America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture

by David Gelernter

America-Lite (where we all live) is just like America, only turned into an amusement park or a video game or a supersized Pinkberry, where the past and future are blank and there is only a big NOW. How did we come to expect no virtue and so much cynicism from our culture, our leaders—and each other?

In this refreshingly judgmental book, David Gelernter connects the historical dots to reveal a stealth revolution carried out by post-religious globalist intellectuals who, by and large, “can’t run their own universities or scholarly fields, but are very sure they can run you.” These imperial academics have deployed their students into the top echelon of professions once monopolized by staid and steady WASPs. In this simple way, they have installed themselves as the new designated drivers of American culture.

Imperial academics live in a world of theory; they preach disdain for mere facts and for old-fashioned fact-based judgments like true or false. Schoolchildren are routinely taught theories about history instead of actual history—they learn, for example, that all nations are equally nice except for America, which is nearly always nasty.

With academic experts to do our thinking for us, we’ve politely shut up and let second-raters take the wheel. In fact, we have handed the keys to the star pupil and teacher’s pet of the post-religious globalist intellectuals, whose election to the presidency of the United States constituted the ultimate global group hug.

How do we finally face the truth and get back into the driver’s seat? America-Lite ends with a one-point plan.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Education, Sociology, History

200 pages, Paperback

First published May 22, 2012

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

David Hillel Gelernter (born March 5, 1955) is an artist, writer, and professor of computer science at Yale University. He is a former national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and senior fellow in Jewish thought at the Shalem Center, and sat on the National Endowment for the Arts. He publishes widely; his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, LA Times, Weekly Standard, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and elsewhere. His paintings have been exhibited in New Haven and Manhattan.

He is known for contributions to parallel computation and for books on topics including computed worlds ("Mirror Worlds"), and what he sees as the destructive influence of liberal academia on American society, expressed most recently in his book America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats).

In 1993 he was sent a mail bomb in the post by Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, which almost killed him and left him with some permanent disabilities: he lost the use of his right hand and his right eye was permanently damaged.

(From Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Candice · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a brilliant, sarcastic, hilarious, insightful, justifiably judgmental critique of the current state of our Union. David Gelernter has produced a refreshingly judgmental book and is not afraid to tell it like it is. I think this is a book every American should read right now. He did a wonderful job outlining the decline of American education and the rise of academia and the effects on American culture.

He opens the book by claiming that authority was swept away by the cultural revolution. Power remains, of course. Power will never go away. But nearly no one holds authority. Respect is rare and etiquette is almost non-existent.

"In assaulting the protective shell provided by etiquette or good manners, the cultural revolution and its consequences promoted the destruction of privacy; in fact, of the whole idea of privacy." - p. 4

Gelernter asserts that there were two reasons for the cultural revolution. The first was the Great Reform of elite American colleges and the second was the rise of Imperial Academia. "The intellectuals' college became the Imperial University. Elite universities had always been influential in American culture, but in the generation after World War II they took charge. Thereafter, American culture was in their hands, because of the enormous influence of their alumni and direct influence of the institutions themselves - on journalism, business, the arts, every other college in the country and on grade school teaching at every level." (p. 13). Intellectuals tend to study theories instead of facts. This leads to ignorance. This leads to political correctness. "Nowadays we don't like to generalize, lest we should arrive at inconvenient or forbidden conclusions about some nation or race or religion." (p. 15)

"When young people learn left-liberal theories at school instead of facts, they can't see America no matter how hard they try." - p. 18

"Intellectuals invent theories and teach them to Airheads." - p. 19

Gelernter exposes political correctness for its ridiculousness on every single page of this book. He challenges the modern establishment on page 49 by asking if a statement can be simultaneously bigoted and true. What a question! But it demands an answer. "Becoming a gentleman did not require studying medicine or law or science. It hinged on character." (p. 63). Just because someone does not meet certain standards does not mean denying them admission is bigotry, in fact, it's just good sense. "[M]ediocracy can't last. Those who don't make the grade will always see unfairness in the very definition of 'the grade'." (p. 65). Everything has become professionalized. Kids are under the impression that they cannot master a skill unless they have a certificate from some university certifying them. "American society will always need and depend on non-college boys, assuming that people will still drive trucks and buses, build and fix things, put out fires and police the streets. The idea that everyone needs a college education was always silly. That nearly everyone should then proceed from college to graduate school is even sillier." (p. 87).

Unfortunately, the theories planted in elite universities two generations ago have trickled down to grade schools. "The whole institution of American education is a megaphone to amplify the musings of elite universities." (p. 79)

Barack Obama is a product of this Great Reform. "He is a symbol of American's decisive victory over bigotry. But he is also a symbol, a living embodiment, of the failure of American education and its ongoing replacement by political indoctrination. He is a symbol of the new American elite, the new establishment, where left-liberal politics is no longer a conviction, no longer a way of thinking: it is built-in mind furniture you take for granted without needing to think." (p. 109). Gelernter goes on to paint a picture of Obama on page 118, "Obama has the gift of appointing people and making decisions in ways that spread airheadedness." And again on page 135, "The president is an Airhead liberal who speaks out of ignorance and bases his opinions on nothing."

The following scenario is a beautiful example of this airheadedness:

"Part of the left's new agenda is reparations to blacks for slavery. Rahm Emmanuel, mayor of Chicago and former Obama chief of staff, has endorsed this idea of compensation payments to the decedents of former slaves. This theory holds, evidently, that non-perpetrators must compensate non-victims for crimes they never suffered - but would have, if they had been born two hundred years ago. Perhaps someone owes you money for a crime he never committed, but would have, if only you had both been born in some other century." p. 142-143

The author's sarcasm bled through on every page. He simultaneously spoke truth and made me laugh - a brilliant combination. On page 113 he teases, "Yes, it's hard to admit you were wrong; it's hard to admit you've been childishly deluded. It's hard in all sorts of ways to be an adult." On page 120, he discusses white man's guilt. He talked about Sonia Sotomayor, a Latina woman who was nominated to be a Supreme Court judge in May 2009. She claimed, " . . . a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [on the bench] that a white male who hasn't lived that life." Gelernter's reaction is frame-worthy:

"True, nearly all of us white males do spend our lives propped up in bed playing with our Xboxes and not having experiences - although some of us are said to have fallen, the recent economic crisis, all the way down into the upper middle class and been expelled from our golf clubs and had our BMWs taken away; but let's hope that's only a rumor."

The sarcasm. I LOVE IT. Is there any other way to respond to such an incoherent assumption made by Sonia Sotomayor? "There is a theory that minorities make better, wiser judges than other people. The theory is non-sense; the whole point of American justice is to judge people not on who they are but on what they did or didn't." (p .120).

The problem: "With each passing year, the proportion of Americans who were educated after the cultural revolution increases; and such people are abnormally likely to be left-liberals - not by reasoned conviction but by indoctrination." (p. 155)

The solution: "American education is in the hands of liberal Airheads. Take it away from them." (p. 155)

Although I agree with Gelernter's solution, I think his method is incomplete. He is encouraging students to leave schools and use the internet. I think he is 100% correct in claiming that education is being controlled by Airheads, but I don't think encouraging students to revert to 100% independent study is wise. I like his idea of internet communities/cafes/hostiles for college age students, but I really think he needs to factor in proactive parent involvement in elementary education - where the indoctrination begins.

The following are some additional quotes that I enjoyed:

"Do modern liberals deny that women are more likely to be abused? They like to believe that the sexes are interchangeable. And they'd also like to believe that crimes committed by men against women are a much worse problem then crimes committed by women against men - which is only common sense. But you can't have it both ways. Are we interchangeable or not?" - p. 3

"The tragedy of the atheist is that he is thrown back on his own resources to pick a god." p. 128

"Liberals want the government to love and care for each of its citizens; conservatives want the government to respect its citizens. Respect implies keeping your distance. In love there is no distance." p. 133

"The worst consequence of modern feminism for women themselves has ben the cruel insistence that young men and women be treated as if they wanted the same things and saw life in the same way." p. 139

"Inventing rights has become one of the intelligentsia's most promising growth fields." p. 143

"In modern America, the left gets its way not by convincing people, but by indoctrinating their children." p. 144

"Airheads all learn the doctrine that in any black-versus-white dispute, blacks are right - unless they are conservative, in which case they are not black." - p. 148

"We have knowingly reared a whole generation in ignorance of history, literature, religion, morality. ' They have sown the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind.' (Hosea 8:7)." - p. 152

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

The actual title of this book is "America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats)". I highly recommend this book. All during the recent presidential election, I longed to ask an Obama supporter, 'What exactly is it about Obama that draws your support?' Reading this, I have a better understanding. The author explains how the cultural revolution of the 60s and 70s impacted our country, moving out the WASPS and moving in the PORGIs--post-religious globalist intellectuals. The leaders in business, politics, and intellectual areas were now left-leaning, rather than conservative. Their influence and authority impacted the universities, filtering down to the lower levels of education, thereby creating another generation of liberals, PORGI Airheads. These people have theories about the world that they hold to, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. ("America is bad." "We just need to sit down and talk to the terrorists.") The author shows how these theories have led to decisions that affect all of us. The book ends on a note of hope, with a surprising suggestion of how to turn things around so that people are thinking clearly and not just operating on second-hand information from unreliable sources. Very thought-provoking!

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking book on how leftist thinking has come to dominate our academia and the resulting impact on American Culture. The book shows how much our view of America and its culture has changed over the past fifty years.

[Tyler Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Since the current speculation is that this guy could be the official science adviser for the Trump administration, I thought it would be worth getting to know him.

This book reads like your cringe-inducing uncle's entertaining but ugly jeremiad about how all the problems in America can be traced back to the cultural revolution of the 1960s. The first half of that decade is described as "our Periclean years," when it was still okay to be a red-blooded American. After the cultural revolution, the left-libs took over. The people in senior positions of power now are the first to have been educated/indoctrinated by lefties. They may be smart and well-intentioned, but they are ignorant. Also, they are feminine, because “Deep down, to be liberal is female; girls want to be loved" (cf. his "To be conservative is male; boys want to be respected”) and “Liberal intellectuals tend to be insecure, to blame themselves, to curry favor. Like small girls, they are eager to feel loved, and worry lest they should not deserve it. They are eager to apologize and be forgiven.”

Here are a few of the talking points: According to Gelernter, American tax policy should not promote wealth redistribution, because wealth-distribution policies kill economies; “Gathering scientific doubts” about global warming and climate change are being filtered out by the ecofundamentalists; politicians like Obama don't know how to think for themselves, would be lost without their teleprompters; Women are okay, morally the equals of men, but feminism is bad (feminists are the “deadliest enemies” and famous for their “take-no-prisoners fury”); Without coming out explicitly against gay marriage, Gelernter carefully implies that our society’s “ignorant” embrace of its legalization is likely just one stop on a left-wending path towards legalization of pederasty and other untold horrors; The concept of "reparations" to blacks would be funny if it weren't so expensive; Cutting “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and/or “In God we trust” from the dollar are high on the liberal agenda; There is bigotry in STEM against young men (and by the way, men are naturally better scientists than women); Our society is unfairly biased in favor of blacks when they come into conflict with whites, and of women when they come into conflict with men; and PORGI (Post-religious global intellectual) airheads like Obama don’t know or care about history. Oh, and terrorists are bad while Christians and Jews are good. To wrap up the book on a constructive note, Gelernter suggests that since PORGI airheads control the educational system, the answer is… the internet. Instead of going to college for indoctrination, folks should seek out an online à la carte conservative education and occasionally meet up with like-minded fellow learners in person.

The book was written after the 2008 election and evidently intentioned chiefly to smear Obama in the run-up to the 2012 election. Gelernte didn't get the result he wanted then, but now? Well, we have Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education and there is little doubt that one of the major factors propelling Trump into the White House was a sinister brand of à la carte online education known colloquially as the Alt-Right, an "educational" movement fueled by many of the same specious grievances as Gelernter articulates in "America-Lite." I read this book as a window into the thinking of the "other America," the one not reflected in the NYT and the university culture I inhabit. The one positive thing I can say about "America-Lite" is that the kind of thinking it reflects should act as an incentive to liberals to think carefully both about why we hold the values we do (i.e., we should be able to give reasons more compelling than just that they're "obvious") and how we communicate those values in a public arena where racist, misogynistic, selfish, and destructive voices like Gelernter's are finding a receptive audience.

[Bojan Tunguz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The problems with the American higher education are a legion. You can hardly open a newspaper today without coming across an article decrying many ills that overly expensive education has saddled the students with. As the price tag of a college diploma seems to be getting ever more out of control, the value of what students get diminishes every year.

The over-priced and under-valued American higher education is just a symptom of a larger problem with the academie. The problem is the subversion of the meritocratic mindset that flourished, however briefly, for a little while during the opening of the American colleges and universities in the middle of the twentieth century.

One of this book’s greatest strengths is that it takes a long view of the American higher education, much longer than most such books on this subject. It goes all the way to the founding principles of many such institutions a few centuries ago, especially the private ones. American colleges and universities have always been a form of exclusive social clubs, and the emphasis on the value of the actual education that one gets from them has ebbed and flowed over time. The meritocratic renaissance was the result of few momentous social and cultural developments around the middle of the twentieth century – the G.I. bill, the massive-scale entering of the women into the workforce, the increasingly service-oriented economy, the introduction of the standardized tests, to name just a few. However, this change of the value and perception of the higher education quickly became a self-serving exercise in the control of the cultural influences, and the new generation of (very leftward) professors took it upon themselves to go beyond empowering students with knowledge and education, and turned the universities into the boot camps of left-wing radicalism and activism. Even though only a small fraction of students accepted the full-scope of this indoctrination, the impact that it had on the culture and society as a whole was profound and long-lasting. This was the birth of the “imperial overreach” of the institutions of the higher learning.

The tone of this book is very polemical, and it will not win over many converts I am afraid. However, to those of us who are already in the choir it provides much needed intellectual articulation of certain ideas that we’ve come to take for granted. The author is also at moments quite consciously literally in his allusions and turns of phrase. This is a welcome change from most of the rather drab writing that characterizes modern “current events” writing, but it can also come across as a bit pretentious. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in getting a better grip on the scope of current crisis in the higher education.

[Peter di Lorenzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a quirky, sharply perceptive explanation of the nature and history of big academia's left/lunatic shift to a left-intellectual, dictatorial, indoctrinatory fantasy world after 1967. Gelernter relies mostly the experiences of American Jewry to illustrate the various processes propelling this shift, though parallels to other groups are obvious and often cited as well.

Gelernter is pessimistic about the chances to restore any balance and restraint to the elite universities, but he has thought this problem through on a broad strategic scale. He is very optimistic about the opportunities the internet and burgeoning homeschooling resources provide to involve less wealthy, less prestigious colleges and universities in new, creative partnerships with quality online degree-granting institutions able to provide students with serious, broad and/or specialized educations at lower cost.

And by so doing, clarify the nature of our 'elite institutions' --- island playgrounds of the privileged, self-congratulating children of the 60s --- as what they are: expensive finishing schools where, inevitably, the children of the privileged acquire the very proper progressive, secularist, trans-national attitudes and etiquette at the expense of solid depth of learning; finishing schools, then, providing the certain-to-be-employed privileged with a completely conformed, bankable prestige so important in the circles dominated by alumni of those same once-hallowed, now hollow, halls.

[Brian Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The underlying premise in the book is sound and there is a lot of good support for why colleges and universities changed from social clubs run by WASPs to indoctrination centers run by left leaning intellectuals. It’s a long arc and easy to see as the author traces history and the changes that took place on college campuses.

He calls the current left loons - Airheads, because they make decisions based on theory, not practical reality. The time frame for the book ends in 2013, during the last four years of Obama. He spends too much time bashing Obama - how much of this can anyone at this point stomach ? But the point is on target, and that is - Obama’s minions were running the country and doing a terrible job of it.

Fast toward to the first nine months of Biden Administration in 2021 and you can see how this is accurate: the border crisis, the failed exit from Afghanistan and the damage done to the economy, are all based on left loon ideology and NOT based on the facts on the ground. It is very dangerous and easy to see how the author was able to predict just a few short years out from his publishing date.

[Brian Calandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is garbage. The first half reacts like a script for an episode of “Drunk History” where Gelertner describes a change in the demographics of elite universities, but cites mostly to jazz era fiction — or fiction about the jazz era — for factual support. Since his cites are to novels, there are no facts supporting his story, and the inferences he draws sound like the ramblings of a 20th Century lit dropout.

That is just prelude for what Gelertner really wants to do, which is scream insults at Barack Obama with a spittle-inflected, eye-bulging rage. Wondering how you get from college demographics to Obama? I am, too, although apparently out-of-context cites to Mary McCarthy and Henry James have something to do with it. After awhile, Gelertner’s hobby-horses gallop in, namely how woman are inferior to, ahem, different from men.

To be fair, I was happy when I finished the book because (i) it was over, and (ii) if this is what passes for social criticism among conservatives, at least the bigotry is on full display.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I must be one of the PORGI Airheads he's talking about . . . I don't buy into his premise (that it is solely the Liberals ruining our nation), but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Ultimately, though, Gelernter name calls and presents dubious support for his vague rants. Example: in the midst of using a movie as support for one of his specious claims, he takes a sidestep to mention that Cary Grant is the best comic actor ever. What does that have to do with his claim? Oh, and obviusly, PORGI has not caught on as an acronym--I STILL cannot remember what it means!t

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little dry, but informative and right on the mark.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fabulous book!

[Lisa Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good bits rescue the ones he seemed to phone in.

Parts read like standard right wing (I'm right wing myself) list of frustrations -- "Did you see that reporter say that? Did you hear this outrageous claim made by that leftist politician?" -- that sort of thing. Entertaining for me, but not as illuminating as just regular choir-preaching.

But the initial premise goes deeper than the standard conservative complaint about elites and education, much more discursive. Inclined to the aggressive argumentative style he attributes to certain cultural groups in the book (for those who find those sections alarming in their blunt language, note the last name of the author and look up his bio and you'll feel better -- it's insider baseball).

As with all culture warning books, the hard part to write is the "what do we do about it" section. Gelernter's ideas are of interest, but not much fleshed out. His discussion about internet learning could use some research -- he would do well to spend a bunch of time with the home school community, which is actually using alternative education, often in order to avoid the problems he describes. In my own experience with home schooling, I can say that the internet is not a magic pill. In fact, distance learning has been used by indoctrinating elites pretty well, and public schools have used the lure of internet learning programs (they give you a free computer!!) to lure home schooling families back into the fold. A quick look at Khan Academy, the quintessential independent learning internet system, is informative. Khan began by making math videos for his extended family, and the videos became very popular and used by millions. But once Khan had made his name (deservedly) this way, he set up a system that drove right past those independent learners and prioritized "partnerships" with the public school system. Subject matter has expanded, and once math was left behind the content became predictably left-leaning -- pretty much fits the exact description of the education Gelernter describes.

Definitely four stars for cogent ideas well articulated, but will be looking for follow up as his thoughts develop in coming years.

[Brandon Minster · Rating 2 out of 5]

A distracting number of metaphors. Written for the crowd that will say, "I know, right?!" Uncautious in its treatment of race and sex, so a noncharitable reader might see it as bigoted. Includes weird asides (Cary Grant was great, Clark Gable was terrible, Mary McCarthy was hot when she was at Vassar). Important point poorly executed.

[Douglas Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

The version of this book that I bought was entitled "America-Lite; How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture and Ushered in the Obamacrats" Gelernter seems to have jumped on the social/cultural change bandwagon along with the likes of David Brooks (The Social Animal) and Charles Murray (Coming Apart), etc. Although I agree that liberal academia is seriously biased and a problem, I'm not completely convinced by Gelernter's argument that it's all their fault, and getting rid of them with some kind of "internet education" end-run is the solution. Nevertheless, this is a well researched and eye-opening history of how we got to where we are.

[Yuvilio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great tour of the American college's transformation

Professor Gelernter doesn't pull many punches in his tour of how one group of academics slowly wrested power from another . He surveys old academia's ossified but sturdy traditions and how they were pushed for faddish but unpredictable , if well meaning, new conventions. In the backdrop are the 20th century's transformations that helped bring about these changes. This made a great companion ot Heather Mac Donald's recent "Diversity Delusion", which adds more recent academia fads since the endpoint here, including the costly and counterproductive new activist beaurocracies in the administration.

[Adam Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A jeremiad against progressive "airhead"-ism, the Obamacrat cultural mood begotten of America's cultural revolution; not even properly ideological, but presuppositionally progressive, because its tenets have not been critically assessed and accepted, but rather breathed as the oxygen of intellectualism.

What is education? Why is it important, and to what end? The pipeline of American education cannot be detoxified without bringing these questions out of the shadows and back up to the forefront of all of our debates.

[John Thum · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like it. I heard the author on a radio talk show and was inspired to buy the book, but it really is written in a very academic and not too compelling way.