The upcoming New York Times Magazine has an article on Antioch College, my alma mater (’79), which closed in 2008 but plans to reopen next year. The article asks “can Antioch College return from the dead again?” One of those quoted is emeritus professor of anthropology Victor Ayoub, now 88, with whom I took an intro to anthro course as a freshman (we’ve stayed in touch over the years). If the new faculty is made up of people like him and some of the other fine professors who taught at Antioch in my day, and becomes once again the serious liberal arts college that it was until the 1960s, then it will stand a fighting chance. And I will give it lots of money, in spirit at least. But if the college picks up from where it left off, remaining the flaky, off-beat, counter culture time warped, identity politics obsessed place that it was degenerating into by my time there—and with declining academic standards—, then forget it. It has no chance. And I will not wish it luck.
À propos, the right-wing Weekly Standard had a cover article in November 2007 on the demise of Antioch, entitled “Death by political correctness: Who killed Antioch College?” Now I am not a fan of TWS, whose political world-view is the antithesis of mine, but, to my regret, the article was dead on target. Devastatingly so. The author Charlotte Allen’s inquiry was impressive in its thoroughness and accuracy. It is the best account of Antioch’s demise one will read. Alas.
UPDATE: Watch here Saturday Night Live’s hilarious October 1993 parody of the preposterous dating code Antioch drew up that year, which made the college a laughing stock on both sides of the Atlantic.
Arun with a View 
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