Many of today's colleges feature strident demonstrations of "woke" self-righteousness. Self-appointed inquisitors on the faculty demand that speakers be canceled and fellow professors fired should any harbor an opinion, different from their faith. Immature, censorious students inspire and/or join in these inquisitions. Then craven, opportunistic or fellow true believing administrators not only fail to squash this intolerance, they frequently cave in to it.
It's hard to imagine more repulsive, ill-advised behavior on the part of any faculty, students or administrators. It is outrageously out of place in any institution of higher education that absolutely depends for its very existence on freedom of inquiry. Moreover this modern day zealotry is totally crazy when it occurs at a public college or university because their sanctimonious extremism undermines government funding by drastically weakening already shaky public confidence in higher education.
Remember, attacks on higher education can pay big political dividends, particularly if you're a MAGA politician. The Pew Foundation found that two-thirds of today's Republicans already have only “some” or “little” confidence in colleges as institutions. Indeed a lot of them have come to believe that higher education is little more than “woke” indoctrination. And today's"woke" shenanigans inject this political monster with growth hormones.
Republican-led defunding has already devastated the aspirations of lower income kids who want to go to college. Higher education is getting less and less affordable. For example, in 1958 I was only able to afford college because government funding covered, on average, 75% of public higher ed costs. Now, after 60 years of paring down, average public funding of comes to 25%.
We can thank Ronald Reagan for modeling this tactic. As Governor of California, Reagan ended free higher ed tuition for California residents; demanded 20% across the board cuts in higher education funding; repeatedly slashed college construction funds for state campuses, and imperiously declared that the state “should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.” (Something largely absent in Reagan himself.)
While he was at it, Reagan, and Republican legislators also slashed funding for California’s basic education. These cuts ultimately resulted in overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating schools, more poorly paid teachers and, of course, increased local taxes. Nevertheless, Gov. Reagan was reelected despite the fact that California's public education system has never fully recovered from his despoliation.
When he was governor. Reagan took particularly advantage of the anti-Vietnam war movement by vitriolicaly denouncing student peace protests. Whenever these students demanded an end to this ill-conceived adventure, Reagan was scathing in his criticism. He called the anti-war activists “brats,” “freaks,” and “cowardly fascists.’ (Reagan, himself, spent WW 2 safe and sound in Hollywood making Army propaganda films.)
In summary, when Ronald Reagan became governor, California’s basic and higher educational systems were probably the nation’s best. When he left, they weren’t. Subsequently, in his two terms as U. S. President, 1981 to 1989, Reagan continued his now time-then tactic of criticizing educators and slashing public education funding. In fact at Reagan's urging a Republican congress cut that federal spending on education in half. When he entered office, federal funds paid 12% of the nation’s public schooling bills. When he left they were paying just 6%.
The Republican campaign against public education that Reagan prototyped exploits America's historic distrust of learning and the learned. But the current extremism of the strident “woke” crowd creates an unprecedented opportunity for right wing politicians to enact more censorious legislation, foster know-nothing parent's distrust of their kid's teachers, further cut financial support for “government schools, and so forth.”
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