In 1986, economist Herbert Stein proposed what is now known as Stein’s Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” This may have been true 35 years ago, but we’d be hard-pressed to apply this law to today’s colleges and universities. The parade of crackpot ideas is unending, and one can only wonder why ostensibly smart people are seduced by one harebrained scheme after the next. What is behind this apparently interminable folly?

The answer lies in human nature—specifically, man’s powerful urge to do something to gain control in the face of frustrating failure. Doing something helps overcome the feelings of depression and despair that attend helplessness, and thus serves as a means for self-medication. These psychological benefits have been demonstrated in countless studies. As a review in The New York Times puts it, “the feeling of being in control, of having a say over what happens in one’s life, has far-reaching consequences for physical and mental health, for achievement at school and work, and even for sex, researchers are finding.”

This urge, moreover, need not be rational. Indeed, the ease of reacting, not its logical connection to the obstacle at hand, may explain the allure. Consider the popularity of prayer during troubling times or the widespread medical quackery among those facing death from incurable illness.

Those in the grip of this “do something” passion might well admit that the odds of success are slim, but they will surely, and correctly, aver that at least doing something soothes the psyche. After all, God may take pity on you to escape the black death if the self-flagellation is correctly administered. Yes, the odds of this divine rescue might be one in a million, but self-mutilation is better than doing nothing. Evolutionary biology might also suggest that action, no matter how inane, may provide survival benefits, and, thus, those inclined to self-flagellation or similar ineffectual gestures pass their genes down to the next generation.

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So, what motivates all this entirely therapeutic, albeit crackpot, behavior? Answer: creating a campus, top to bottom, across all disciplines, in every academic nook and cranny, that perfectly mirrors America’s demography. The term “obsessive compulsive disorder” might be appropriate here. Why else do universities on average need 45 administrators to promote Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE), while those who doubt this egalitarian mission are punished? Why else would American colleges spend $14 billion on DIE alone? Just listen to the endless student demands—those calling for “racial justice” drown out all others. In a nutshell, the contemporary social justice mania is self-medication on a colossal scale.

Achieving this vision may well take eons, and so setbacks are only momentary. The Energizer Bunny is the model. Yes, initial affirmative action programs failed, as did “diversifying” the faculty, but that is just the predictable hit-or-miss beginning. Just wait until we exorcize the names of universities’ racist founders, purge all “hateful” books from our libraries, and otherwise eradicate the toxic, white supremacist culture that professors impose on their students. The woke paradise will finally arrive.

Three factors feed this cycle of blatant nonsense. First, decades of failure serve as a powerful force to keep going. Success is, true believers tell us, just around the corner, so we need to double down and resist surrender. It’s hard to imagine canceling Charles Murray if past egalitarian schemes had performed as initially guaranteed. What else could possibly explain the return of campus segregation? Or ever-more draconian speech codes? Desperation and persistence despite endless failures become signs of moral virtue.

Second, the modern university supplies near-unlimited opportunities to egalitarian dreamers willing to devote their lives to the cause. “Barriers” to progress are everywhere, many of which were never understood as “racist” until the woke cognoscenti discovered the truth. Every day, professors utter offensive words or assign toxic readings. For those who no longer embrace the pursuit of knowledge, uncovering alleged evils provides lifetime employment.

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Third, in today’s university the monetary cost of promoting nonsense is often negligible, and when fresh funds are needed, Uncle Sam or mega-rich foundations come to the rescue. This is not the private sector, where markets punish ineptitude—being uber-woke may even attract students and donations. For weak-willed administrators and those anxious to expand bureaucratic empires, the egalitarian agenda is a gift from heaven. Tops schools won’t go bankrupt in their pursuit of egalitarian Utopia, so this virtue-signaling is an all-you-can-eat buffet for the morally famished. Even those schools struggling to pay the bills hardly want to be left behind in the rush to the equitable promised land.

What is particularly exasperating about this endless, ill-advised crusade is that it is impervious to scientific reason. It is an embrace of theology, not science. Forget about swaying the zealot by demonstrating how past efforts have failed, how no logical connection exists between the nostrum and the perceived problem, or how deeply rooted cultural obstacles impede his Quixotic quest. The same goes for the challenges of illegality or totalitarian overreach. Again, past failures only seem to energize true believers.

Short of universities going broke, it should be clear that the only way of stopping this nonsense is to accept a harsh reality: academia will never precisely reflect the general population. Happily, this awakening may not be as hopeless as it might initially appear. Yes, fervent egalitarians may never reject the divorced-from-reality true faith, but everybody grows older and will, eventually, retire. Time is the great enemy of those seeking to transform the university; who knows, events may also play a role. Recall when religious disputes were fundamental schisms and millions died. Ideologues can jump ship—think of those dutiful Marxists who opportunistically embraced capitalism when the Soviet Union collapsed. But meanwhile, human nature is human nature, and the cost of indulging fantasies is minimal compared to the sugar-high of doing something. The parade of nonsense will likely continue as the academy stumbles from one failure to the next.

Image: Jake Weirick, Public Domain