Ten Secrets to Academic Success | Remember Why You’re Going to College

Last April, I visited Boston addressing the New Anti-Semitism, the Academic Intifada, and the Great Betrayal American Jews experienced as Woke U becoming Jew-Bashing U. One morning, I jogged to Harvard. Running along the Charles River, the heaviness of the wars against Israel and against the Jews lifted. Reaching Harvard Yard, I time-traveled. The decades separating me and today’s undergraduates – and some of the anger distancing me from some Harvard colleagues – vanished – at least temporarily.

I remembered my undergraduate years as a Harvard Crimson Key tour guide sharing Harvard lore. Here – Weld 32 — is where John Kennedy lived in 1936-1937. There — the Sever Hall basement bathroom — is where Marilyn French was inspired to write her feminist blockbuster The Women’s Room.   

The students looked unchanged: fresh-faced, enthusiastic, adults-in-the-making. You imagined all the brain-power churning. You could taste the wealth and power epitomized by the historic buildings, and some well-dressed, older, corporate types wandering the Yard, escorted by eager-beaver undergrads. You felt like harvesting the pheromones from the budding romances, as young couples arm-in-arm exited their dorms – or his or her dorm. And you remembered, beyond it all, how this universe was fueled by ideas, ideas, and more ideas.

In short, a year after the encampments, amid the confusion as Jews wondered how America’s president could be so illiberal yet so against anti-Semitism, the university’s forever-magic triumphed. Despite its problems, North America’s Higher Education system remains the most marvelous laboratory for instilling knowledge, nurturing ideas, generating innovations, and cultivating young minds invented since the Babylonian Yeshivas. That’s why so many of us oppose what’s happening on campus – while still encouraging students to enter what could be toxic environments.

“Look at me,” I tell students, “I’m a case of arrested development. I got to university and never left.” But many of us fear that the liberal-minded, critical, substantive university I fell in love with, left us.  

These then, are the clashing realities every thoughtful student, Jewish and non-Jewish, faces.

Just as David Ben-Gurion advised Zionists during World War II to fight the British as if there were no Nazis, while fighting with the British against the Nazis, modern students must live a paradox.  The Academic Intifada continues. Beyond demonizing Israel, Zionists, Jews, a small fanatic group of “hack-ademics” hijack the holy classroom podium. They turn it into a political platform obsessed with romanticizing “the oppressed” while targeting the “oppressors.” While it’s worse in elite social sciences and humanities faculties – my world — some medical schools teach “DeColonizing Anatomy,” not basic bone structure, and some mathematicians brand adding numbers correctly “white supremacist.”

Similarly, some overly-influential students practice an all-or-nothing politics of intolerance, orthodoxies, litmus tests and cancel culture. 

So, yes, dear students, as this series will teach, you must be ready to resist this academic intifada. But only a small minority of hyper-politicized faculty and students have ruined the atmosphere. Their toxicity varies from campus to campus, department to department, class to class. 

Beware, if you see it everywhere – you’ll learn nowhere; it’s much harder to learn, laugh, live, thrive, if you’re constantly tense or on the defensive.

The greater obstacles to good education include parents’ and students’ obsession with credentials, grades, and future jobs, combined with too many professors’ over-investment in research, not teaching.

Relax. Make sure to see the magic, seek the magic, and cultivate higher education’s forever-magic. Your parents, your society, your upbringing, have given you a mind-expanding, soul-stretching, character-building opportunity. Unlike in much of the rest of the world, most young Americans and Canadians don’t have to serve in the army or work so many hours that they cannot enjoy the four-year-gift of college, which nearly 40 percent extend to graduate school.  

Make sure to see the magic, seek the magic, and cultivate higher education’s forever-magic. 

Start a new ritual: on your first day of school, call – don’t text – the people in your life most responsible for this gift. A little gratitude goes a long way to helping you see the good around you not just the bad, and in this case, appreciate the structures of education that still work, beyond the misfires.

Throughout the next ten weeks, this column will advise learners of all ages – and their parents – to maximize the wonderful opportunities many take for granted. You want to take challenging, thought-provoking, classes from open-minded, rigorous professors and don’t just go for the “gut course” – easy grade. You want to learn how to be an effective educational consumer, advocating for your rights when necessary, but seizing great learning moments always. You want to taste what it’s like to live the life of ideas, staying up late arguing with friends about the meaning of life, who your role models are, and what is the best ice cream flavor.  And I hope you’ll have experiences that get you questioning some of your core assumptions, either to change them, or to dissect them, re-examine them, reaffirm them, and then defend them passionately.  

You want to taste what it’s like to live the life of ideas, staying up late arguing with friends about the meaning of life, who your role models are, and what is the best ice cream flavor.  

To model the kind of journey you might follow, applying eternal wisdom from great books, to how you learn, think, live, consider Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, 4:1. Ben Zoma said: “Who are wise? Those learning from everyone” – your peers have much to teach, along with your professors. 

“Who are mighty? Those subduing their evil inclinations….”  Life unsupervised easily degenerates into life undisciplined. Know who you are, what you want, and how to limit yourself to achieve your best self.

“Who are rich? Those rejoicing in their lot….” Universities are filled with smarty-pants superstars who can outdo you – alongside normies who find you intimidating. Spend less time competing with others, or feeling inadequate, and find your inner satisfaction, your balance, your happiness with who you are and what you have.

Finally: “Who gets honored? Those who honor others….” Ultimately, Woke U runs on disrespect. A small, self-righteous, overly-influential group dismisses open-ended inquiry and thoughtful disagreement. 

Go in the other direction. Cultivate respect for others, stay open-minded, self-controlled, and satisfied with who you are – and be grateful for the magnificent opportunities universities offer to flourish.

Gil Troy, a senior fellow in Zionist Thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream” and “The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath” were just published.