The moral panic about “woke” campuses has metastasized not just to the idyll of Florida's swamps, but to actual law. Last week, Alabama's governor signed a bill aimed at restricting the teaching of “divisive” topics in universities. The bill is similar to a bill Florida signed into law last May that bans diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at public universities. Both are all-out attacks on learning by excommunicating liberal ideas from the classroom. Other state legislatures are also busy. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Republican lawmakers have proposed 81 anti-DEI bills in 28 states. (So ​​far, 33 cases have not been passed into law, and 11 cases have been passed into law.)
State-level threats to higher education are especially problematic because most students attend public universities. Although the federal government has tremendous power, the states have more direct political influence. Republican leaders in the most reactionary states hope they can rally donors and political support by appealing to the moral panic of teaching about history, race, gender and identity. The bills already passed in Florida and Alabama are examples of shortsighted and counterintuitive legislative overreach. This political drama highlights the satire of a university where spoiled minds are seduced by liberal ideas. Unless university leaders, politicians, and voters defend faculty governance and democratic discourse, reactionaries will continue to transform universities into exactly what they claim to be: closed schools incapable of responding to the wants and needs of students. There is a possibility that it will be transformed into a new institution.
Fighting legislative overreach is difficult in states where gerrymandering and electoral structures favor reactionary Republicans. But unlike K-12 schools, students hold tremendous power in higher education. Public universities require student tuition fees. If the state takes a hostile stance toward students' values, students may choose to attend other universities or abandon the university altogether. That would create a conflict between right-wing political support and student funding. But first, students need to pay attention. They will need to be careful. You will also need to actively choose a university that matches your values.
That's why I read with interest a recent report from the Lumina Foundation and Gallup on how policies and laws shape college admissions. This report, part of a larger study into students' experiences of higher education, left me with one big lesson. The national conversation about so-called woke campuses does not reflect the interests of most college students. It is worth noting the key findings of this report. These developments highlight how confused the national debate over higher education is, and how out of touch the Republican-led public higher education system is with the majority of college students. It's not hard to imagine students voting with their feet and avoiding schools in states that don't align with their values.
The report identifies four reactionary shifts in the national policy debate that could shape students' feelings about attending and enrolling in university. First, there are a series of bills like those in Alabama and Florida that oppose teaching concepts that are considered divisive. Second, there is the 2022 Supreme Court decision regarding concealed carry permits. Students fear this is an example of how states with stricter gun laws may change gun laws on campus in anticipation of legal challenges. Third, the availability of reproductive health care changed significantly after Roe v. Wade was defeated.The Wild West, including various abortion bans, Plan B, and legal challenges to contraception, will shape students' college experiences.. Finally, there is the 2023 Supreme Court decision that effectively ended race-based affirmative action in admissions. States have already broadly interpreted the decision to include scholarships and programs.
If you're applying to college in 2024, you'll not only be choosing a major at a college you're happy with, but you'll also likely be able to get in at an affordable price. They are also protected from gun violence, have access to medical care if they need it, are eligible for some types of financial aid, and receive a liberal arts education that may improve their life trajectory. We are also considering whether it is possible.
I read the report carefully to see the main points and what some of the detailed data points meant. The big picture is that most students still choose universities based on quality, cost, reputation and job prospects. I'm interested in which of her four reactionary changes are most important (and to whom), so I pulled them out of her list of all the things that matter to students. From the most important to the least important, students are concerned with gun violence, anti-woke laws, and reproductive health care. Race-based affirmative action is not ranked because it is measured slightly differently than other concerns.
Last year, I experienced a mass shooting on campus. As I watched college students silently climb out of windows and escape from buildings, I realized that this is a generation that grew up with constant target practice. This may be why 38 percent of on-campus students said they were worried about gun violence at school. For his 80% of those surveyed, campus gun control is at least somewhat important. According to the report, among interested students, those who wanted more restrictive gun laws outnumbered those who preferred looser policies by a 5-to-1 margin.
What about those “split” concepts? Students want it. The majority of students concerned about these issues said they did not want restrictions placed on classroom instruction, the report said. What's even more remarkable is that the students' opinions don't align with the intense political partisanship that dominates the headlines. If you look at the students who are interested in this issue, you might expect to see some political differences. And there are some. But the good news is that they're not as partisan as one might imagine. Even 61% of Republicans who considered this issue when choosing a college wanted a state that didn't restrict classes on topics related to race and gender. This compares to 83% of Democrats and 78% of independents.
Given these data, it's remarkable how little politicians and the public are saying about how college students fear being shot on campus, not new ideas.
Among these changes, concerns about reproductive health ranked third. Seventy-one percent of those surveyed said their state's reproductive health care policy influences their choice of college. The gender split here was a mixed bag. While many men are concerned about reproductive health, women are 18 percentage points more likely than men to prefer states with fewer restrictions on reproductive health care. Although it is impossible to claim causality, the commonplace culture wars over gender are not occurring in isolation. They enliven the values ​​of men and women. This data suggests that it may be difficult to recruit men (who tend to seek greater medical restrictions for women) and make female students feel cared for and safe. There may be no way for a single university to serve both master's degrees.
The role of the Supreme Court's affirmative action decisions in shaping students' college choices is more difficult to analyze than other reactionary changes. People don't have a common understanding of what affirmative action means or how it works. Still, 45% of those surveyed said the ruling would influence their decision about which school to attend or whether to attend college.
While the idea of ​​a woke campus may garner attention and motivate some reactionary Republican voters, the report finds these partisan differences among students to be moderate. “Most current and prospective students of all political parties say these issues are important to admissions, including more restrictive gun policies in terms of curriculum, more restrictive reproductive health care laws, “We would like to see fewer regulations.”
More simply, to the college students they claim to be saving from hostile college campuses, the Republican Party must look like aliens, if not dinosaurs.
Discussions about what happens on college campuses are a proxy for partisan politics. They are also convenient ploys to restore the nominal democratization that higher education experienced in the late 20th century. Those of us who see education as something more noble than a political football need to care about how partisan attacks and sensational headlines harm real people trying to make sense of their lives. there is.
Students go to college because they want a job, they want an education, they want to be respected by others (or a combination of all three). Universities implicitly promise that they have the legitimacy to grant access, facilitate learning, and bestow status. The point is that when universities engage in a con game of moral panic about woke campuses, they become what we fear.
The loudest stories about American universities are disconnected from what college students care about. Still, the country's diverse and ambitious college students are trying to make college choices that align with their political values. According to this research, they are highly progressive, fair-minded, and unafraid of intellectual challenge. If only our politics followed their values.
Treci McMillan Cottom (@tresiem cphd) Became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2022. She is an associate professor in the Department of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Thick: And Other Essays. and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow.
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