Since William Buckley wrote his once-famous screed, “God and Man at Yale,” the nation’s colleges and universities have been under attack for liberal bias. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Right complained that political correctness was stigling the voices of conservative students and professors and that affirmative action was causing white students to lose out in the admissions process. Somehow, despite the alleged (and real) leftward tilt of the professoriate, American politics is dominated by rightwing politicians. All three branches are in the hands of conservatives, and rightwing media is enjoying a dramatic resurgence.
But be prepared, warns an intern at the National Review, American higher education is about to become the nation’s scapegoat, serving next year in the role that the media serves now: punching bag for Republican demagogues. It is elitist, it costs too much, it harbors leftist bias, it encourages a proliferation of bizarre majors and courses.
There is more than a grain of truth in all these charges, but that grain is tiny compared to the anti-intellectualism and bile that lies behind these charges. Elected officials have spent decades shifting the cost of higher education from the state’s to students, and the costs are out of reach for many students; for those who do attend, the cost of paying back student loans can take years. Meanwhile, many universities have responded to competition by building lavish student facilities and reducing the number of faculty eligible for tenure. Some 70% of the nation’s professors are adjuncts, or “contingent” faculty, barely able to cobble together a decent living as a “reward” for their years of preparation and study.
The “political correctness” claims have been blown out of all proportion because they are easiest for the uneducated to understand. They play into the well of white resentment that elected Trump, r
The sense that nonegites are getting an unfair advantage over whites.
Since World War II, our nation’s universities have been generally viewed as engines of economic progress and a path to social mobility. They are also considered by many to be the best in the world.
Make no mistake. If the right targets them next as the target of the nihilist steamroller, the future growth of our nation–economy and social–will be at risk.
It is past time for the leaders of higher education to strategize about the future, about cost and accessibility, about how they are perceived, about their role in American society, and about how to respond to the attacks by rightwing politicians that will blame higher education for the erosion of equality and opportunity in our society.
The recent release of polling data that showed that a majority of Republicans believe that higher education has a negative effect was the first indication that new political ground was being plowed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/11/dramatic-shift-most-republicans-now-say-colleges-have-negative-impact
American colleges and universities do have a left-ish bias. They are in favor of open discourse (at least used to be), using science as a means to understand the world, inclusion of all students/diversity, academic freedom, etc. Definitely a left-ish bias. Dirty commies.
Good GRIEF, Steve Ruis. What about DIRTY CAPITALISTS?
Steve Ruis LOL to that one. But really, that just about captures the negative “branding” that’s been going on for quite some time now. Also, some on the left actually deserve a good critique. But these are equivalent to “welfare moms,” “bad teachers,” and even “corrupt business people and politicians.” With human situations you always have to deal with the dregs among us.
But THAT’s the present (and long-term) methodology of the right AND the left in many cases–though I don’t see the left raising it to the same level of playbook, din, or system that the Republicans, the neo-liberals, and generally the “right” have. It seems the left doesn’t have the intensity or the institutionalization of a Carl Rove or a Fox News that I know of. (I’m remembering Anne Richards here–bless her heart–and her response to being pummeled by the right wing–she said she would wake up every day and wonder what spaghetti-lies about her they had thrown at the wall THAT day.)
But here’s the method in its general form: (1) isolate and focus on the WORST TRUTH in any situation–you can always find something, and if you can’t, make something up; (2) paint the WHOLE (for example, ALL who are on welfare) with that truth’s broad brush (they are ALL welfare moms taking-taking-taking); (3) throw that spaghetti at the wall over-and-over again, systematically-even, until it’s etched in people’s heads like a Disney cartoon from the past; and (4) NEVER comment on either (a) the whole context as a wealth of good examples) or (b) the general good that’s going forward in spite of the bad-truth.
The method of THAT method is to use all of the logical fallacies that Copi has to offer (because many believe what you say and don’t look for half-truths and double-speak “code”) and run your target into the ground until the good that could happen dies of exhaustion from playing whack-a-mole with evil.
David Horowitz is one of the many far right wing gargoyles constantly pushing this glop that universities and colleges have a left wing or liberal bias. To these toxic waste spewers I say, toughen up snowflakes. Tant pis.
While the Big Ivy League Graduates game has worked very hard at keeping certain families and certain economic/cultural practices carefully in power since our nation’s inception, it is interesting to watch, now, as these Exclusive Graduates now face incursions to their control over financial and political status: not only are state colleges and small institutions producing graduates who believe they can compete in the financial and political ring, but cheaper online courses are opening the door to many non-dominant-culture students who have not been able to afford Big Money/Big Status prices.
Th next?
Seriously… You need to rad Joel Shatzky’s satire “Option Three,’ (2012) which neatly nails the how-to reduce the teaching professionals (i.e PROFESSORS) at the college level.
Here is what I wrote, when I reviewed it for Amazon:
“While much is written today about the failure of the schools, nowhere is there such a lucid account of the effect of this conspiracy on the genuine educators who are first, forbidden to do what we do best — create the lessons that develop the thinking skills that underlie all learning — and then punished and ostracized for standing our ground. I laughed at the cynical dialogue and outrageous administrative shenanigans, but when I finished, I wept like the teachers in the novel . . .” —Susan Lee Schwartz, winner of the NYSEC “Educator of Excellence Award”
“When Acting Visiting Assistant Professor L. Circassian is fired and rehired in the same week (with a 35 percent pay cut), he is only at the beginning of a cycle of abuse and professional debasement at the university. Joel Shatzky has created an hilarious novel about the corporatization of higher education — a book filled with blowhard deans, corrupt politicians, grasping CEOs, inept union officials, inappropriately dressed students, and scholars in donkey ears.
“Option Three is an imaginative, funny and sometimes all too realistic account of life in today’s colleges and universities. Shatzky tells it like it (unfortunately) is in today’s academic world.” —Del Janik, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, SUNY, Cortland “Joel Shatzky gives us a tour of a public university where the present vogue for competition and privatization has been taken to a logical extreme. The results are highly entertaining — and terrifying.” —David Koistinen, Associate Professor of History, William Paterson University of New Jersey
“Option Three explores drastic takeovers of academia by corporations, in which the mantra becomes the bottom line of making money under a strict umbrella of profit only. Joel Shatzky’s bizarre, most humorous and onerous odyssey confronts these changes with keen insight and most fearless fantasy.” —Louis Trakis, Professor Emeritus in Art, Manhattanville College
go get the book and see how it is done..the ploys they used for years!
Right wing media berates universities. Then, Pew Trusts conducts polling, which shows the right wing’s propaganda reached its target. The fringe, i.e. the richest 0.1%, has its message mainstreamed by media, when msm reports on Pew polling. David Sirota explained that Pew Trusts is not the benign organization we’ve been led to believe it is. Pew is significantly in league with John Arnold on community surveillance and pension alarmism.
Billionaire John Arnold (ex-Enron) has made it his mission to eliminate public pensions.
He is rich. Why should you have a comfortable retirement or even one that will permit you to have a middle-class existence?
Arnold is also funding insurer’s front groups under the guise of “value” to give them “data” to eventually deny the reimbursements of innovative (and costly) drugs for cancers and other diseases. Arnold doesn’t smirk in front of the camera as Martin Shkreli does, but he’s far more wide-rangingly malevolent to the interests of some of our most vulnerable neighbors.
insurers’
Arnold funds the pension project at Urban Institute where Mitch Daniels and the wife of TIAA’s CEO sit on the board. There was a petition at Change.org telling Urban that the signers thought the Institute’s research on ACA was flawed. How surprising that their work would undermine a Democratic policy.
the future growth of our nation, economy and society, is already at risk. Going after higher ed to turn it into a mouth piece for idiots that think all life appeared 6,000 years ago when their god blinked, and then humans walked side by side with dinosaurs only makes it worse.
If the Nihilist Right succeeds, that will signal the end of our species and most life on the planet as we know it, because they will destroy the environment we need to survive as a species.
A friend told me today that a friend’s uncle had declared that the eclipse was a creation of NASA, a hoax created to take power from the people. When they tried to explain that the earth rotated on its axis, he declared that any fool could see that such a thing was a lie if you just jump up and land in the same spot. The idea of earth going around the sun? Another NASA plot to take power.
This is not a joke. Is it any wonder that higher education is held in low regard. How can they teach a public that has not reached the era or the heliocentric solar system? There will be no end to this foolishness. Few as these stastical outliers be, they are evidentiary of a general movement toward superstition that has taken place during my own lifetime. We have whole segments in our society accepting the idea of the danger of vaccinations. Many can be swayed by reference to one or more hot button issues to vote against their own best interests. The era will one day be termed “the age of preposterous”.