In the debate pitting defenders of racial preferences in college admissions against proponents of meritocracy, both sides implicitly accept the premise that there must be a single national elite. What divides the two sides is how the members of this single national elite are to be selected in their late teens or early 20s. But there is an alternative to a national oligarchy selected on this or that basis by admissions committees at a few prestigious universities: a plurality of separate elites, each with its own constituency, its own distinct entry requirements, its own internal career ladders, and with little or no lateral mobility between different elites.
Societies in which members of a single, homogeneous national elite with similar backgrounds circulate easily among all of the various centers of power—government, business, academe, and the media—are familiar in the modern world. In Britain, graduates of Oxford and Cambridge and a few elite private schools who live in a few neighborhoods in London dominate powerful institutions. In France, the grandes écoles play the role of Oxbridge in Britain. The University of Tokyo functions similarly in Japan.
Increasingly, the pattern in the United States is similar. It resembles a candelabrum: Those who manage to squeeze through the stem of a few prestigious colleges and universities in their youth can then branch out to fill leadership positions in almost every vocation, including the arts, outside of the military and the clergy.
After attending Columbia University, Barack Obama went from being a community organizer to a state legislator to a US senator and president, to end up today in his latest career as a producer of documentaries in Hollywood. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton are now co-authors of political thriller novels. Did I mention that Obama and the Clintons also have their own nonprofit foundations? In this respect, they resemble their fellow Baby Boomer, Donald Trump, the Wharton grad who inherited the family real-estate business and has dabbled in television, menswear, golf courses, and hotels, and even founded his own university before becoming president in his first campaign for public office.
“The lateral circulation of members of the same elite … is a formula for oligarchy.”
It must be frustrating for ambitious screenwriters and directors and producers and talented novelists and nonprofit specialists who spent decades going through the paces in their respective vocations, only to be shoved aside in favor of dilettantish ex-presidents and ex-first ladies hopping from one occupation to another at the top. The lateral circulation of members of the same elite through revolving doors in the public, private, and nonprofit realms is a formula for oligarchy.
compactmag.com
Societies in which members of a single, homogeneous national elite with similar backgrounds circulate easily among all of the various centers of power—government, business, academe, and the media—are familiar in the modern world. In Britain, graduates of Oxford and Cambridge and a few elite private schools who live in a few neighborhoods in London dominate powerful institutions. In France, the grandes écoles play the role of Oxbridge in Britain. The University of Tokyo functions similarly in Japan.
Increasingly, the pattern in the United States is similar. It resembles a candelabrum: Those who manage to squeeze through the stem of a few prestigious colleges and universities in their youth can then branch out to fill leadership positions in almost every vocation, including the arts, outside of the military and the clergy.
After attending Columbia University, Barack Obama went from being a community organizer to a state legislator to a US senator and president, to end up today in his latest career as a producer of documentaries in Hollywood. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton are now co-authors of political thriller novels. Did I mention that Obama and the Clintons also have their own nonprofit foundations? In this respect, they resemble their fellow Baby Boomer, Donald Trump, the Wharton grad who inherited the family real-estate business and has dabbled in television, menswear, golf courses, and hotels, and even founded his own university before becoming president in his first campaign for public office.
“The lateral circulation of members of the same elite … is a formula for oligarchy.”
It must be frustrating for ambitious screenwriters and directors and producers and talented novelists and nonprofit specialists who spent decades going through the paces in their respective vocations, only to be shoved aside in favor of dilettantish ex-presidents and ex-first ladies hopping from one occupation to another at the top. The lateral circulation of members of the same elite through revolving doors in the public, private, and nonprofit realms is a formula for oligarchy.
Break Up America’s Elite
In the debate pitting defenders of racial preferences in college admissions against proponents of meritocracy, both sides implicitly accept the premise that there must be a single national elite. What divides the two sides is how the members of this single national elite are to be selected in...
compactmag.com