Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Spencer Jay Case's avatar

Hi Matt, great post! But I'm raising my eyebrow about this: "conservative politicians have responded by noticing this and acting accordingly, cutting university budgets and exerting greater ideological control over universities where possible. This is a bad thing — I’m opposed to political control of higher education — but it’s inevitable." Why is conservatives responding politically a bad thing given that the university is already politicized? The politicization cat has been out of the bag for a long time! This is what drives me nuts about commentary from centrists like Jennifer Frey: They write as if the politicization is just now occurring, that it's some new intrusion of politics into the sacred de-politicized space that is the university pre-Desantis. But the question is: given the university is a politically captured institution, why is it out of bounds for the other side to try to capture it? One answer I've heard is that the right's capture comes from the outside (state governments) whereas the left's emerged organically from within. But I fail to see why this matters.

Expand full comment
5 more comments...

No posts