People who work in higher education are worried about the future of things like DEI. They have every right to be concerned.
From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
If Trump WinsWhat if Donald Trump is re-elected as president? As unpleasant as it may be to contemplate, it’s an increasingly likely possibility that would be a disaster for higher education. Trump leads Biden, according to recent polling. And yet the sector’s response, so far, has been to sleepwalk into the election. It’s time for us to wake up.For well over a year now, a small army of think-tankers, consultants, congressional aides, and campaign staffers have been at work crafting higher-education policies in anticipation of a Trump restoration. These efforts, if enacted into law, would radically change higher education in this country. Even more worrisome, Republican politicians have recently shown their skill at calling attention to campus problems that resonate strongly with the public. A Trump presidency with a Republican legislative majority could remake higher education as we’ve known it.Given the stakes, it is time to look more closely at what Trump’s re-election could mean, and to be clear-eyed about the weaknesses a second Trump administration would exploit. Put simply, changes in academic leadership style will be necessary if the sector is to defend itself effectively.The December 5 congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses offers a preview of what’s to come. When we pull ourselves away from the partisan melee and the fallout, including the resignation of two Ivy League presidents, we can see the outlines of a thus far one-sided battle. The maladroit responses of the presidents provided the necessary pretext for advancing the Republicans’ attempt to punish parts of the academic enterprise they disdain and to redirect university efforts along the lines they champion. But the right’s interest goes well beyond anything discussed by the three university presidents who were grilled by Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.Consider Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist behind Republican attacks on critical race theory and anti-racism programs (and now a board member at New College of Florida). He sees universities as having succumbed to “race and sex narcissism” and as having turned their backs on the “pursuit of truth.” He dismisses the idea that universities can reform themselves: Administrators are too “weak,” he argues, and are thus prone to “emotional or social manipulation” by faculty activists. For Rufo, the way forward is to use state power to bring about what he sees as the necessary changes. Triumphant at the resignation of Claudine Gay as Harvard University’s president, he wasted no time in announcing a “plagiarism hunting” fund aimed at exposing “the rot in the Ivy League.” But that’s just the beginning of what Rufo has in mind.
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