Twitter users on both Left and Right hailed New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s column today:
From @DouthatNYT, a look into the dirty linen on the meritocracy: The Secrets of Princeton http://t.co/M8FYq0Yzj3
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) April 7, 2013
https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/320915873814704129
Truthbomb, if u will RT @NKingofDC: Ross Douthat nails it: The inbreeding of the elite & The Secrets of Princeton http://t.co/cDl7k0DyFA
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) April 7, 2013
Ross Douthat tells dirty little secrets about the new elite that the new elite knows but won't admit publicly. http://t.co/DwdZgu5GBm
— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) April 7, 2013
The Secrets of Princeton – http://t.co/uDgscgs4cr – http://t.co/czbdTuRS5w. <—- excellent column by @DouthatNYT
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) April 7, 2013
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/320906980610953218
Douthat’s argument is that Ivy League schools such as Princeton University are mainly about establishing and perpetuating social connections among elite Americans:
SUSAN PATTON, the Princeton alumna who became famous for her letter urging Ivy League women to use their college years to find a mate, has been denounced as a traitor to feminism, to coeducation, to the university ideal. But really she’s something much more interesting: a traitor to her class.
Her betrayal consists of being gauche enough to acknowledge publicly a truth that everyone who’s come up through Ivy League culture knows intuitively — that elite universities are about connecting more than learning, that the social world matters far more than the classroom to undergraduates, and that rather than an escalator elevating the best and brightest from every walk of life, the meritocracy as we know it mostly works to perpetuate the existing upper class.
…
The intermarriage of elite collegians is only one of these mechanisms — but it’s an enormously important one. The outraged reaction to her comments notwithstanding, Patton wasn’t telling Princetonians anything they didn’t already understand. Of course Ivy League schools double as dating services. Of course members of elites — yes, gender egalitarians, the males as well as the females — have strong incentives to marry one another, or at the very least find a spouse from within the wider meritocratic circle. What better way to double down on our pre-existing advantages? What better way to minimize, in our descendants, the chances of the dread phenomenon known as “regression to the mean”?
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As @ExJon notes, New York Times readers (many of whom presumably attended elite colleges) didn’t think much of Douthat’s argument:
The second best thing about today's @DouthatNYT column is the haughty butthurt found in the comments. http://t.co/3VFdmF79bF
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"Reads like someone who spent his time in Cambridge pursuing social life rather than an education. Endogamy is an amazingly complex subject"
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"This is reductive nonsense. Princeton is not Columbia. It is not Cormell. Nor is it Brown, or Penn. It is most decidedly NOT Swarthmore."
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"Is it only the elites that strive for the smartest, best looking, successful, thoughtful, energetic, connected, talented & wealthy mate?"
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"I'm an ivy league grad & frankly, it's hard for me to find a partner who doesn't look at me quizzically if I reference to Henry James."
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"Since leaving academia it has been really hard for me to find even 1 date w/someone who I feel has the same intellectual interests as I do"
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"I want a partner I can talk about The New Republic with, and who likes to watch documentaries, and then actively discuss them afterward."
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"As a Princeton student AND a queer female of color from a working class family…" 1/2
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"…I'm ashamed I & my fellow non-white, non-straight, non-privileged classmates are getting lumped into Ross' blanket characterization" 2/2
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"educated people marry educated people not to perpetuate inequality… but because they like the same philosophers and poets and composers"
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
.@AppFlyer These are all real comments to @DouthatNYT's column.
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"Smart people, educated people, want to be around other smart educated people. There is no problem…"
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"[Is Douthat saying] intelligent people should squeeze themselves into a relationship with people of more limited cognitive abilities?"
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
These commenters have very high opinions of their own intellectual abilities, but are they as smart as they think?
I love how the comments conflate matriculation to a certain school w/ intelligence. "Ivy" is not a synonym of "smart" to say the least.
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
Experience working w/ recent Ivy grads: Unexceptional education; incurious; rigid, inside-the-box thinking; severe arrogance/entitlement.
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
Bingo.
Update:
@ExJon catalogues more comments from snotty NY Times readers:
More REAL comments to the Douthat article coming up!
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"A PhD in philosophy might not marry or be close friends w/ an auto mechanic. Could it be that they wouldn't have anything to talk about?"
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"[Why would an] English major share his/her love of literature with an uneducated bank teller… a math professor with a beautician?"
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"I in no way wish to disparage any of the professions I mentioned…" (Oh, of course not, dear.)
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"ooooooo-a conspiracy of the hard working smart people! now we're in trouble!" (Yep, only Ivies are hardworking and smart)
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"So Ross is advocating young people graduating for ivies should go find a good for nothing lowlife who has no interest in raising kids" 1/2
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
"…or staying Out of jail, so we can produce dysfunctional kids who are all mediocre in order to to create greater social equality?" 2/2
— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 7, 2013
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