December 11, 2023 - 7:05pm
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.
After a number of highly-publicised disputes in recent years, Tucker Carlson and other conservative commentators began to peel back the curtain, bashing progressive excess on campus. Accordingly, successive Gallup polls show that the share of Republicans expressing “a great deal of confidence” in higher education fell from 56% in 2015 to an unprecedented 19% in 2023. Nationally, the numbers sank from 57 to 36%.
Universities which have inexplicably escaped the scrutiny of Republican legislators and donors are increasingly in their crosshairs. Red states like Texas have banned Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices, the epicentre of progressive illiberalism on campuses. GOP lawmakers have become bolder even in swing states like Wisconsin, where the Republican legislature has defied Democratic Governor Tony Evers, the media and the educational establishment by refusing to approve money for the state university system until $32 million in DEI funding is removed from the budget.
National press coverage of campus antisemitic incidents in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October massacre and the squirming of the presidents of Harvard, Pennsylvania and MIT under congressional scrutiny is even convincing Democrats like Josh Shapiro and members of Joe Biden’s team that something is deeply wrong.
There is still plenty of room for trust to tumble further because most people, even Donald Trump voters, still do not understand how monocultural the academy is. When I asked a sample of nearly 600 American respondents what they thought the political affiliation of American social science and humanities (SSH) academics was, the typical Trump voter said 35% Republican and 65% Democrat. The reality is closer to a 75-5 advantage for the Democrats. At Harvard, for instance, a faculty survey found just 1.5% backed the Republicans while political donations data shows that across the Ivy League the two-party split stands at 96 to 4. Public ignorance protects universities, even in red states.
Consider that Gallup’s numbers track the share of Americans with high confidence in universities, but this excludes those expressing “some” confidence. However, when I ask respondents whether they actively “mistrust” SSH academics, the figure is just 17%. Among Trump voters, 43% mistrust SSH academics while 37% trust them, a fairly even balance.
Yet the closer such voters’ perceptions come to reality, the more they mistrust SSH professors. Trump voters with an accurate perception of the composition of the SSH professoriate, at the far left of the chart below, have over a seven in ten chance of mistrusting these academics. Among the significant minority who think most SSH academics are Republican, fewer than two in ten mistrust them.
As politicians talk up academia’s Leftist skew to voters, trust among Republicans is likely to fall further, increasing the incentives for the GOP to target universities. The result will be a feedback loop of growing hostility. Academia’s insulation from political reality may not last much longer.
Eric Kaufmann is Professor at the University of Buckingham, and author of Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities. He is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange.
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SubscribeThe left’s great advantage throughout the last twenty years has been the public’s craven ignorance, both of its agenda and of its increasing dominance. This dominance is found not merely in academe but across the institutions of society – such as banks, which close the accounts of outspoken vicars or prominent Brexiteers; churches which reject Christians and “right of centre” parties which refuse to adopt conservative policies.
It also enables the left to blind itself to its own long established dominance and power, and hence to pose as the insurgent, the critic, the heretic and to imply – conversely – that not merely “the right” but the “extreme right” is somehow in power and can hence be blamed for everything wrong with society today, not least the left’s failure to bring about nirvana – yet again.
We see this in miniature with some vegan idiot complaining that the public has stopped buying meat substitutes not because they taste utterly foul but because of “gas-lighting” by conspiracies of butchers.
A more sinister parallel can be found in openly communist regimes such as those of Stalin or Mao, which continued to persecute and murder members of the “ci-devant” classes long after they had been ejected, impoverished and enslaved.
The left is paranoid, Utopian and puerile. Its ostensible aims can never be realised; and its real aims express no more than a prolonged and vicious tantrum that this should be so, spitefully taken out, time and again, on those whom it has already injured.
The need for another 1989, this time in the west, is pressing.
I suspect we are closer to 1913 than to 1989.
More like 1861
At the root of all we are facing is Gramscian Cultural Marxism. Gramsci’s theories were embraced by various academics in the early 20th century, they were embedded and developed. I hope I can be allowed to post this long quote for it puts it clearly:
“Gramsci’s counter-hegemony is also deeply rooted in today’s theory of intersectionality. It seeks to dismantle the existing cultural hegemony by ideological subversion and opposition, challenging the legitimacy of existing super-structural institutions like family, religion, and political power. Saul Alinsky describes the modus operandi for such an enterprise in the introduction to his book Rules for Radicals: “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
A counter-hegemony, in essence, is an alternative ethical view of society that seeks to challenge, undermine, and replace the existing bourgeoisie power structure. It has been described by Neo-Gramscian theorist Nicola Pratt as the creation of a rival hegemony on the terrain of civil society in preparation for political change. In Gramsci’s own words, he viewed the task thus: “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”’
Gramsci wrote that in 1915 so it has indeed been a very long march. The quote is from the Acton Institute.
Fascinating! I’d never heard of this individual. Thank you for illuminating the discussion.
I think the phenomenon We’re witnessing now is more a consequence of spectacular growth in the wealth divide.
Plutocracies have always resorted to divide and rule in times of growing class division. Whenever there was a shortage of bread in Rome the patricians would send agitators into the forum and the wine shops to foment racial and tribal strife.
Most of the finance for modern American progressive movements comes from Wall Street.
Correct, Hugh.
The reason why the writings of one impotent Italian Communist scribbler in a fascist jail cell in the 1940s have spread and grown in importance — as opposed to all of the other writings of impotent scribblers around the world — is because his ideas served the purposes of the elites who shape the world: the men with property, money and power.
How could it be otherwise?
Even Gramsci’s mentor, Karl Marx, stated as a bedrock belief of dialectical MATERIALISM that the economic realities of the world create and shape the ideologies that prosper within it, not the other way around.
Ideologies like “Cultural Marxism” are permitted superstructural products of the class of men which runs the world. “Socialists of the Chair” delude themselves and others with their imaginary puissance.
Wish I could give you an extra uptick for using ‘puissance’, but it seems we’re only allowed one.
“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 don’t believe Ackman was so naïve. Until recently, the focus of extreme left-wing bias in universities has been whites and “white adjacent” groups, notably Asians. I doubt Ackman cared, or he didn’t care enough to challenge progressive orthodoxy.
What changed is the left’s open disparagement of Jews. They crossed a deeply-entrenched cultural line there and will pay the price until they learn to keep their opinions about Israel to themselves (I’m not saying they’ll actually change their opinion, they simply won’t express it).
Progressivism on campus will continue largely unabated until the Right is willing to stand up to the continual disparagement of our culture and, in particular, white people. Somehow I don’t see that happening anytime soon, not least because the main financial backers of our “elite” universities remain committed to most of the progressive agenda.
“Progressivism on campus will continue largely unabated until the Right is willing to stand up to the continual disparagement of our culture and, in particular, white people.”
Sadly, I think you are correct in your conclusion.
Political problems aren’t the only ones universities are facing. Even as they face increasing political and public scrutiny for their toxic ideologies, they are also facing a demographic crisis of declining enrollment, both as a result of lower rates of childbirth that go back decades, increasing costs, and the increasing perception that a college education no longer conveys the economic advantage it once did. It will be interesting to see if all these disparate factors coalesce into a movement against generalized higher education towards more career oriented technical and trade schools. The outlook is pretty bleak for the educational establishment.
I really hope so
I’m fairly confident in my predictions for the future over the long term, with the proviso that there’s a nonzero probability of a third world war that would throw everything out the window.
They deserve everything coming their way. There will eventually be a reckoning.
I suspect higher education can perpetuate its scam a good while longer. So many jobs nowadays require not just a bachelors degree but a masters or even higher if you want to climb the greasy management pole. These degrees tend to be in woolly, politicized subjects such as sociology or HR-related subjects. Higher ed will use the oldest advertising technique in the book: create a spurious need then fill it.
Very much so. If you take a look at an ideology-driven field like gender, you can see that they make up issues, prove them with so-called science (for example, the idea that more diverse teams perform better), and then move themselves and their peers into made-up positions of power in DEI departments. It’s a self-perpetuating and self-serving machinery. And all the surrounding institutions like the media and politics are willing helpers, likely since they have the same issue as most intellectuals: They feel like they know better than the unwashed masses, and are envious of successful capitalists.
Here is the rub: Public primary and secondary education aren’t going away anytime soon. Ed schools are the chief agents transmitting the left activist ideology; and they are among the biggest “career oriented” programs around. So if the future you envision comes to pass, dont be surprised if their influence only grows and becomes less checked than it is at present (believe it or not).
I don’t imagine they’re ‘going away’. I imagine that they are diminishing in importance. Indoctrination in K-12 schools will have to be handled directly by voters and state legislatures enforcing local accountability. It won’t change the outlook of the education establishment, but it will set guardrails on how far they can go and create hostile environments that encourage the most dogmatic teachers and administrators to seek employment in the major cities, perhaps putting their safety and livelihoods where their mouths are when it comes to ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’.
Higher education though, is poised for a major reckoning. Demographics alone will cause major budget crunches that will cause universities to have to evaluate the viability of fringe subjects like ‘gender studies’ against traditional liberal arts which are still well defended and the more practical hard sciences and rapidly growing technical education programs. High inflation is likely to continue as deglobalization or ‘de-risking’ or whatever they’re calling it progresses. I can almost guarantee a major recession in the next five years, at least as bad as 2008, maybe the worst we’ve seen since WWII. It’s a necessary sacrifice to fix the mistakes of three decades of unchecked globalist greed.
Economic nationalism will have more direct effects as well. The Biden administration, for all its faults, has at least recognized the stupidity of allowing possibly hostile nations to monopolize and manipulate the markets for critical materials and goods. There will not be a return to the 2015 version of normal. The tech and computing arms race with China has begun in earnest and there’s going to be demand for engineers, programmers, developers, and other high tech occupations. Those programs that produce the graduates the MIC thinks we need for our national security will get funded from the federal level and that will trickle down to the states in the usual fashion, as earmarks for this or that school of whatever the Pentagon thinks we need more of. I expect to also see quite a bit of federal funding for resource extraction activities related to the rare earth elements that China had previously monopolized, and this will come regardless of which party wins the white house. Only the public spin will change. With Dems it will be about ‘green technology’ and with Republicans it will be about jobs for America and self-sufficiency.
All the woke nonsense is a product of luxury beliefs that blossomed in an era of relatively unchallenged American authority and economic excess. As we increasingly face a more hostile and divided world, there will be a lot of belt tightening and the least necessary will be the first to feel the pinch. We need resources, microchips, energy, food, weapons, technology, etc. We can do without college professors making six figures to teach gender studies. Sure, in the private schools, the rich aristocrats will still fund those departments. When has Harvard not been a haven for extremist intellectuals peddling nonsense to rich benefactors? I expect public funding will be increasingly funneled towards those industries and professions deemed critical to national security.
Thankfully America has a deep anti-Intellectual tradition that will, once again, save us all.
If only the intellectual totalitarians who tore down our monuments and rewritten our history had been stopped before they got to The Jews, but thankfully now they’ve gone too far in even the dumbest liberals eyes.
No the big problem for them is they have gone all in on those dirty Trumpers and Middle Americans being “white nationalist yatzees”. Having their own constituents calling for “Judenfrei” is becoming a real messaging problem. Even worse those horrible Republican voters seem to care about the lives of Jews. Boo hoo.
Well said, sir.
…Andrew Sullivan’s excellent article on the Weekly Dish substack of December 8, about the congressional hearing, is entitled ” The Day the Empress’ Clothes Fell Off”. He doesn’t elaborate on the female feature of the situation, but all the presidents were women. So much for diversity then, the lack of which is no doubt contributed to the C grade groupthink which has cleared captured them and their institutions.
When I was in high school, the male/female teacher ratio was pretty even. In college, our dean and most of our professors were men. When Husband and I were in professional arts pre-mid 90s, most of the editors and art directors were men.
Women have since taken over education at every grade level, and publishing is controlled by women. We can see for ourselves – and lament – the results.
About time that particular nut was cracked wide open and here in the U.K. too.
The insanity of our times is rooted in what has been indoctrinated in universities for several decades.
When academia decided they need to be political activists and can’t be pursuers of truth only, politicians can no longer insulate academia from political intrusion. That seems like a fair straightforward conclusion.
Their is only one tenable position for American institutions that are publicly funded: A commitment to political neutrality and freedom of speech.
I find it depressing that only when the toxic leftist culture affects entrenched Zionist interests, does anyone wake up and object to what has been happening.
This tells me we are not on a path to a principles-based solution; rather we will simply redefine the censorship and partisan bullying along slightly different fault lines.
…rather than “anyone” waking up a this point, by reason of antipathy towards Jews, it’s more like “everyone” waking up now. This maybe because antisemitism is at the extreme end of human propensity for collective evil, at least in the modern era. And it takes something extreme before the mass becomes alert.
Can we stop calling these people ‘progressive’, they are not. You hear the word all the time, so I ask what is its definition.
One states – Progressivism is a very student-centered philosophy of education. Rooted in pragmatism, the educational focus of progressivism is on engaging students in real-world problem- solving activities in a democratic and cooperative learning environment (Webb et. al., 2010). In order to solve these problems, students apply the scientific method.
This would seems to be a far cry from what is actually happening with the critical race theory and the radical DEI agenda.
Yes just like during Vietnam the Students are Smarter than the general Public .
This is the kind of research I expect from conservatives. Trump cult member asks other Trump cultists if they trust universities that they know literally nothing about except that they could never go there.
Guess the results?!?!
Don’t whine when I call you stupid when everything you say and do is utterly dumb!
Trump 2.0.
I don’t believe you. You’re lying.
Life must be ever so much easier for you. Simply define everyone who does not agree with you as dumb and stupid. Don’t make any attempt to understand why they think the way they do. It and they really don’t matter.
Understand? Fools don’t attempt understanding anything. Because it says in Proverbs 4:7……”Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”