That nostalgic time of year for newly minted college grads and their professors has now concluded. I admit to being affected by the academic robes I pull out for commencement, not to mention the students I’ve taught for the past four years, who are finally ready to make the leap into the “real” world.
This spring was a bit different. It marked the 30th anniversary of my own graduation from college. And as I headed east for my reunion, I thought about how my daughter (a sophomore) and the rest of her millennial cohort have inherited a radically different academic world than the one I toasted with my friends from the Class of 1984. The changes — and they were dramatic — occurred on my generation’s watch, and were not just a series of unrelated misfortunes. On the contrary, the new world is the end product of a fiendishly successful conspiracy.
During my first semester of college, John Lennon was assassinated 40 blocks south of my freshman dorm, and Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California, was elected president of the United States. I was devastated by both of these events. At the time, I had no idea that the Great Communicator had cut his teeth on campus protests during the 1960s, using long-haired Berkeley students as perfect foils. Reagan assailed the Free Speech and antiwar movements, promising the taxpayers that if elected, he’d get college kids off
— source salon.com | Peter Lunenfeld | Jul 5, 2014