservatives. But even this kind of graduate brings liabilities to the workplace. I\u2019ve met recent Ivy grads with conservative convictions who manifest a form of posttraumatic stress disorder. Others have developed a habit of aggressive counterpunching that is no more appealing in a young employee than the ruthless accusations of the woke.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

In recent years, I\u2019ve taken stock of my assumptions about who makes for the best entry-level employee. I have no doubt that Ivy League universities attract smart, talented and ambitious kids. But do these institutions add value? My answer is increasingly negative. Dysfunctional kids are coddled and encouraged to nurture grievances, while normal kids are attacked and educationally abused. Listening to Haverford\u2019s all-college Zoom meeting also made it clear that today\u2019s elite students aren\u2019t going to schools led by courageous adults. Deprived of good role models, they\u2019re less likely to mature into good leaders themselves.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

My rule of thumb is to hire from institutions I advise young people to attend. Hillsdale College is at the top of that list, as are quirky small Catholic colleges such as Thomas Aquinas College, Wyoming Catholic College and the University of Dallas. In my experience, graduates from these sorts of places are well-educated. But more important, they\u2019ve been supported and encouraged by their institutions, and they haven\u2019t been deformed by the toxic political correctness that leaders of elite universities have allowed to become dominant.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Large state universities and their satellite schools are also good sources. In my experience, top-performing students at Rutgers are as talented but less self-important than Ivy Leaguers. They\u2019re more likely to accept the authority of those more experienced. This allows for better mentoring, which in turn produces better results over time.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

The biggest liability that comes with hiring graduates from places like Haverford and Harvard is that they have been socialized to panic over pseudocrises. Talk of systemic racism and fixation on pronouns inculcate in young people an apocalyptic urgency, a mentality that often disrupts the workplace and encourages navel-gazing about \u201cdiversity,\u201d \u201cinclusion\u201d and other ill-defined notions that are far removed from the main work of my organization, which is good writing, good editing and good arguments.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

A few years ago a student at an Ivy League school told me, \u201cThe first things you learn your freshman year is never to say what you are thinking.\u201d The institution he attended claims to train the world\u2019s future leaders. From what that young man reports, the opposite is true. The school is training future self-censors, which means future followers.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Mr. Reno is editor of First Things.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even those who aren\u2019t woke seem damaged by the experience, and they\u2019re deprived of role models. By\u00a0R.R. Reno June 7, 2021 5:56 pm ET I\u2019m not [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3701"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3704,"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701\/revisions\/3704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumniforacatholicusd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}