There was a time when institutions of higher learning - college, universities, grad schools, law schools - at least pretended to exist for the pursuit of "universals" (i.e. truth).

That time is long past.

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At some point, there will be a reckoning for this. Sooner rather than later, organizations, bar associations, medical boards, and other professional institutions will no longer view degrees from such places as valuable or necessary.

The latest example of this descent into irrelevance comes from Penn State Dickinson Law, where a Texas military veteran dropped out rather than submit to what increasingly sounds less like legal education and more like ideological reeducation.

According to reporting from The Washington Free Beacon, law student David Blackman objected to a mandatory "anti-racism" course featuring speakers openly declaring things like:

• "It's not optional."

• "Today you all officially become part of this broader coalition."

• Assertions that the criminal justice system exists primarily to "keep Black people in their place."

That's not legal instruction. That's activist doctrine. Listen to the bombshell audio yourself:

The issue, as it appears to me, is not whether students should study racism, civil rights history, or claims of systemic inequities. Any serious legal education would examine controversial ideas and competing perspectives.

The problem is the now established assumption within higher education that students are not there to analyze ideological frameworks critically, but to affirm them ritually. That's a completely different enterprise, and one that reduces the school's value and changes its purpose entirely.

Law schools are supposed to produce attorneys capable of reasoning through difficult constitutional questions, examining evidence, arguing competing sides, and defending free inquiry. Instead, too many institutions now seem committed to producing ideological minions whose primary qualification is the ability to regurgitate fashionable academic buzzwords.

And that transformation has happened astonishingly fast.

It wasn't that long ago that universities feared accusations of indoctrination. In a matter of a decade or two, those same schools openly advertise that's their desire, unabashedly throwing around words like:

• "Equity"

• "Anti-racism"

• "Social justice"

• "Decolonization"

• "Allyship"

In other words, there is one morally acceptable framework through which enlightened people must interpret society. Deviation from that framework will not be treated as intellectual disagreement, but as moral deficiency.

Why would rational, non-conformists to the spirit of the age ever put themselves through such inanity? And pay an institution to subject them to it? It's a crazy premise.

That's exactly why Americans who still value free inquiry and intellectual growth must react to these kind of clips from Penn State with revulsion. It is far past time to shun and revolt against these colleges that have become seminaries for the secular religion of the age. This means not doing business with them. Not attending them. Not taking them seriously. And where possible, using the full force of the law to stop them.

A civilization can survive bad ideas more easily than it can survive institutions no longer capable of honestly testing them.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.