David Brooks Calls for Revolution ... Against David Brooks.
I miss my dad when I read a particularly interesting article, story, or essay and my immediate impulse, six years after his death, is still to send it to him so we can talk about it. This recent article by David Brooks was a real heart-breaker in that sense. It’s not that dad and I would have agreed with every point Brooks makes — or even with each other, across the board — but man, there’s a lot to talk about in this one.
The headline is: “The Sins of the Educated Class,” which is a bit misleading, because Brooks isn’t really talking about “the educated class” so much as “the upper class.” He’s not talking about folks who learned a trade, got a Master’s degree from a state school, or just like to read a lot — all of whom certainly qualify as “educated.” No, he’s talking about folks who went to Stanford, Princeton, Cornell, and similar institutions seemingly designed to endow the lucky few with a lifelong sense of superiority, entitlement, and wealth.
Despite the misleading title of his piece, Brooks makes the point that it’s not “the educated” that have made a mess of things, it’s those who have been educated at elite institutions. He cites research by Julien Berman who found that in 2000, there wasn’t much difference between the political leanings of student journalists at elite vs. non-elite schools. But by 2023, opinions at elite schools had veered off into holier-than-thou progressivism — “about two and a half times more progressive than they were in 2001.”
Most of the energy pushing progressive politics these days is coming from upper-class students at elite universities, which creates an interesting psychological conundrum. How can rich kids at insanely expensive schools claim to be politically progressive if progressivism is largely about being against privilege?
To take a practical example of how this progressive fervor is concentrated in schools with upper-class students, Brooks quotes a report in The Washington Monthly titled “Are Gaza Protests Happening Mostly at Elite Colleges?” The authors surveyed 1,421 public and private colleges and concluded that almost without exception, the protests are only occurring at schools where the vast majority of the students are upper-class: “Protest activity ... [has] taken place almost exclusively at schools where poorer students are scarce and the listed tuitions and fees are exorbitantly high.”
Brooks makes important points about the drift in progressive politics in the past hundred years or so. Until recent decades, progressive political movements have been fueled by working class anger at their exploitation by the elites: auto workers agitating for better conditions; farmers rebelling against banks eager to foreclose on unscrupulous loans and seize their land; undocumented immigrants treated like disposable machinery. Think The Grapes of Wrath, The Jungle, Cesar Chavez.
But now, most of the energy pushing progressive politics is coming from upper-class students at elite universities, which creates an interesting psychological conundrum for them. How can rich kids at insanely expensive schools claim to be politically progressive if progressivism is largely about being against privilege? In Brooks’ words: “Many of the curiosities of our culture flow as highly educated people try to resolve the contradiction between their identity as an enemy of privilege, and the fact that, at least educationally and culturally, and often economically, they are privileged.”
How to square that circle?
Brooks identifies three main responses to this conundrum:
Self-justifying radicalization. (To prove you really are progressive despite your obvious privilege, you need to scream louder, cancel more vehemently, make ever more unrealistic demands of “the man.”)
Radicalization as a result of “elite overproduction.” (When there are too many PhDs competing for scarce jobs, people are far more willing to say or do practically anything to gain advantage.)
“Inflammation of the discourse.” Brooks notes that, “the information age has produced a vast cohort of people … who live by trafficking in ideas. … [Such people value'] having the right beliefs, pioneering new beliefs, staying up-to-date on the latest beliefs, vanquishing the beliefs [they] have decided are the wrong beliefs.” He notes that the collapse of religion as an organizing structure makes things even worse: “In the absence of religious beliefs, these moral wars give people a genuine sense of meaning and purpose.”
I encourage you to read the article and let me know what you think in the comments below. (The link should get you through the pay wall.) It seems to me that Brooks is on the verge of calling for a revolution against people like him. That’s not something you’re going read in The New York Times every day!
Dad would’ve gotten a kick out of this one.
I haven't spent much time in elite circles, but some friends of friends were raised in wealthy private Catholic schools and elite colleges with family trips all around the world, etc.
I've noticed they dress really weird (like ankle-length pioneer woman skirts and black combat boots) and strange haircuts, they shave off their eyebrows. It's like they know they're privileged and the world is their oyster, so they actively do things to make themselves less attractive. And I'm only 30 and they're like 25 so I'm not a boomer that just doesn't understand today's fashion. I even heard one of them claim to be bisexual, but that they'd never have sex with someone of the same sex. What?! I know they spend lots of time in therapy as well. And I wonder if it has to do with guilt of believing certain things about privilege, yet not being willing to give up their positions of privilege. They're confessing in order to relieve themselves of their guilt (should've just stayed Catholic). But in the same breath that they denounce privilege, they'll brag about their high-paying jobs at Fortune 500 companies. Money is one hell of a drug!
Another factor to throw into the mix is that 100 years ago the elite universities themselves lacked diversity, both in student body, faculty, and content - with zero awareness that maybe that was a problem. Not only are there scholarships now so that poor kids gain access to what they teach there, but you're getting the mixing of class, race, gender, etc there that is uncomfortably more recent than we care to acknowledge. You see which groups have what and their attitudes and extensive knowledge of history and you're in a place with tons of international students. Experience really defies what the news tells you to think and so it makes sense that these kids want to change the narrative based on the very different exposure they're getting on these campuses.