Long-time Oregonian journalist David Sarasohn:
It’s clear, as we mark the one-year mark of the Donald Trump show, that the Official Dislike list includes immigrants, many of the countries they come from, corporate taxes and reporters who ask annoying questions.
But there is also a clear dislike, and multiple moves against, the nation’s higher education institutions, part of what The Atlantic calls “The Republican War on College.”
This regime is deeply suspicious of people who think they know something.
Michael Schill, president of the University of Oregon, calls the situation “alarming,” noting that “We are getting a message from some members of Congress and the president that’s hostile to higher education.” …
Gee wiz, I sure do wonder why.
Let me help you understand why: Colleges help individuals from marginalized populations achieve greater economic mobility and potential and is a space in the US social landscape where questions of privilege and structures of oppression are acknowledged and engaged intellectually.
In short, one of the few places in our culture that is not just a circle-jerk of rich white men applauding each other. One of the few arenas where money is just the most, not the only, important factor shaping outcomes.
Let’s throw Trump into Mount Mayon – that might solve
two current problems with a single action.
I’m sure any Republicans or Trump supporters reading these posts will see the errors of their alienation from higher education.
You misidentify the causal direction. It is not significantly the research and teaching emphases in colleges that alienate conservatives, but the fact they find *any* diversity of views or people as scary, so they attack colleges and universities under the cover of histrionic claims of campus Stalinism. It has been their approach for a long time. Anything short of total subservience to conservative intellectual traditions will induce “alienation.” Coors U or a public university. Conservatives will only accept the former. What about you?