Woke is Not Dead – Especially in Higher Education
“Though woke concepts such as systemic racism, critical race theory and gender fluidity aren’t as visible in corporate boardrooms and the federal government, they remain a powerful force”
If you follow higher education news, you know this. So many changes that have been made will be undone the minute another Democrat wins the presidency.
Matthew Continetti writes at the Wall Street Journal:
‘Woke’ Isn’t Dead, or Even Resting
New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is no firebrand. Yet as he delivered his school’s commencement address last week, he was booed. Several dozen students even walked out.
Prof. Haidt’s offense? The students who called on NYU to cancel the speech say that the author of “The Anxious Generation” has “promoted disturbing rhetoric around antiracism, social justice, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, claiming that the abolition of DEI may be the only way out of the Leftist ideological capture of American campuses.”
These aspiring Jacobins, in other words, wanted to silence an advocate of campus free speech—thereby proving his point. Whatever they majored in, it wasn’t irony.
The gesture was futile, but the lesson wasn’t. The radical ideas on race, “gender” and sexuality known as woke ideology—and the activist intolerance for dissent that accompanies them—might have retreated from their Biden-era apex. They haven’t disappeared. Though woke concepts such as systemic racism, critical race theory and gender fluidity aren’t as visible in corporate boardrooms and the federal government, they remain a powerful force in progressive strongholds, from college quads to Democratic primaries.
This is unexpected. The wave of left-wing activism that swept U.S. institutions after the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 seemed to have receded. A few years ago, headlines announced that America had hit “peak woke.” In 2023 the Supreme Court ruled that race-based college admissions are unconstitutional. A study that same year found a decline in academic research focused on identity and discrimination. Media outlets published fewer articles on “white privilege.” Major universities no longer required job applicants to sign statements pledging support for DEI.
Donald Trump’s 2024 victory confirmed the trend—and accelerated it. Mr. Trump had campaigned against Kamala Harris’s support for “gender transition” surgery for imprisoned felons and aliens in immigration detention. His early executive orders repealed Joe Biden’s equity initiatives, ended racial preferences in federal contracting, and withheld funds from universities that weren’t complying with the Supreme Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence and laws combating antisemitism.
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