The less noble of Antioch

George Will writes about the demise of Antioch College which was consumed by its liberalism. Antioch is a name you see often on Baptist churches in the south. It comes from a Greek city which the apostle Paul found the members of the church more noble than those at Thessaloníki. You never see any Thessaloníki Baptist churches for good reason.

This appears to be a case where the college pretty much failed to live up to its name sake. In fact it is doubtful anyone there had a clue as to the source of their name.

DURING the campus convulsions of the late 1960s, when rebellion against any authority was considered obedience to every virtue, the film "To Die in Madrid," a documentary about the Spanish Civil War, was shown at a small liberal arts college famous for, and vain about, its dedication to all things progressive. When the film's narrator intoned, "The rebels advanced on Madrid," the students, who adored rebels and were innocent of information, cheered.

Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, had been so busy turning undergraduates into vessels of liberalism and apostles of social improvement that it had not found time for the tiresome task of teaching them tedious facts, such as that the rebels in Spain were Franco's fascists.

That illustrates why it is heartening that Antioch will close after the 2007-08 academic year. Its board of trustees says the decision is to "suspend operations," and it talks dottily about reviving the institution in 2012. There is, however, a minuscule market for what Antioch sells for a tuition, room and board of $35,221 - repressive liberalism unleavened by learning.

Founded in 1852, Antioch was, for a while, admirable. One of the first colleges to enroll women and blacks, it was a destination for escaped slaves. Its alumni include Stephen Jay Gould, Coretta Scott King and Rod Serling, whose "Twilight Zone" never imagined anything weirder than what Antioch became when its liberalism curdled.

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There is more and it is not pretty. Good riddance.