BATTLE LINES ARE BEING DRAWN.

A soviet of writers at the house organ for wokeness as usual in higher education issues a manifesto.

The widespread assumption that universities are progressive, multicultural, antiracist places has insulated many of us who work and live in higher education from reckoning with the lived experiences of marginalized communities all over the world. Indeed colleges and universities are gendered and racialized, and many institutions perpetuate systemic racism, colonialism and sexism through gatekeeping, educational discrimination and not sharing vital resources with local communities.

It is crucial to embrace these multiple realities simultaneously: that higher education is deeply implicated in reproducing systemic discrimination and racism in the United States and around the world and, as we imagine what could be next, higher education is distinctly positioned to help build and develop the infrastructure, resources, values and education systems necessary for diverse, inclusive, antiracist democracies. And there are examples of students, faculty and staff engaged in that work.

In this moment of disruption, postsecondary leaders, students, faculty and staff might humbly consider four steps to advance antiracist, diverse and just democracies locally and globally.

It's hard to see much humility in that passage, and it's probably mean to point out that if institutions of higher education are as horrible as that opening passage suggests, then why is an essay like this one predictable either at Inside Higher Ed or behind the Chronicle of Higher Education paywall?  Let alone that those horrible institutions are irrelevant in their communities?  "For too long, citizens have viewed their universities like privately held companies that have little relationship to their own lives. Yes, people have local pride when sports teams win, but that is not the same thing as postsecondary education being relevant and tied to the destiny of local citizens."

But for all the false humility, their proposal reads like the same sort of stuff that has been coming out of affirmative action bureaucracies for the past thirty years.

The values that universities should hold dear are open inquiry, diversity and inclusion, democracy, equity, and justice. Equity and justice require inclusive representation among students and academics -- including more people who are first-generation, from marginalized and working-class communities, and women. That would entail intentional recruitment within high schools situated in historically minoritized and working-class neighborhoods, as well as actively recruiting recently minted Ph.D.s from BIPOC groups to fill the ranks of the professoriate.

It would also involve universities working in serious, sustained, comprehensive partnerships with public schools in their locality to diversify and enrich the educational pipeline. Universities should also reallocate funding to support the hiring and retention of women and people of color within the faculty and administrative ranks of the institution, as well as provide more scholarships to first-generation students.

It wasn't persuasive then, it's no more persuasive now.  Thirty years ago, some legislatures and governing boards sought to restructure their universities.  They're at it again.  "Starving universities of public money is the only way to rein in a social justice university and force activists to find careers outside of higher education."  In particular, the things the Inside Higher Ed soviet see as desirable are malicious departures from the academic mission.

Universities have abandoned the unique mission of unfettered dedication to the pursuit of truth and replaced it with social justice.

The radical, illiberal, anti-American ideology of social justice combines a toxic brew of intersectionality, critical race theory, neo-Marxism and pseudo-science.

Many Americans are justly becoming concerned about this problem. We at the Idaho Freedom Foundation and the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life are doing something about it.

People in higher education who are uneasy about some of the woke rhetoric -- and they exist -- might be put off by that sort of language, and there might even be serious Marxists who would welcome intellectual support if critics didn't bring in Marxian allusions where they don't fit.

On the other hand, sometimes you don't have to win their hearts and minds, if you can cut off the money.

This misuse of public funds for social justice activism is a betrayal of the public’s confidence and deprives students of an education that cultivates their mind by forcing them to adhere to one ideological dogma.

The higher education establishment in Idaho has refused to reverse course from this politically malevolent agenda for years. Armed with evidence and policy solutions in these reports, conservatives in the legislature decided no more public funds would be used to subsidize the political activists hijacking Idaho’s institutions of higher education.

Summer is generally quiet time for higher education and for legislatures alike. The story is likely to pick up again come fall.