Jinn of Quality and Risk

Socialism is both a theoretical and a practical failure, as demonstrated by e.g. von Mises long before WW II, and as illustrated by e.g. the total collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But that ideology still enjoys widespread support among those who consider themselves intellectual. The reasons are multiple, including a dominant ethical belief in altruism, a desire of many intellectuals to impose their vision of (social) perfection with them at the top of a meritocratic pyramid, hostility to reason and logic as the only tools of cognition, as well as general ignorance of the history of freedom and economic progress.

Edward Feser, Loyola Marymount U: The hegemony of the Left over the universities is so overwhelming that not even Leftists deny it. Whether the institution is public or private, a community college or an Ivy League campus, you can with absolute confidence predict ... the [leftist] curriculum ... What is surprising is how little attention is paid to the question of why the university has come to be so dominated by the Left ... There have been various theories presented, and many of them no doubt contain part of the answer. But none has gotten to the nub of the matter ... The present essay will survey the theories that have been proposed so far... [via PrestoPundit] 

If you study but one thing today, go read Cory Doctorow's Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books. The author is a radical, looking at the intersection of new publishing technologies, human desires, and copyright restrictions (or the lack thereof, as well as the concomitant beneficial aspects of expansive, supportive, non-commercial relationships between authors and the rest of the world).