For example, universities burned a lot of political capital, and opened themselves up to a great deal of legal liability, with aggressively pursing affirmative action policies. When you depend on public grants, it’s probably a bad idea to publicly discriminate against the racial group that comprises the majority of taxpayers.
As to what universities should have done, the answer is “just dribble.” Universities should be places that are just as eager to research effective approaches to mass deportations as all the DEI stuff they do.
Meanwhile, 68% support the Supreme Court’s ban on Harvard’s affirmative action admissions policies: https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4411246-majority-supp...
Universities, as institutions, were actively working against the public on both of these issues, from legal clinics trying to block deportations to extensive programs of racial preferences. It’s not surprising many people don’t want the taxpayer to subsidize that.
Popularity is a poor barometer for educational value and policy.
The public is entirely within its rights to ensure that publicly supported universities are pursing activities consistent with the public’s values and ideology. That’s different than the public second guessing experts about verifiable facts.
As for things that aren't "facts," but are nonetheless extensively studied and have wide consensus: should universities, for example, teach that the Civil War was actually about states' rights and that slaves benefitted from slavery? There is no historical evidence for these claims, yet a large percentage of the public believes them due to punditry, party loyalty, and other truth-distorting forces.
> In 2023, Florida banned DEI initiatives in its public university system. The ban resulted in changes to the state’s African American history curriculum, including a reinterpretation of the effects of chattel slavery to include that enslaved people gained beneficial skills.
Should universities fall in line with this kind of thinking, or is there a moral imperative for educators and academics to push back against propaganda? I think it's clearly the latter. Otherwise, the university system just becomes a Soviet-style state organ, good for only certain kinds of STEM.
Second, you said:
> As to what universities should have done, the answer is “just dribble.” Universities should be places that are just as eager to research effective approaches to mass deportations as all the DEI stuff they do.
That sounds like you're saying that universities should be blank slates, essentially devoid of values. But they should also kowtow to the values and ideology of the public...? So which is it?
In my opinion, given that academia is (by definition) the vanguard of knowledge, it must hold to its own set of internal values and principles, not ones delivered by outside forces. Pursuit of knowledge should be the primary driving force and not, for example, commercial pressure to bolster "clean coal" at the expense of sustainable energy.
Third, I should remind you that, in all likelihood, at least 50% of the population believes that universities today are pursuing activities consistent with their values and ideology. They pay taxes, too — perhaps even more taxes than conservatives. In a democracy, the plurality should not have dictatorial control over things like university policy; it's tantamount to taxation without representation. These things must be decided by consensus-building, not royal decree.
Also, as an aside, I suspect that when affirmative action was first introduced, a majority of the public still opposed civil rights and desegregation. Was that "DEI"? Barring direct state intervention, should universities have acquiesced to the masses? I stand by what I said: popularity is a poor barometer for educational value and policy.
The reason that it happens is that these institutions have been captured by a new ideology. Facts, evidence, reason: these don't matter any more. All that matters is conformity with the ideology that has no better name than "woke" (If I knew a better name I'd use it, because the term does upset people.) But the fundamental issue isn't the woke teaching, it is WHY it happens: the median humanities lecturer in the West is either far-left or completely incapable or unwilling to challenge far-left ideology.
A coordinate result is that they also use their judgement and teach a lot of woke rubbish. There is little internal pressure within the university not to teach courses with descriptions like this:
> This course examines the representations, contexts, and politics of gender, sexuality and the media. By interrogating the discourses of gender and sexuality as they are 'mediated' in a variety of forms (including television, film, popular music, social media, advertising), we will examine the construction and disruption of categories of gender and sexual identity, and their intersection with other identity frameworks.
If you talked this way in real life, you would be ridiculed and rightly so. Interrogating the discourses? Really? Construction and disruption of categories of sexual and gender identity?
Yet there are no classes taught by people with equivalently ridiculous fringe views on the other end of the spectrum. In fact, not even centrist perspectives are tolerated. Can you imagine a course at a public American university that looked at the development of gender ideology neutrally, covering founding figures like John Money and the cruel experiments he did on young boys?
The Overton window of the university barely overlaps with the Overton window of the real world.
Also I take issue with your 50% claim. I think it is likely that the vast majority of the public is opposed to using public money to teach far-left politics (Marxism, gender ideology, etc.) to young impressionable minds.