Mindless: What Happened to Universities?: Jewish Quarterly 259

by Cary Nelson

Extremism, antisemitism and intolerance are thriving on campus. How did this happen?
After October 7, the university – an institution dedicated to the search for truth, knowledge and freedom – became overrun by a toxic and dangerous fervour. Civil discourse was abandoned, as campuses became the epicentre of hate speech, bigotry, conspiracy theories, denialism and antisemitism. Yet, as Cary Nelson reveals, this betrayal of the university's ideals was decades in the making.


In this groundbreaking essay, Nelson, an academic and writer whose years of involvement in university organisations has made him a leading expert on higher education, explains the causes of the institutional failure that has been evident on campuses worldwide. Mindless shows how universities came to abandon a commitment to shared intellectual principles and fractured into disciplines that – unconstrained and unchecked – slid towards conformity and indoctrination.

Kindle Edition

Published March 6, 2025

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well-written and evidence-based. Grim reading, as the antisemitism at universities runs wide and deep and many of the examples came from respected institutions, some of which I attended. This volume gave me food for thought; for example, it had never occurred to me before that being openly Jewish and mentioning that I had traveled to Israel once may have led to me secretly being rejected from university grad programs or job opportunities after I earned my PhD. I think this is important reading, and it would be a good idea for High School seniors and their parents to read it to get a glimpse of what they will be up against when they go to college.