Speaking Of Education..

There are many ways to “slice and dice” the U.S. citizenry–ways to distinguish between the Americans who support our mad, would-be monarch, and those who don’t. Research strongly suggests that one of those ways is education–not just the wide distinction in voting patterns between Americans with college degrees and those without (in 2024,college graduates went for Harris by 13 points), but between voters with and without such degrees who continue to cheer the persistent, arguably hysterical war that the administration and the Republican Party is waging against science, history, and genuine education of all sorts.

That war is wide-ranging.

MAGA’s White “Christian” nationalist base is once again trying to post the (cinematic version of the) Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. Red State legislators–very much including Hoosier lawmakers–continue to confuse education with job training, evaluating the “merit” of high school and college programs on the basis of student’s later earnings. RNK, Jr. has led the battle against medical science and probative evidence, while others in the administration continue to force changes to accurate historical displays in the nation’s parks and museums, turning them into “patriotic” propaganda.

But the administration continues to wage its most ferocious war on the nation’s universities. And as Arne Duncan, the former U.S. education secretary, and David Pressman, a former ambassador to Hungary recently argued in the linked essay, America’s universities need to dramatically improve their response to the unremitting assaults on academic freedom.

For decades, universities have cast themselves as guardians of free inquiry and intellectual independence. Yet when confronted with political coercion aimed squarely at those values, too many have revealed a troubling gap between rhetoric and practice.

In their essay, they draw a troubling parallel between what happened to the universities in Hungary and what they see unfolding in the United States. They point out that the early responses were the same, and predict that if the current spinelessness continues, the outcome will also be the same.

In Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungary, a kleptocratic and illiberal political movement began not with tanks in the streets, but with pressure, “compacts” and quiet accommodation. Storied institutions of higher education and research were slowly captured, their leaders coerced through financial threats and political pressure.

There, university rectors told themselves that going along was the best way to protect their institutions and their work. But they were wrong. Accommodation did not moderate the regime; it emboldened it, signaling weakness and inviting further demands.

Duncan and Pressman list the Trump administration assaults: conditioning federal research grants on ideological conformity; threatening investigations; freezing funding; intrusive oversight; turning money meant to cure disease and advance knowledge into political ransom. But, as they charge, with only “a handful of notable exceptions,” academic leadership has responded “with timidity, silence or preemptive concession.”

As the authors charge, “When institutional self-preservation replaces moral leadership, universities abandon their core mission. This is a striking abdication of responsibility — particularly from leaders entrusted with educating the next generation of citizens.”

It’s hard to disagree with their warning that allowing legal caution to displace moral leadership is anticipatory surrender.

Lest we be tempted to shrug off that warning, we might want to take a look at what is happening in Florida right now, where Ron DeSantis is making Florida the poster child for the GOP’s war on reality. The state has just handed down a sociology curriculum that they are requiring all public colleges to use– and the Florida Department of Education is already working on a similar framework for American history classes.

Aligned with the state-sanctioned sociology textbook, the framework requires that the courses do not “include a curriculum that teaches identity politics” or one that “is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”

The Florida Department of Education also distributed an instructor’s manual and textbook, while demanding that institutions submit their current sociology syllabi, “including detailed assignment schedules, topic calendars, or modules to show course coverage.” The state has entirely banned class discussions that “state an intent of institutions today to oppress persons of color,” “that argue most variations between men and women are learned traits and behaviors,” and “that describe when, how, or why individuals determine their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.”

Welcome to Fantasy Island….