Universities across U.S. and Europe have enacted guidelines and rules that align with the new “woke” ideology, all in the name of equity, antiracism, and empathy. This has had expected results. The modern day witch hunt has ousted great minds and is bringing about a vacuous echo chamber in the once hallow halls.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been blasted for the intolerant actions brought on by the new ideology. Earlier this month, two MIT alumni published an article detailing why they were withdrawing their financial support for the school. They outline three main offenses that have happened within the past two years.

The first was the firing of the Catholic chaplain, Father Daniel Moloney, when he published a letter after George Floyd’s death. Father Moloney pointed out that Floyd did not live a good life (in reference to Floyd’s multiple criminal infractions and arrests) and that everyone assuming the crime was racially motivated was jumping to conclusions.

The second incident had to do with MIT canceling a talk by renowned geophysicist Dorian Abbot. The reason was not because of Abbot’s lecture subject matter but because of a piece that he and another professor published in Newsweek emphasizing the importance of merit. They opined that the inclusion and equity policies enforced by universities sacrifices talent to satisfy a statistic.

Thirdly, at the beginning of this year, MIT made it mandatory for new and current students to take “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” and “Sexual Assault Prevention Ongoing: Healthy Relationships” trainings. We’d wager that more than these two alumni are displeased at how their alma mater is choosing to use its financial contributions.

Sadly, MIT isn’t the only university that has decided to cave to the new ideology. British actor John Cleese canceled a talk at Cambridge University after hearing that the school blacklisted a speaker who had done a Hitler impression and uttered anti-Semitic slurs. The speaker in question was using these tactics to illustrate how horrifying Hitler’s regime was, but (as we have long suspected) the woke have no sense of satire. Cleese is an outspoken opponent of cancel culture and those who apologize to that mob. He himself has a famous sketch in “Fawlty Towers” where he does a Hitler caricature. He stated in his letter to the school:

I was looking forward to talking to students at the Cambridge Union this Friday, but I hear that someone there has been blacklisted for doing an impersonation of Hitler I regret that I did the same on a Monty Python show, so I am blacklisting myself before someone else does. I apologise to anyone at Cambridge who was hoping to talk with me, but perhaps some of you can find a venue where woke rules do not apply.

A common thread for both these famed universities is that they caved to the demands of the woke mob and their students have lost opportunities to broaden their perspectives and grow academically. The theologian and prolific writer C.S. Lewis once wrote in his book Screwtape Letters: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”

The sacrifice of the virtue of courage by conceding to wrong little by little signals that when these colleges are faced with an actual sticking point where courage is needed, they will be totally incapable of rising to the occasion.