Enshrining malignancies

Frankly, it's not as if I need more proof that our colleges and universities are jumping their own personal sharks, so as to make themselves ridiculous in the eyes of ordinary Americans. However, if I did need proof, I would find it in this John Leo article about the various awards and honors our colleges and universities shower upon those whose values are somewhat antithetical to ordinary American values. Some examples:

Stanford University gives the Allan Cox medal each year for faculty excellence in guiding student research. Cox was a professor of geophysics and dean of the school of earth sciences at Stanford. He committed suicide in 1987 while under investigation for sexually molesting the son of a former student. The molesting allegedly went on for five years, starting when the boy was 14. One of the most elegant prep schools, Phillips Exeter Academy, gives an annual Edmund E. Perry Award for "diversity and cultural awareness." Perry was an outstanding black student at Phillips Exeter who was shot to death in Harlem while trying to mug a plainclothes cop. *** Last year the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York announced a new scholarship named for Ho Chi Minh and another honoring Joanne Chesimard, the former Black Panther and convicted murderer of a New Jersey police officer. Both scholarships were quickly renamed after protests.

You can read the rest here. No wonder I'm less enthuasiastic than Mr. Bookworm about spending my very hard earned money to send my children to fancy East Coast (or any Coast) liberal arts colleges. Fortunately, since my children are young, our debate right now is hypothetical. I'm hoping that, when they're old enough for the debate to be real, the evidence of insanity at these institutions will have reached proportions sufficient either (a) to dissuade Mr. Bookworm from casting yearning eyes at these places or (b) to effect an actual change at these places so that I won't mind funding them.