
 |
|
Nov. 24, 2009
JWisdom.com: You are a Philanthropist
with Aliza Bulow (5 minutes)
Nov. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Nov. 19, 2009
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf
with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith
with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Nov. 12, 2009
JWisdom.com Does God get tired?
with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole
in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to
have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Dec. 2, 2005
/ 1 Kislev, 5765
Conservative U. in cyberspace
By
David Gelernter
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Fifteen years ago, conservatives saw a country that was split about 50-50 between the left and the right, as it is today and will continue to be for a long time. But the country's main cultural institutions were nearly all liberal making conservatives rage and despair. Things have now changed for the better, and technology has been the main enabler.
Take the news. Most major newspapers and hundreds of local ones, as well as the Big Three TV networks, remain liberal bastions. But blogs and other Web services, and cable TV and talk radio, have expanded the news. Conservatives were unable to take over existing institutions, so they invented new ones using groundbreaking techniques.
Technology can lead the way once again as conservatives storm the most important of all liberal-held fortresses America's colleges and universities.
Campuses across the country are the proudest possession of the liberal elite. They were central to the cultural revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s. (Was there a liberal revolution? You better believe it. When John F. Kennedy complained about the "one-party press" in the early 1960s, he meant that the press was all Republican.)
How did the revolution happen? Universities pushed their tentacles into more and more cultural niches. Back in 1939, E.B. White wrote admiringly of the rural school his third-grader attended, where the teacher taught all subjects in grades one through three while she supervised her pupils' clothes, health and snowball fights. She and thousands like her knew nothing and cared less about the latest education-school theories. They were not theoreticians.
In elementary school teaching and many other areas, college degrees were a lot less important than they are today. You didn't need a journalism degree to be a reporter. You didn't need an MBA to go into business. In 1960, people still joked about "eggheads" and "college men" who made less money than their bosses who might well have been high school dropouts. Experience counted, not college diplomas. This was a practical country, and proud of it.
No longer. Today you need a B.A. just to register on the nation's radar, and an advanced degree if you plan to be taken seriously. So naturally universities are vastly more influential than they used to be.
And that revolution in turn reflects another: the coup of the intellectuals. Before World War II, faculties at prestigious universities were dominated by big wheels who belonged to fashionable clubs and churches and gave society weddings. To be admitted to a fancy college, your best strategy was to be an up-and-comer socially, not intellectually.
But after World War II, the old-line WASP elite was tired and the intellectual elite was soaring. It was a great time to be a physicist or a Freudian or a Keynsean. The world seemed more complex, technical and frightening, and intellectuals had all the answers. At least they said they did.
By the late '60s, the nation had been transformed. And as long as liberal intellectuals are in charge of the all-important realm of higher education, conservatives are also-rans in America's culture war. Here is where technology comes in.
Important conservative scholars are scattered all over the country, like rhinos in zoos. Most universities have one or two. But sometime soon, a conservative think tank will offer a new type of Web service. (I say so because it's inevitable, not because I have inside information.) This new service will help those professors create high-quality online courses so that lots of conservative scholars can come together for the first time, electronically. The result will be a cyber university that presents an integrated, conservative world view.
It only took a few smooth operators to reveal the vast, untapped market for conservative talk radio. The same thing will happen with conservative cyber universities. When it does, watch out. The culture war will no longer be a liberal walkover.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Yale professor David Gelernter is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, Jerusalem. To comment, please click here.
ARCHIVES
© 2005, Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|