#Colleges are dismantling civilization and other commentary

Last year, protesters disrupted the start of the second half of a college football game between Harvard and Yale.
AP

“Academia was the ideological seedbed” for post-George Floyd violence, contends Heather Mac Donald at City Journal, and it’ll “prove just as critical in the accelerated transformation of the country.” College officials have “competed for the most sweeping indictment of the American polity, rooted in the claim that blacks are everywhere” under threat. Yet “what if the racism explanation for ongoing disparities is wrong” and “racial economic and incarceration gaps cannot close without addressing personal responsibility and family attitudes,” among other things? “With the university now explicitly committed to the racism explanation,” there’ll be “little chance of changing course and addressing the behaviors that lie behind many racial disparities.” Persisting inequality will then produce “a new round of quotas and self-incrimination.” And graduates will “proceed further to dismantle our civilization.”

Libertarian: The Politics of School Reopenings

Many “public school districts and teachers’ unions are fighting” to keep their schools closed “in the name of safety,” but new data suggest that they really care more about politics, reports Reason’s Corey A. DeAngelis. According to an Education Week study, districts in “states with stronger teachers’ unions” are “significantly less likely to reopen in person this fall.” In fact, those in “states that require union membership” are 25 percentage points less likely to do so. And an analysis by Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Jon Valant found that’s largely because of “people’s political leanings and support for” President Trump: The “less support Trump had in an area, the less likely that school district is to offer in-person learning.” Politics, it seems, and not “the safety of students, families and teachers,” is the key factor in reopening decisions.

2020 journal: Elephant in the Convention-Room

The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass advises readers to “pay attention” to what Democrats aren’t mentioning at their convention — namely, the “growing violence” in big US cities. Why not? “Urban violence threatened the peace of targeted Democratic suburban voters,” who make up the key “swing vote.” Meanwhile, “this new left Democratic Party of 2020 sees only two types: The Oppressed and The Oppressors,” so convention-speakers such as Bernie Sanders instead praised “virtually open borders, free college” and “the defunding or ‘reimagining’ of police.” The convention’s theme: “We the People.” Yet if you “disagree with the Democrats,” are you still “ ‘the people’ ” — or “some nonhuman” in “the basket of deplorables”? That, says Kass, is “what this election is about.”

Eye on the Economy: The Sunbelt’s Sunny News

Though the national economy is “still fragile” because of the COVID shutdowns, “southern states that were hot spots just a month ago” are showing improvement, cheers Bloomberg Opinion’s Conor Sen. After Arizona reopened its economy in early spring, it saw “rapid virus growth,” but cases began falling in mid-July — and “stopped growing or began falling in other southern states.” Thus Arizona “dining activity is increasing again,” and Texas, Georgia and Florida have seen “a similar uptick.” Meanwhile, air travel is up to “a new pandemic-era high.” Because southern states have the virus “more under control” than a month ago, “economic activity in these states appears to be reaccelerating” — a dynamic that “should help support the national economy,” whether or not Congress reaches a relief-package deal.

Conservative: An Unwise Reminder About Terror

At the DNC, Dems brought up the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting — yet “it’s remarkable,” marvels Jim Geraghty at National Review, “how little reckoning” there’s been about how that “Islamist terror attack was widely re-spun as a reflection of ‘homegrown homophobia.’ ” The trial of the shooter’s wife made clear he “was not a closeted gay man.” He “literally pledged his loyalty to ISIS while on the phone with police.” Yet the way the Obama administration and media responded to that attack, and others, “probably contributed” to fear that government and the media weren’t “being honest” about the Islamist threat. “There are many reasons Trump won in 2016, but that sense that Hillary Clinton would continue a willfully blind approach” was “almost certainly one of them.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann & Adam Brodsky