Antioch College, R.I.P.

Antioch College, once a leader in liberal education, has finally been done in by decades of unrelenting leftism. The college is supposed to reorganize and re-open in a few years. Nonetheless, if it is not dead, it is likely to remain a shadow of itself, short of a wholesale housecleaning. In its glory days of civil rights liberalism, when Coretta Scott King and Eleanor Holmes Norton were students, Antioch supported equal access to a high standard of education, combining liberal arts with a well-establish co-op work program. Antioch's contributions to academic life include Stephen Jay Gould, Clifford Geertz, and David Apter, while the college's pop culture creators include John Flansburgh (half of They Might Be Giants) and Rod Serling, who made "The Twilight Zone".

In recent decades, though, Antioch entered its own twilight zone. The looney left took over, promoting egalitarianism, and then just sheer radical chic, at the expense of the academic program. They dropped grades, discouraged disciplinary majors, and had celebrity murderers as commencement speakers. The college also grossly over-extended its resources to try to create a far-flung adult education empire as Antioch University. Lately, the school has become a laughingstock for its "may I please do this, may I please do that" sexual conduct policy for students.

Antioch was a great school in its day. I wish its academic remnant well in their attempts to rebuild from the rubble.