Concerns about the state of higher education have reached the White House
For those who follow the ebb and flow of the culture wars, it has long been obvious that university faculties and student bodies largely form a Left-wing monoculture. Some have sounded the alarm for decades, but we forget how long it takes for majority opinion to catch up. Now, the penny is finally dropping.
On social media, many wonder how a donor like Harvard alumnus Bill Ackman could have held such pollyannish views about his alma mater for so long. I get it. I was lucky enough to win a visiting fellowship to Harvard’s Kennedy School as a young professor in 2007-8. Our weekly seminar featured a range of guests, from four-star generals to leading politicians. The content was, in my experience, professional rather than ideological; yet my conversations with dissidents in other departments made it clear that those who didn’t politically conform experienced chilly winds from other academics.
Few average voters have any idea about the progressive conformity and radical DEI agenda taking place behind closed doors in the departments, faculties and committees of the Ivory Tower. This typically intrudes as an “equity and diversity” line item late in a meeting after the dry business of marking and administration is done, but sets the ethos of the university.
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Eric Kaufmann is professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London and an adjunct fellow of the Manhattan Institute.
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