Yale University, with more than $25 billion dollars in its endowment, is about to launch a new capital campaign to raise several billion dollars more. For decades, Yale and other elite university alumni, grateful for the education they received, gave back to help their alma maters build their financial war chest. The idea was simple: With greater resources, the elite schools could make financial aid more generous, hire more professors, and upkeep their infrastructure.

But in recent decades, universities have changed. They have prioritized politics and social justice activism over education. In the name of combating racism, they encourage it; indeed, campuses have become ground zero for 21st century segregation in the name not of conservatism but rather of progressive theory. And they have hired administrators at rates far greater than they have professors. For all their talk about diversity, they are superficial in its application: Skin color and sexuality count toward diversity, economic background less so. Intellectual diversity and respect for alternate viewpoints – what should be the basis of any serious education – hardly merits university consideration.