Americans are losing confidence in Ivy League institutions, scholar says

Ilya Shapiro — a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute — recently said that the recent scandals involving Ivy League schools across the country are doing harm to higher education's reputation. The remarks were made after former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned from her post amid claims of plagiarism.

Shapiro recently shared with Fox News Digital that "higher ed in general has become embattled and is losing more and more confidence of the American public." The glaring issues within the nation's most prestigious universities have become apparent since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

However, confidence in these institutions has consistently declined over the past several years. According to a recent Gallup survey, "Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%). In addition to the 17% of U.S. adults who have 'a great deal' and 19% 'quite a lot' of confidence, 40% have 'some' and 22% 'very little' confidence."

The survey noted that it did not specifically ask those surveyed why they held such low confidence in these institutions.

A separate Gallup survey went into more detail about the developing situation in higher education, noting that Democrats have expressed concern about the increasing cost of attending college or university, whereas Republicans are more concerned with the politics and rhetoric often taught in lecture halls.

Harvard is one such institution that has worked its way into the spotlight since Hamas' attack against Israel. Since then, the university has been accused of harboring far-left bias after dozens of pro-Palestine students suggested that the Jewish state was responsible for the horrific attack.

As a result, Gay appeared before Congress to give testimony about the developments on campus, where she struggled to confirm that students calling for genocide against Jews would be in violation of the school's code of conduct.

Gay ultimately resigned after she had been accused of plagiarism following her lukewarm comments before Congress.

Fox News Digital noted that a similar situation played out at Cornell University, where students said they felt unsafe after Russell Rickford, a professor, said that he was "exhilarated" after Hamas launched its attack against Israel.

Many pro-Palestine activists have used coded phrases that represent genocide of the Jewish people, such as "From the river to the sea" and "Intifada" — an Arabic word that means "uprising."

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