by Thaddeus G. McCotter
America’s universities have rebuilt their “Ivory Tower” into a self-ruling fortress of wealth, ideology, and arrogance, towering even above the law.
For the longest time, people have casually denigrated academia as “the Ivory Tower.” This was intended to express popular disdain for the arrogance of campus academics and bureaucrats who believed they were born and bred to be cosseted by tuition, endowment, and taxpayer funds to exist in luxurious splendor above the gritty diurnal existence of us peasants—peasants they habitually loathe and critique, and for a steep fee deign to reeducate and indoctrinate when they are not devising new leftist idiocies to make humanity miserable. The Ivory Tower moniker, specifically, references their poshly appointed aerie, wherein their insularity, impracticality, inanity, and arrogance are on display for all to see except for themselves.
The Ivory Tower moniker is now also something else: passé. Our denizens of academia have been busy using other people’s money for a DIY renovation of their Ivory Tower into a Platinum Citadel.
Dictionary.com defines the word “citadel” as “a fortress that commands a city and is used in the control of the inhabitants and in defense during attack or siege.” Other definitions are quick to note it can also be a place of refuge—for some people, anyway—rather than one of repression. (Such entries often cite The Citadel, the storied military college of South Carolina. I’ve yet to find an entry mentioning the Rolling Stones ditty “Citadel,” but maybe someday. “Flags are flying dollar bills; ‘round the heights of concrete hills, you can see the pinnacles….” Seems rather apt for these academics.)
In light of this definition and of recent events, can there really be any denying how far too many of our institutions of higher learning believe they are not only above the daily grind but above the law? The Platinum Citadel is emulating the lead of America’s cosmopolitan corporate executives and their multinational corporations (MNCs), who also believe themselves to be an autonomous, imperious nation-state.
The Platinum Citadel believes its campus policies are superior to federal and state law. Moreover, the denizens recognize only the constraints of their conscience and, truth be told, of convenience, connivance, and, above all, pecuniary considerations in choosing what laws to follow. One need look no further than their flouting of anti-DEI laws, rules, and regulations.
The Platinum Citadel also has its own foreign policy, which is often distinct from that of our country (especially when a Republican administration conducts foreign policy). One can clearly see this in the Platinum Citadel’s support of the anti-Israeli “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) movement, as well as other pro-Palestinian demonstrations, including the intimidation and silencing of dissenting voices who support the Jewish state. So, too, the Platinum Citadel has been quite prehensile in accepting foreign money from entities and engaging with foreign actors while remaining obstinately heedless about the impact on our national security.
Armed with billions upon billions of dollars in endowments and the legion of wealthy alumni who contributed such largesse—often with the best of intentions that pave the golden road to these brainwashing emporiums cloaked as institutions of “higher learning”—the Platinum Citadel has weaponized itself against all challengers to its self-aggrandizing sense of superiority and sovereignty.
Indeed, when I was in Congress, I had suggested to others in our GOP House leadership that we should hold hearings to see how universities spent federal funds and cut funding to those institutions that squandered taxpayer funds or exorbitantly raised tuition costs. I was flatly rejected, for, as a high-ranking member of the leadership argued, “A lot of Republican donors sit on university boards.”
Fortunately, the Trump administration refuses to hew to such venal political logic and is storming the bejeweled gates of the Platinum Citadel. Yet whether the Trump administration can foster the conditions allowing for the possible redemption of the Platinum Citadel remains to be seen. For the ultimate redemption necessarily rests in the hands of the very academics and bureaucrats who created the problematic situation. Believing themselves to be rootless, supranational entities, the Platinum Citadel—or American-based MNCs—both avail themselves of all the advantages of living in the U.S. while eschewing all the duties of doing so.
It is a lesson the rest of us learned long ago, though not so the habitués of the Platinum Citadel: no person—or institution—is above the law.
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An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003-2012. He served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles, a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a co-host of “John Batchelor: Eye on the World” on CBS radio, among sundry media appearances.
Thaddeus G. McCotter
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/11/01/the-platinum-citadel/
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