CNN's Fareed Zakaria's critique of American universities

Critiques like this, whatever their merits (which are mixed), probably do reflect the Zeitgeist, and maybe will even have a salutary effect by putting an end to the "diversity" mania in American higher education.  Some excerpts, with a few comments interspersed:

American universities have been neglecting excellence in order to pursue a variety of agendas — many of them clustered around diversity and inclusion. It started with the best of intentions. Colleges wanted to make sure young people of all backgrounds had access to higher education and felt comfortable on campus. But those good intentions have morphed into a dogmatic ideology and turned these universities into places where the pervasive goals are political and social engineering, not academic merit.

An overstatement, but unfortunately, there is some truth to it, although it varies by field.

As the evidence produced for the recent Supreme Court case on affirmative action showed, universities have systematically downplayed the merit-based criteria for admissions in favor of racial quotas. Some universities’ response to this ruling seems to be that they will go further down this path, eliminating the requirement for any standardized test like the SAT. That move would allow them to take students with little reference to objective criteria. (Those who will suffer most will be bright students from poor backgrounds, who normally use tests like the SAT to demonstrate their qualifications.)

In the humanities, hiring for new academic positions now appears to center on the race and gender of the applicant, as well as the subject matter, which needs to be about marginalized groups.

Again, an exaggeration, but the proliferation of "philosophy of race" and similar jobs in philosophy is confirmation of the basic point.

Based on conversations with dozens of academics, my impression is that today a White man studying the US presidency does not have a prayer of getting tenure at a major history department in America. Grade inflation in the humanities is rampant. At Yale College, the median grade is now an A. New subjects crop up that are really political agendas, not academic fields. You can now major in diversity, equity and inclusion at some colleges.

The ever-growing bureaucracy devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion naturally recommends that more time and energy be spent on these issues. The most obvious lack of diversity at universities, political diversity, which clearly affects their ability to analyze many issues, is not addressed, showing that these goals are not centrally related to achieving, building or sustaining excellence....

"Political diversity" should not be an academic value (neither should racial and ethnic diversity:  there are reasons for affirmative action, but they have nothing to do with "diversity").   Political beliefs are either justified or not, but they are irrelevant to any actual Wissenschaft.

With this culture of virtue signaling growing, the George Floyd protests erupted, and many universities latched on and issued statements, effectively aligning their institutions with these protests. By my memory, few took such steps even after 9/11 or during the Iraq War.

This was, indeed, a symptom of the problem Zakaria identifies.  Indeed, even at UChicago, the former Provost started issuing idiotic statements about "systemic racism" after the murder of Floyd, until Jerry Coyne and I organized a group of faculty to send a letter to the President and Provost pointing out the clear violation of the Kalven Report principles.