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.
To the extent that leftward bias in academia is the result of professors' research projects, it's protected academic freedom. To the extent that it's an imposition by administrators, that's a real problem, but part of the larger "fall of the faculty" problem which needs to be addressed by the professoriate.
Why does it need to be addressed by the professoriate when it's clear that the professoriate isn't addressing it and there's public money going into it? What's the principle here?
That's precisely what I'm disputing. Doesn't that seem like it requires a further reason? Suppose a public hospital is killing its patients. Sanitation is a mess. Do we say "Well, we've got to wait for the doctors to sort this out among themselves"? Is that what anyone would say if far-right fanatics took over the university from within? We know the answer to that. No, if a public institution is failing, then it merits a public intervention, regardless of the origin of the crisis.
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.
To the extent that leftward bias in academia is the result of professors' research projects, it's protected academic freedom. To the extent that it's an imposition by administrators, that's a real problem, but part of the larger "fall of the faculty" problem which needs to be addressed by the professoriate.
Why does it need to be addressed by the professoriate when it's clear that the professoriate isn't addressing it and there's public money going into it? What's the principle here?
The principle is that it needs to be addressed by the professoriate. If they're not doing the job, that's not license for someone else to do it.
That's precisely what I'm disputing. Doesn't that seem like it requires a further reason? Suppose a public hospital is killing its patients. Sanitation is a mess. Do we say "Well, we've got to wait for the doctors to sort this out among themselves"? Is that what anyone would say if far-right fanatics took over the university from within? We know the answer to that. No, if a public institution is failing, then it merits a public intervention, regardless of the origin of the crisis.
Agree to disagree on this one.