A Red-State Governor Went to Harvard and Was “Surprised.” That Says More About Politics Than College Campuses, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

A Red-State Governor Went to Harvard and Was “Surprised.” That Says More About Politics Than College Campuses

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 22, 2025

A former red-state governor went to Harvard expecting to be mauled by “woke lions.” Instead, he found students who listened, disagreed civilly, argued seriously, and went about the work of learning. He was surprised.

He shouldn’t have been.

What he describes at Harvard is not exceptional. It is what you would find on most college campuses in this country—including public universities, regional institutions, community colleges, and yes, UT–Austin. Not perfection. Not ideological purity. But classrooms where people with different views show up, talk, test ideas, and—more often than not—treat one another with respect.

The governor’s surprise exposes the real problem: politicians don’t know universities because they rarely experience them as places of learning. They know them through caricature—viral clips, outrage narratives, and a political economy that rewards attacking higher education rather than understanding it.

If more politicians actually taught a class, they might stop legislating from memes.

What happens daily on campuses doesn’t resemble the culture-war fantasy. Students are not a single political bloc. Faculty are not indoctrination machines. Courses are not scripts handed down from some ideological central committee. They are messy, human spaces where disagreement is routine and learning is slow.

At UT–Austin, I see the same thing this governor saw at Harvard: veterans sitting next to first-generation students; conservatives arguing with progressives; students wrestling with evidence, history, and ideas they didn’t expect to encounter. That’s not radical. That’s education.

The danger isn’t that universities refuse debate. The danger is that politicians increasingly refuse to see universities as democratic institutions at all. Instead, they treat them as enemies to be disciplined—through funding threats, curricular bans, loyalty tests, and the elimination of entire fields of study. That’s not defending free speech. That’s narrowing it.

The governor invokes Alexis de Tocqueville’s “spirit of association.” Good. But that spirit doesn’t survive intimidation. It survives when academic freedom is protected, when faculty expertise matters, and when students can explore ideas without fear that the state is watching the syllabus.

Here’s the challenge: if politicians truly believe in dialogue, they should do what this governor did—show up. Teach. Stay long enough to see how ordinary and unglamorous learning actually is. Sit through student presentations. Read their writing. Talk to students who disagree with you and still want the conversation.

They might be surprised again.

And if they are, the next step matters more than the essay they write about it: stop governing universities through suspicion and spectacle. Democracy doesn’t get rebuilt by attacking the few places where people are still practicing how to live with disagreement.

It gets rebuilt by entering those spaces—and telling the truth about what you find there.

I was a red state governor. What I saw at Harvard surprised me.

The spirit of association remains alive in unexpected places.

December 8, 2025

Students walk through Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Charles Krupa/AP)

By Eric Holcomb

Eric Holcomb, a Republican, was the governor of Indiana from 2017 to 2025.

In January, I completed two terms as governor of Indiana. This fall, I did what all red state Republicans do (right?): spent a semester teaching at Harvard University. As someone who believes that restoring our communities is among America’s greatest challenges, my goal was to see if the foundation of an open-minded, problem-solving community still existed in a place far removed from my own cultural comfort zone. It does.

Friends warned me that a den of woke lions would maul me or try to turn me into one of them. Neither happened. I suffered no grievous insults, surrendered none of my conservative principles and witnessed no disruptive behavior on a quiet campus.

Contrary to my side’s worst fears, I found students from a wide range of circumstances. Harvard’s freshmen hail from all 50 states; one in five is a first-generation college student; half pay no tuition thanks to Harvard’s endowment; and 16 are military veterans. The students in my “Leading Through Divisive Times” seminar shared their broad views while listening respectfully to mine and others. My fellow faculty experienced the same.

I found a community that didn’t always agree but could still talk with each other and work together toward the greater good, which in Harvard’s case includes education, discovery and the development of ideas and technologies.

To dismiss my experience, today’s online denizens at both ends of the political horseshoe will probably come to the same conclusion: “He must be a centrist squish aligned with Harvard’s elite orthodoxy.” I have long been, and remain, a low-tax fiscal conservative and supporter of free markets; highly skeptical of hyper regulation, social engineering and culture-war fads; a peace-through-strength U.S. Navy veteran; pro-life, pro-liberty and pro-faith. That’s not the elite profile of late.

Yes, Harvard offers courses that deconstruct the Western canon. It also features classes such as “Using Markets to Solve Social Problems” and “Central Challenges of American National Security,” taught by nonpartisan thinkers.

Yes, you may still find the intellectual underpinnings of Harvard’s embarrassing anti-Israel encampments in some clubs and faculty lounges. You will also find a new president, an observant Jew, who is making sure that similar disruptions of campus life and blatant antisemitism do not reappear, even as serious conservative speakers show up again.

Yes, Harvard devotes some of its large government research funding to projects that people like me might roll their eyes at. It also uses taxpayer support to study ways of reducing the trauma of war injuries, replacing humans with robots on the battlefield and developing radiation countermeasures, alongside nearly countless human-health projects. For example, the university’s “Move Lab” at its engineering school developed a robotic vest that helps restore stroke survivors’ arm and shoulder movement. The lab is using a $5 million National Science Foundation grant to transition prototypes for widespread use by patients.

What I’ve experienced may be a natural return to Harvard’s more moderate bearings, following noisy displays of intolerance by campus agitators in recent years. Or it may be due to the Trump administration’s forceful executive orders and fiscal pressure. Either way (and it’s probably both), let’s take the win and learn the broader lesson.

From Ivy League campuses to neighborhood associations, service clubs and faith-based groups, communities of all kinds can restore themselves. And they need to. An American Enterprise Institute surveyof more than 6,500 Americans in 2024 found that the country’s civic life “has declined by every conceivable measure since the mid-20th century.” The survey found that Americans who still take the most basic step out of their comfort zones — walking around their neighborhoods and talking to others — are much more likely to trust people. Trust, of course, is the first step to working with others in a strong community.

To fix things we need to put down our phones, meet in person across tribal lines and seek common ground while respecting different ideas about how to get there. County by county, with Democrats and Republicans, that is how we achieved some of the nation’s largest public health investments two years ago in Indiana, despite raw memories of pandemic-era standoffs. We approved a 1,500 percent increase in public health spending, expecting that a novel set of solutions — designed and driven by people who trust each other at the community level — will better reduce overall spending on health care. It costs less to keep people healthy than to intervene when they’re sick.

Success in restoring our communities will ensure America’s ability to meet any other challenge. Failure will make us brittle and weak.

The French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville recognized this on his famous study tour of America nearly two centuries ago. In his resulting masterpiece, “Democracy in America,” Tocqueville marveled at our country’s “spirit of association.”

Harvard convinced me that the spirit of association remains alive in unexpected places. And if any of my friends on the left want introductions at service clubs, union locals, or churches in the red states, call me. Getting out of our comfort zones to restore communities works both ways.

C. Wright Mills Warned Us: The 'End of Ideology' is a Trap, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

 

Wikipedia

C. Wright Mills Warned Us: The 'End of Ideology' is a Trap

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 17, 2025/Updated Dec. 20, 2025

You may view and listen to this blog on my Youtube Vlog here (also posted below).

In 1960, renowned, Waco, Texas-born, sociologist C. Wright Mills offered an incisive warning in his widely-read essay “Letter to the New Left.”  When powerful actors declare that ideology has ended, Mills argued, they are not transcending politics but actively protecting existing power relations by reframing them as “civil,” “neutral,” and—today—these might be claimed as the remedy for “wokeness.”

In other words, claims of post-ideology enforce political conformity. The assertion that we have moved beyond ideology is itself ideological—one that disguises power as reasonableness and suppresses structural critique in the name of balance (Mills, 1960). 

A prolific and highly influential writer, Mills' classic texts that are still read in many college classrooms today are The Power Elite (1959) and The Sociological Imagination (1959/2000).

While Mills' letter was not to Americans, but rather to address authoritarianism in Eastern bloc countries like Hungary and Poland, as well as Latin America (Menand, 2021), his warning nevertheless speaks directly to our current moment in higher education, where accusations of “ideological tribalism” and “political indoctrination” are routinely invoked to justify state intervention.

Texas’s SB 17 and SB 37, along with a growing wave of anti-DEI legislation nationwide, are framed as responses to an alleged crisis in the academy. Mills asks us to beware of crisis rhetoric about the academy.

We are told universities have been overtaken by ideology, that classrooms have become politicized, and that the remedy lies in restoring objectivity, neutrality, and balance. But as Mills insisted, facts severed from structure are not neutral. They are fragments—even fragments of fact—that obscure power rather than illuminate it.

Hence, beyond the essential work of research, teaching, mentoring, and publishing, our responsibility as professors, scholars, researchers, and public intellectuals is to connect the dots—to expose patterns of inequality, name structures, and make power relations visible.

What he called the “end-of-ideology” posture was not the absence of politics but its concealment. It allowed criticism only in pieces, never in patterns; permitted facts but forbade their connection; tolerated dissent so long as it never rose to the level of structural analysis. 

Mills argued that all public thinking of consequence is ideological because it necessarily involves judgments about institutions, authority, and human values. 

This, Mills warned, is how democratic debate quietly dies. Throughout his writings, Mills was preoccupied not simply with economic inequality but with the concentration of power among elites and the strategies through which they sustain and reproduce the existing social structure.

In Mills’ terms, claims of crisis function as ideological instruments. 

They frame the university not as a site of inquiry and deliberation, but as a problem to be managed, disciplined, and re-aligned with state priorities. Under this logic, teaching about race, gender, colonialism, or power is recast as partisan excess, while laws that restrict such teaching are presented as neutral safeguards of objectivity. When those in power declare an “end of ideology,” Mills showed, what they are really demanding is compliance with their own.

This rhetoric of reasonableness—measured in tone, managerial in posture, and deeply political in effect—isolates facts from structures and treats conflict as aberration rather than evidence. It forecloses the very questions universities exist to ask. The supposed crisis thus becomes a justification for intervention: curriculum oversight, faculty discipline, and the dismantling of DEI infrastructures under the banner of restoring balance.

SB 17 does not ban speech outright; it bans connection. SB 37 does not eliminate academic freedom; it conditions it. Together, they regulate how knowledge may be assembled, which histories may be contextualized, and whether patterns of inequality may be named as systemic rather than incidental. This is precisely the condition Mills warned against: a public sphere in which ideology is disavowed even as it is rigorously enforced.

Mills was especially clear about what happens when traditional democratic channels grow brittle or complicit. In such moments, the responsibility to name public issues does not disappear—it shifts to students, educators, writers, and cultural workers. Their refusal of apathy is not extremism; it is the lifeblood of democratic life. Universities are not endangered by ideological conflict; they are endangered by enforced quietism.

If there is a crisis in higher education today, it is not one of excessive ideology. It is a crisis of suppressed imagination. Mills’ lesson remains urgent: when power demands neutrality, we must ask whose values are being protected—and whose truths are being rendered unspeakable.

Reference

Menand, L. (2021, March 15). The making of the New Left: The movement inspired young people to believe that they could transform themselves—and America. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/22/the-making-of-the-new-left

Mills, C. W. (1960). Letter to the New Left. In Power, politics and people: The collected essays of C. Wright Mills (pp. 227–246). Oxford University Press.

Mills, C. W. (1959/2000). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press. [downloadable pdf]

Mills, C. W. (1959). The power elite. Oxford University Press. [downloadable pdf]

Visit my Youtube Vlog here.

Why A ‘Lay Low’ DEI Strategy Is Especially Bad Right Now, by Dr. Shaun Harper

Friends:

In total agreement with Dr. Shaun Harper. It's very clear to me that our leaders within our institutions and corporations need to speak up. This is a time for leadership, not silence or complacency. Failing to take a stand only enables those who seek to undermine truth, equity, and justice.

Angela Valenzuela

Why A ‘Lay Low’ DEI Strategy Is Especially Bad Right Now

ByShaun Harper 

Jan 15, 2024, 07:28pm EST | Forbes

r. I am a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) expert



Some business leaders are renaming and hiding their DEI initiatives. getty

Politicized attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion have frightened many educational, military, and corporate leaders. Executives don’t want their organizations to be targets of unnecessarily polarizing, headline-grabbing schemes to mislead the public about DEI. Some are therefore running scared, renaming, and not calling attention to their DEI initiatives. This strategy isn’t what our democracy needs right now.

Why are leaders suddenly so interested in deemphasizing certain programs, policies, and accountability systems? Over the past three years, 44 states have introduced legislative bans on the teaching of topics related to DEI in K-12 schools, according to data published in Education Week. Those efforts have succeeded in 18 states thus far. Local school boards across the 32 remaining states have enacted assorted DEI suppression policies. Also, a Chronicle of Higher Education legislative tracker shows that DEI initiatives have been defunded at colleges and universities in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and other states.

Last summer, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives demanded that all DEI activities be stripped from the annual military budget, which delayed passage of the National Defense Authorization Act for months. Other DEI opponents are intentionally and recklessly mischaracterizing all DEI programs and policies as too-woke, divisive indoctrination. For example, in a recent tweet, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk dubbed DEI initiatives racist and sexist. Musk didn’t specify which ones, thus his assertion presumably applies to all of them.

Across industries, businesses have significantly rolled back their internal DEI efforts. Some, but definitely not all of this is attributable to the negative press that DEI has received since 2021. Too many leaders have been duped by extraordinarily effective misinformation and disinformation campaigns; they actually believe what obstructionists baselessly allege. And then there are those who were never truly committed to DEI — any convenient excuse to abandon and disinvest is fine with them.

Fortunately, lots of leaders know better. They understand how people and our nation benefits from organizations that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive. They know the price of DEI initiatives is only a tiny fraction of what discrimination and harassment lawsuits cost. There are some white male CEOs, specifically, who recognize the importance of having leadership teams that reflect the diversity of their customers and the demographics of America. Notwithstanding such appreciation for DEI, many leaders are spooked right now.

“Let’s just do the work without calling unnecessary attention to ourselves,” is one popular response. Renaming programs and positions to make them not so obviously tied to DEI is another protective sustainability tactic. This is the wrong strategy for numerous reasons.

First, when organizations don’t show their work, people presume that DEI initiatives therein are versions of the extremism they hear about on conservative broadcasts and read on social media. Leaders who know that children aren’t being taught pornographic content in K-12 classrooms, that white workers aren’t being told in every campus or corporate DEI training that all of them are racist, that only people of color are being hired and promoted, and that other ridiculous DEI myths aren’t universally (or even mostly) true have a professional responsibility to counter such harmful misinformation and disinformation with facts about what actually is occurring.

In the absence of public information about high-quality, reasonable, and totally appropriate DEI efforts, significantly more Americans will be poisoned by lies that are being aggressively spread through well-coordinated, well-funded campaigns. What sense does it make to know something is a lie and to have examples of what’s actually true, yet deliberately hide those truths for fear of what liars might do? This is a paradoxical, peculiar brand of dishonesty that gives too much power to liars.

A ‘lay low’ DEI strategy also strongly conveys to women, people of color, queer people, persons with disabilities, people from non-dominant religious groups, and others who make organizations diverse that they aren’t worth fighting for and protecting. Hiding DEI efforts also conveys the same disappointing message to diverse customers, clients, partners, investors, and community members. It also weakens trust among the very people that DEI initiatives are intended to protect and serve.

Furthermore, keeping quiet about DEI is bad role modeling for current and future leaders. Today’s employees and managers who witness executives mute an essential part of the business are being taught that it’s fine to mistreat it as a disposable imperative when they become senior leaders someday. Spinelessness runs the risk of becoming a cultural leadership behavior in those settings. Loudly declaring that DEI was among the organization’s highest priorities immediately after George Floyd’s murder (one of many performative actions executives took in June 2020), then subduing it now signals to current and aspiring leaders that it’s okay to contradict themselves.

Lastly, institutions and industries need inspiring examples of DEI effectiveness. Laying low denies colleagues elsewhere access to adaptable, replicable, and scalable models of success. The “as long as we do the work” and “it doesn’t matter what we call it” logics undermine internal and external opportunities for organizational learning. If diversity, equity, and inclusion are indeed the ultimate aims, then they should be called by their name — not by cryptic, imprecise, politically palatable synonyms. Good DEI efforts that eliminate individual harm, improve teams, reduce risks, and strengthen organizations in numerous other ways must be proudly showcased and defended.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

In defence of wokeness: Right-wing attacks on ‘wokeness’ are part of a wider campaign to undermine social justice and equality advocacy.

This piece is helpful in that it shows how the far right accomplishes its goals. What they do is delegitimize a concept like "wokeness" by redefining it, and then equating it with extreme cases, or lying about its meaning.

Accordingly, "wokeness" becomes leftist hysteria over pronouns or diverse superheroes, rather than genuine efforts to combat discrimination and promote inclusivity. The question that remains is how to reclaim what today is a "dirty word" that I see the left abandoning. This is a good question to ask as this is what they're doing with critical race theory (CRT) and Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

DEI was always a nice way to not have to say "racist," "racism," "prejudiced," or "discrimination," so perhaps we—as marginalized people—go back to that.

The far right is so devious and disingenuous. But then, that's the point....

-Angela Valenzuela

In defence of wokeness

Right-wing attacks on ‘wokeness’ are part of a wider campaign to undermine social justice and equality advocacy.

Christopher Rhodes | Al Jazeerah |Sept. 11, 2022

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the Stop WOKE Act in April, but it was blocked by a court in August [Reuters/Octavio Jones]

In late August, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made headlines with a dubious declaration. “Florida is the state where ‘woke’ goes to die,” he said at a Republican Party event in his US state, celebrating a slate of conservative victories in school board elections.

Given the governor’s policies over the last few years – including hostility to anti-COVID measures such as vaccines and masking – DeSantis’s Florida is indeed a prime destination for anyone with a death wish. But this declaration represents more than just a snappy sound bite. Rather, it is a wilful distortion of the reality of “woke” activism and history, and an attack against both the concepts of justice and equality that underlie wokeness and the people who advocate to make these ideals reality.

The terminology of being “woke” – waking up to a new awareness of the world and particularly the oppressions around us – has a long tradition in African American Vernacular English. The term has been used by Black musicians for nearly a century, from 1930s blues singer Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter to 21st-century hip-hop and neo-soul artists like Childish Gambino and Erykah Badu. The more overtly political connotations of the term were popularised by the Black Lives Matter movement during campaigns in places such as Ferguson, Missouri, before being adopted, or coopted, by non-Black activists in real life and on social media.

It was around this time, in the 2010s, that “anti-wokeness” began to emerge. At first, the main criticism, from both left and right, was against people who were using “woke” rhetoric in a performative or insincere way. In the past several years, however, the very concept of wokeness has been attacked, specifically by conservatives.

While people like DeSantis, who has created his political brand by fighting battles in the ongoing culture wars that he himself has created, or Fox News host Tucker Carlson are among the loudest “anti-woke” voices in America, they are far from the only ones. Right-wing advocates across the country – politicians, pundits, even social media trolls – have spent the last few years demonising wokeness as a destructive radical ideology.

According to the GOP and the conservative media, wokeness – not COVID-19, racism, violence or inequality – is the most dangerous challenge to America today, with “woke” ideology being tied to a variety of largely manufactured societal ills. Some decry wokeness as a new (false) religion and even accuse it of being used to undermine traditional religious beliefs. Others have condemned “woke racism”, an ill-defined criticism that seems to imply that we are taking the concept of battling racism too seriously and perhaps even engaging in reverse racism as a result.

“Woke history” is condemned for portraying the United States and its founders in a negative light, undermining patriotism. Even superhero movies and shows are now being criticised for increasingly casting actors who are not white men in leading roles, with claims that film studios like Marvel are putting wokeness – here defined as “forced” diversity – ahead of telling serious stories about flying people punching robots and aliens.

Lost in all these accusations are the actual concerns of wokeness: recognising racist violence, combating bias and fostering equality. The verbal sleight of hand that has been deployed against wokeness is not new. The rhetorical tricks employed by conservatives have been used against many groups and ideas.

A variety of terms and phrases have been redefined and demonised by the right, ranging from specific movements like “Black Lives Matter” to general concepts like “social justice” or “equity”. To see how effective these tactics can be, we need only look at a whole generation of white moderates who believe in equal rights but bristle at being called feminists.

But Black activists have long borne the brunt of this redefinition, and it is no surprise that concepts like wokeness that originated in Black activism have received the harshest attacks. In recent years, Black Lives Matter and critical race theory have received this treatment, as have writers and academics such as Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X Kendi.

Non-verbal forms of protest have also been subjected to this distortion. American football player Colin Kaepernick still remains blacklisted from the National Football League, years after he began kneeling during the playing of the national anthem at NFL games. The reason for his protest – speaking out against police brutality and anti-Black oppression – was clearly stated for anyone who wanted to listen.

Yet, by the time Fox News and the Trump administration were done opining on the matter, Kaepernick’s respectful protest had been transformed into a hate-filled screed against veterans and the American flag. These accusations were, of course, invented out of thin air, but that hasn’t stopped a large swath of the American population from continuing to believe that the quarterback is attempting to attack the country’s most haloed institutions and symbols.

Such slander has real consequences. Kaepernick has had to sit at home, as athletes with less talent and more serious, even criminal, transgressions continue to take the field. And the meaningful discussions that could have been sparked concerning anti-Black violence continue to be obfuscated with debates over patriotism and acceptable forms of protest.

These outcomes are, of course, the point. Modern American conservatism is quite adept at deflecting from substantive debates over reform by creating arguments over language. For all the criticisms placed on the left for enforcing “political correctness” (the same criticisms that have simply been repackaged to condemn “wokeness”), it is largely the right that has engaged in policing language.

The overall disinformation campaign against progressiveness, with anti-wokeness as its latest manifestation, is surprisingly calculated and efficient. The first step was to delegitimise a concept by redefining it, equating it with its most extreme manifestations or simply lying about what it actually means. Thus, wokeness became leftist hysteria over pronouns or attempts to recast superheroes as non-white men, rather than genuine attempts to combat discrimination or increase inclusivity in society.

The second step was to use this manufactured outrage to caricature and condemn the advocates who use this terminology. Thus people like Hannah-Jones, Coates and Kendi have been dismissed by the right as “ultra-left” or “race hustlers”.

Now people like DeSantis have succeeded at the third step in the process, passing laws that actually make progressive conversations illegal, such as the (possibly unconstitutional) Stop WOKE Act that he pushed through the Florida legislature. By eroding the actual definitions of ideas, such as critical race theory, these laws are already achieving a widespread silencing effect over people, such as educators and librarians, across the Republican-controlled areas of the country.

And so allowing the right to shape the conversation over wokeness impacts much more than just semantics. Conceding the debate over “wokeness” is having tangible, oppressive consequences on people throughout the country.

And this is why it’s so important to not simply abandon terms like woke (or feminist or Black Lives Matter) as problematic or tainted. Words have meaning, and there is immense power in the ability to control those meanings. Exercising that linguistic power is an increasingly impactful tactic of those who want to roll back progress within this country.

To prevent such regressive politics from becoming even more powerful, it’s important to hold onto and defend terms, such as wokeness, that symbolise much-needed progress in this country. And defending these concepts means that we must be aware of the full implications of conservative attacks against them.

We must stay woke, even about attacks on the concept of wokeness itself.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade, by Nicholas Confessore, New York Times | January 20, 2024

This attack against DEI is a totally work-shopped, strategic-planned, well-orchestrated, well-heeled attack, as laid bare by this New York Times investigation by Nicholas Confessore that consists of Freedom of Information requests of those in the center of this extremist, anti-civil rights agenda. Their "observations" are sprinkled throughout the document and are well worth reading, but you do have to subscribe to the newspaper to read them. Spoiler alert. Here is a statement in just one exposed email:

America is under attack by a leftist revolution disguised as a plea for justice [...] This is, in fact, the goal: to produce swarms of anti-American zealots who will work to reshape the culture, customs, and political principles of the country, using strategies reminiscent of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution (Ryan P. Williams, President, Claremont Institute, Claremont, California).

THIS IS A LIE and it's SO OFF BASE that laughter was my initial response. Note: There are a bunch of other doozies, too.

I'll not spoil it anymore for you. 🤭

The irony is a strong critique that I and many others have had of our higher education institutions being so incredibly conservative. After all, higher education institutions are dominated by elites and the knowledge that is produced within them overwhelmingly reflects the interests and preferences of this very class!

Ever heard of the term, the "Ivory Tower?" Exactly. Elitism is what that phrase means. Were this not the case, we as minoritized researchers and faculty—where we are woefully underrepresented—wouldn't be fighting from the margins for substantive inclusion in the higher education curriculum. Not that we've not made a modicum of progress, but rather that we are a far cry from a "leftist revolution."

Moreover, to regard the left within academia as "anti-American zealots" smacks of what we REALLY should be concerned about, namely, "Red Scare politics," that this attack represents—with its scurrilous, irresponsible rhetoric with echoes of McCarthyism, and the late Sen. Joe McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee.

Moreover, these extremist think tanks, donors, politicians, and leaders hypocritically decry activism within academia while failing to own up to their own.

And boy, are these folks activists, manifesting a fear that makes them say ridiculous things that reveal their deep-seated anxieties. That's precisely what this NYTimes piece is about. If they weren't so dangerous, I'd feel sorry for them. A life filled with fearing the "other"—or "an-other"—that actually doesn't want to hurt you or take anything away from you sounds so unnecessarily hard of a life to live.

From the diverse side of the anti-diversity equation, there is so much to appreciate, honor, and celebrate that these folks are willfully missing out on. The truth is obviously not all unicorns and rainbows, but as the Good Book says, the truth does set us free. Plus, they totally miss the mark of what a 21st-century, world-class K-12 and higher education system could be, one that provides general uplift to all of God's creation.

Instead of seeking to engineer antagonistic perspectives toward the "other"—or "an-other"—let's do what Jesus would do and discover love, caring, and compassion instead. Love vibrates at a higher level anyway, as opposed to hate-filled rhetoric that will not motivate another generation. This is especially true if theirs is about repression through this raw exercise of power. What they propose isn't appealing to most Americans and never will be.

I wish I could cut and paste all the email comments that populate the NY Times interactive piece because they pull down the curtain on the current moment, revealing the cowering and conniving proverbial Wizard of Oz, together with the fear, resentment, and machinations that drive their behaviors and agenda. So pathetic. So sad.

This New York Times article is a keeper. I'm sharing it with my students and everyone I know who could use a bit of clarity regarding what's afoot in higher education politics today.

-Angela Valenzuela

‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade 

By Nicholas Confessore, New York Times | January 20, 2024

In late 2022, a group of conservative activists and academics set out to abolish the diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Texas’ public universities. They linked up with a former aide to the state’s powerful lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick,1 who made banning D.E.I. initiatives one of his top priorities. Setting their sights on well-known schools like Texas A&M, they researched which offices and employees should be expunged. A well-connected alumnus conveyed their findings to the A&M chancellor; the former Patrick aide cited them before a State Senate committee. The campaign quickly yielded results: In May, Texas approved legislation banishing all such programs from public institutions of higher learning.

Long before Claudine Gay resigned Harvard’s presidency this month under intense criticism of her academic record, her congressional testimony about campus antisemitism and her efforts to promote racial justice, conservative academics and politicians had begun making the case that the decades-long drive to increase racial diversity in America’s universities had corrupted higher education. Gathering strength from a backlash against Black Lives Matter, and fueled by criticism that doctrines such as critical race theory had made colleges engines of progressive indoctrination, the eradication of D.E.I. programs has become both a cause and a message suffusing the American right. In 2023, more than 20 states considered or approved new laws taking aim at D.E.I., even as polling has shown that diversity initiatives remain popular.

Thousands of documents obtained by The New York Times cast light on the playbook and the thinking underpinning one nexus of the anti-D.E.I. movement — the activists and intellectuals who helped shape Texas’ new law, along with measures in at least three other states. The material, which includes casual correspondence with like-minded allies around the country, also reveals unvarnished views on race, sexuality and gender roles. And despite the movement’s marked success in some Republican-dominated states, the documents chart the activists’ struggle to gain traction with broader swaths of voters and officials.

Centered at the Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank with close ties to the Trump movement and to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the group coalesced roughly three years ago around a sweeping ambition: to strike a killing blow against “the leftist social justice revolution” by eliminating “social justice education” from American schools.

The documents — grant proposals, budgets, draft reports and correspondence, obtained through public-records requests — show how the activists formed a loose network of think tanks, political groups and Republican operatives in at least a dozen states. They sought funding from a range of right-leaning philanthropies and family foundations, and from one of the largest individual donors to Republican campaigns in the country. They exchanged model legislation, published a slew of public reports and coordinated with other conservative advocacy groups in states like Alabama, Maine, Tennessee and Texas.

In public, some individuals and groups involved in the effort joined calls to protect diversity of thought and intellectual freedom, embracing the argument that D.E.I. efforts had made universities intolerant and narrow. They claimed to stand for meritocratic ideals and against ideologies that divided Americans. They argued that D.E.I. programs made Black and Hispanic students feel less welcome instead of more.

Creative Resistance: Why Scholars Are Creating an ‘Alt New College’ in Florida

Reading this story today in the Chronicle of Higher Education was incredibly inspiring. Students and faculty DO have power. Notably, "more than a third of New College’s faculty members did not return to campus this fall."  This occurred after Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed several conservatives to the board of this liberal arts college, including Christopher Rufo, the person who launched a major attack against Critical Race Theory that former president Donald Trump endorsed and that now is taking hold as state policy in places like Texas and Florida.

This community does not at all in any shape or form seek to be the lily white, conservative "Hillsdale of the South" that DeSantis wants it to be. What thusly transpired was the establishment of "Alt New College," with Bard College, in New York working towards offering credit that could get transferred to any other institution. 

This reminds me of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s that led to the establishment of alternative universities like Juarez Lincoln University established in Austin, Texas in 1971 and Colegio Jacinto Treviño established in Mercedes, Texas around the same time period because universities would not admit Mexican Americans to universities despite large and growing numbers seeking a toehold into higher education. A motivating grievance was a lack of teaching of Mexican American history in K-12 schools, as well as at the university level.

Similar to the idea of the Alt New College in Florida securing accreditation from Bard, Antioch University became the accrediting institution for both Juarez Lincoln and Colegio Jacinto Treviño. A lot of great people graduated from these universities that no longer exist, including for the reason that our universities began opening up for Mexican Americans. Most importantly, these histories remind us that our youth and communities are not without agency. 

Best of wishes to all the students and faculty at the New College of Florida.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Montemayor, A. (1995). "Colegio Jacinto Treviño,"Handbook of Texas Online, accessed October 16, 2023  https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/colegio-jacinto-trevino

García, María-Cristina (1995). “Juarez-Lincoln University,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed October 16, 2023, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/juarez-lincoln-university.

Why Scholars Are Creating an ‘Alt New College’

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023 | By Megan Zahneis



New College of Florida students and supporters protest a meeting of the Board of Trustees.


As New College of Florida continues to move in a different ideological direction, former students and faculty members are building what they see as an educational resistance.

They have joined national and international free-speech and education groups to form “Alt New College,” a network of online courses for students who remain at the revamped New College and, as critics see it, face limits on what they can learn and say.

Alt New College is making a big splash on Monday with its first event: an online discussion between the philosopher Judith Butler and the writer Masha Gessen on “The Authoritarian Assault on Gender Studies.” The talk’s topic is no coincidence. New College’s Board of Trustees moved last month to start dismantling the public institution’s gender-studies program; the program’s only full-time gender-studies instructor also resigned.

All eyes have been on New College since last winter, when Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, appointed a slate of conservative trustees to its board. At the time, a DeSantis aide said the goal was to turn New College into “the Hillsdale of the South,” referring to the Christian college in Michigan. Since then, the board has fired the institution’s president, denied five professors’ tenure bids amid protests, and eliminated the office that handled New College’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, along with targeting the gender-studies program. More than a third of New College’s faculty members did not return to campus this fall. Now some of those faculty members are working with Alt New College, whose website bills it as “an online institute to support the academic freedom of faculty and students following the hostile takeover of New College of Florida.”

New College’s new leaders believe their overhaul is a necessary corrective at an institution where enrollment was faltering and a progressive orthodoxy reigned supreme, stifling expression of certain viewpoints. Some New College students have joined a lawsuit to fight the recent changes. Others have been urged to transfer to more welcoming campuses, such as Hampshire College or Colorado College.

Those involved with Alt New College, meanwhile, cast their project as a corrective to the corrective, opposing recent institutional changes that they feel have stifled expression. They explicitly see their work as a fight against autocracy modeled on efforts around the world to disseminate knowledge in countries where education is tightly controlled.

Alt New College will offer free and subsidized online talks as well as “miniclasses.” Its fall lineup includes Butler and Gessen; Maya Wiley, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who will discuss critical race theory; and David Hogg, a cofounder of March for Our Lives, who will address youth involvement in the political process.

The network hopes eventually to add semester-long accredited courses through Bard College, in New York, credit for which could be transferred to New College or another institution.

Myanmar, Russia, and Florida

Also among Alt New College’s backers are PEN America, a free-speech advocacy group, and the Open Society University Network, an international collective with $1 billion in funding that aims to leverage teaching and research to solve the world’s biggest problems; Bard is a founding member of the latter. Jonathan Becker, executive vice president and vice president for academic affairs at Bard, also holds a leadership role in the university network, known as OSUN. Becker first visited New College in the spring after concerned community members contacted OSUN.

Becker has written about what he describes as attacks on liberal-arts education, and has worked with OSUN member institutions abroad to combat them. In Myanmar, a coup by a military junta ousted the country’s democratic government in 2021, forcing Parami University, an OSUN member, into exile; the Hungarian government did the same to Central European University. The Russian government blacklisted Bard in 2021, saying its work — which included teaming up with OSUN’s Smolny College on dual degrees — “threatens the constitutional order and security of Russia.” And the American University of Afghanistan, also part of OSUN, had to take its operations outside the country when the Taliban seized control of the government, forcing students to flee.

“We see no radical difference between what’s gone on in Hungary or Russia or Afghanistan or Myanmar and what’s going on in Florida,” Becker said. “We decided to do what we’ve done in other places, which is try to provide a pathway for students and faculty to continue a rigorous liberal-arts-and-sciences education.”

OSUN has opened its online classes to current and former New College students as part of Alt New College, which mirrors its “Smolny Beyond Borders” program for displaced Russian students. There and in Florida, Becker said, “what we’re doing is what universities do.”

“We’re offering education, which I think should not be a controversial thing,” he said.

Sophia Brown, a 2023 New College graduate who now works for PEN America as a community-outreach consultant, hopes Alt New College will offer a refuge for students unhappy with New College’s direction.

“A lot of students sort of felt their options to pursue what they wanted to pursue academically were running out” at her alma mater, Brown said. “I see Alt New College as kind of giving that choice back to students, to say, ‘These opportunities are still available to you. There’s still space to pursue those topics and still space to use your freedom of expression in an academic setting.’”

Another former New College affiliate working on the project is Erik Wallenberg, whose contract at New College was not renewed after he and a colleague wrote an opinion essay criticizing DeSantis’s attempt to “force a conservative Christian model of education onto our public college.” Wallenberg, then a visiting professor and the sole specialist in American history on the New College faculty, will teach a short course through Alt New College in the spring.

Correction (Sep. 18, 2023, 12:34 p.m.): This article originally misstated an aspect of Erik Wallenberg's status at New College. At the time his contract was not renewed, he was the sole professor of American history, not the sole history professor. The article has been corrected.

A version of this article appeared in the September 29, 2023, issue.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.