This should be required reading for all elite university trustees. When I was a student at PENN, walking around campus filled me with pride and awe. Now the feeling is more “shock and awe”. What the hell happened?
Much more to the point while we’re at it… The tax-exempt status of religious institutions, which was a propitiating concession to begin with, and has become a wildly toxic anachronism. It is used to secrete insane profit and declare immunity from any civic responsibilities, while advocating some of the most damaging absolutist positions. Check out the Hasidic and Falun Gong communities in upstate New York for a start, and then look back at the effect of the more familiar evangelical and established churches. At least the institutions of higher learning have aspirations towards broader civic interests; not so the religious institutions that fall into the same tax-exempt category.
And by the way - the above does not invalidate the concerns of the column; it is merely that in terms of urgency, one beneficiary at least has some justification in principle. The other really does not.
This should be required reading for all elite university trustees. When I was a student at PENN, walking around campus filled me with pride and awe. Now the feeling is more “shock and awe”. What the hell happened?
Much more to the point while we’re at it… The tax-exempt status of religious institutions, which was a propitiating concession to begin with, and has become a wildly toxic anachronism. It is used to secrete insane profit and declare immunity from any civic responsibilities, while advocating some of the most damaging absolutist positions. Check out the Hasidic and Falun Gong communities in upstate New York for a start, and then look back at the effect of the more familiar evangelical and established churches. At least the institutions of higher learning have aspirations towards broader civic interests; not so the religious institutions that fall into the same tax-exempt category.
And by the way - the above does not invalidate the concerns of the column; it is merely that in terms of urgency, one beneficiary at least has some justification in principle. The other really does not.