Conservatives seek to rein in public colleges
Some efforts include limiting teaching certain topics, ending faculty tenure, banning diversity, equity, inclusion programs
Conservative lawmakers have accelerated efforts to try to rein in what they see as liberal indoctrination on college campuses, with dozens of state bills igniting debates in recent months over academic priorities and how public universities should operate.
Their efforts — which have alarmed many academics — include limiting teaching about certain topics, mandating courses, ending faculty tenure, banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and fighting accreditors trying to limit political interference.
The most visible front in the partisan battle is in Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and lawmakers have imposed multiple new mandates on higher education. Elsewhere, Texas lawmakers passed a bill this week banning DEI programs at public universities. In Ohio, a massive bill that would overhaul state higher education passed in the Senate. In some places, however, bills have died for lack of support or been revised after pushback from university leaders, faculty and others.
“Conservatives lost the universities in the late 1960s and, since then, have effectively written blank checks to left-wing activists who conquered the public universities. This year was the first time conservatives have fought back in a systematic way,” Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in an email.
Rufo, who helped propel critical race theory into an incendiary national issue, helped write model legislation this winter to “abolish DEI bureaucracies” at public universities. At a Stanford event last month, Rufo — one of the trustees recently appointed by DeSantis to overhaul New College of Florida — said reforming university administration and governance should be priorities.
Pressure from politically appointed members of governing boards has long been an issue for public universities in many states where boards, faculty and administrations have sparred over priorities. And debates over curriculum have occurred for generations.
But having state leaders working to fight national culture wars on campus and codify their vision for higher education into law has dismayed many academics.
“It’s a red-alert emergency” for anyone who cares about academic freedom, higher education and democracy, said Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, which has been tracking more than
50 bills in 23 states. The commonality running through the bills, Mulvey said, is “an anti-intellectual attack, demonizing faculty, weaponizing public education.”
The state measures are changing the rules of how decisions about higher education are made, said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, moving it from an academic debate into the realm of politics.
“And once you make that shift,” he said, “The a priori limitation set by a government on what’s taught, or how it’s taught, is censorship, pure and simple. There’s no room in American education for censorship from any political side.”
Proponents of the changes counter they are working to protect freedom of speech and ensure there is true diversity of thought on campus — and have lost confidence that universities they see as ideologically monolithic will change unless forced.
Ohio Sen. Jerry C. Cirino, a Republican, sponsored a 93-page measure targeting public higher education in his state, and the large number of university employees focused on DEI, after seeing surveys suggesting that students, particularly conservative ones, were censoring themselves on campuses.
“We cannot rely on the institutions to self-correct,” Cirino said. “They have had 50 years to do that. They haven’t shown us that they can do that. And so it’s time for the legislature to step in, and take our seat at the table.”
Conservative think tanks and advocacy groups such as the Manhattan and Goldwater institutes and the National Association of Scholars have played a role in some of the new legislative proposals.
Rufo described a “large and growing network of dissident academics who are working quietly with political leaders to enact reforms.” He held an event earlier this year in California focused on reforming state universities with a road map for political leaders.
At another event last month, Rufo argued that micromanaging college classroom discussions was a losing fight for conservatives, and tenure is not a problem — hiring is. He said universities should seek greater political or ideological balance in hiring. Faculty have no incentive to shut down academic departments, he said, even those Rufo says are hubs of low-quality political activism.
American attitudes about the role colleges play in society has shifted in recent years, with a sharp partisan divide. Last November, a Pew Research Center survey found that 72% of Democrats polled said colleges and universities have a positive effect on the way things are going in this country, while only a third of Republicans did. Among conservative Republicans, 76% said that colleges affect the country negatively.
Legislators in 20 states introduced more than 30 bills targeting DEI programs, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is tracking them.
Advocates for universities and faculty have been protesting and working behind the scenes in many places to try to temper and amend the bills, or kill them outright.