The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial on why a magazine editor at a magazine we’ve never heard of will no longer hire graduates of Ivy League institutions. And here we thought The Wall Street Journal liked to be considered among our nation’s most reputable news publications. In any case, the editor of First Things, which apparently aims to “advance a religiously informed public philosophy” or whatever that happens to mean, has grown tired of hiring graduates from the likes of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Good heavens. What ever will people do? Apparently, he now prefers to hire graduates of Hillsdale College, Thomas Aquinas College, Wyoming Catholic College, and the University of Dallas. Ah, yes. But of course. If not Harvard, then Hillsdale. If not Yale, then Thomas Aquinas. Oy vey is right.

As R.R. Reno tells it in The Wall Street Journal in an op-ed entitled “Why I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates,” “In recent years, I’ve taken stock of my assumptions about who makes for the best entry-level employee. I have no doubt that Ivy League universities attract smart, talented and ambitious kids. But do these institutions add value? My answer is increasingly negative. Dysfunctional kids are coddled and encouraged to nurture grievances, while normal kids are attacked and educationally abused…Deprived of good role models, they’re less likely to mature into good leaders themselves…A few years ago a student at an Ivy League school told me, ‘The first things you learn your freshman year is never to say what you are thinking.’ The institution he attended claims to train the world’s future leaders. From what that young man reports, the opposite is true. The school is training future self-censors, which means future followers.”

Ah, yes, but of course it is logical that Ivy League schools are training students to never say what they’re thinking because one young person told Mr. Reno as much. Perhaps Mr. Reno should never say what he’s thinking? Perhaps students should not attend Hillsdale over Harvard? Perhaps Mr. Reno has been so busy advancing a religiosity informed public philosophy that he lost all sense of reason?