Sharing the history of politics in higher education sets a strong foundation. It helps readers understand the current political landscape in universities.
The 1980s and '90s culture wars may have softened support by grownups but they ensured a steady stream of students who wanted to be where the action was. I'm quite sure many universities would have closed without the extra enrollment that the culture wars ensured, in those years before international students also began filling seats.
“But the current crisis stems largely from conservative control of government. Many leading politicians who came of age during the culture wars of the latter 20th century are building on the cultural grievances that blossomed during that era to punish the academy. They support President Donald Trump’s cuts to university research and his determination to end the diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which they see as the cornerstone of higher education’s embrace of identity politics.”
I thought this was an excellent, informative piece until I got to the above penultimate paragraph.
Prior to that, my major complaint was the lack of explicit mention of how leftist ideology has become more radically oppressor-oppressed, and moved beyond those grievance studies major and infected most university departments and with which the administrations ranged from actively complicit to completely unwilling to curb any excesses.
I also thought the piece was quite well balanced and fair. I.e. pretty close to down the middle.
But your quoted claim is unbelievably leftist-biased framing.
Because even if we accept that it is the most recent flashpoint for “crisis” as *leftists* define crisis, and even if I agree that the 2021-2024 status quo direction would have continued had Kamala Harris won, your frame is beyond “blaming the victim”, it is exonerating the perpetrators.
And that’s apart from the without evidence assertion at the end of the paragraph. DEI as practiced by the universities this decade is prima facie racist. It is hardly the cornerstone of identity politics. But it is the barest minimum of what needed to be removed, both because much of it is plainly illegal and all of it is now overtly illiberal.
I was in college during the first half of the 1990s, and it was there that my originally relatively moderate politics took a sharp turn towards the “right” in opposition to “political correctness.” At the time, this phenomenon was largely confined to academia. Now, so many of the themes that started in academia have a high profile in the larger society.
I was a contemporary of Gitlin, graduating undergrad in 1970 , and clearly remember when he first coined "identity politics" in 1973 when he wrote about why the "new left" proposed by the likes of SDS fell apart.
Before Gitlin, Bayard Rustin raised concerns about the Black Power movement distorting/abandoning MLK's vision of colilition building, and he went so far as to critize the establishment of Black Studies programs in colleges, for all of which he was written off as a neo-conservative. This battle goes way back in time.
I would note that it turns out the pre WW2 American Academe was far larger than the numbers we're given (the Fed gov's Biennial Survey of Education in the United States will contemporaneous to the times tell you that and as it notes it doesnt include all forms). What ended being put in the Great Books of the Western canon after WW2 turned out to be most Eastern European viewpoints that excluded what Anglo-American and west German and some others put up high.
Also, theres so many other matters than cultural stuff. Heck, you focus on 80s/90s, well Bayh-Dole was 80 and effects set in over a decade or so, not the only thing,
"Like any perfect storm, a number of ill winds pushed in the same direction at the same time, including rising tuition that has propelled the national student debt to more than $1.8 trillion, or more than Americans owe on all of their credit cards. But the seeds of doubt about higher education in the United States were unquestionably sown during those culture wars that metastasized during the 1980s and ‘90s. And nothing drove that conflict more than the push to center some college curriculum, and increasingly the bulk of campus politics, around so-called identity issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Those trends would generate a backlash in the wider body politic."
I don't think it's fair to equate Gitlin (a thoughtful supporter of free speech) with Limbaugh, who sought to suppress the left. I also think it's strange to say that a radical decline in public trust from 2015-2025 was caused by the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. The fact is that mainstream Republican politicians continued in the 2000s to recognize the value of higher education despite their criticisms of it. What changed was Donald Trump, and his takeover of the Republican Party to make partisan power an obsession, where all institutions that did not bow before him were deemed enemies of the state. While Trumpism and the far right takeover of the Republican Party can be explained in part by Rush Limbaugh, and the culture wars created a useful enemy out of universities, the rise of right-wing radicalism is much more complicated than the campus culture wars can explain.
It's flat out wrong to suggest that in the '80s, campus life was devoid of real-world activism. The struggles around a bi-lateral nuclear freeze in the early 80s, the anti-apartheid/Free South Africa campaign and the push to get universities to divest their holdings there in the mid-80s, and the opposition to US interventionism in Central America throughout the decade were all vibrant and widespread. I know, I was active in all three at US San Diego. For some of us, even in the Age of Reagan, "the 60s" were not yet over.
But the release from prison and subsequent election to the presidency of South Africa of Nelson Mandela, the nuclear detente with the Soviet Union, and the easing of the struggles in Central America marked a distinct vibe shift and a turn in the direction to identity politics. This turn was energized by a new imperative that had first entered the lexicon in the late '80s--"diversity." That concept, along with the emergence at about the same time of "Queer Theory," set us on the course we are dealing with now.
But Gitlin was wrong to suggest that the rise of identity politics on campus somehow marked the end of real-world activism. The neo-Marxist, triple-headed hydra of race, class, and gender, along with the "intersectional" ideology they spawned, rocked campus life. And before too long, they were rocking life off campus, too. Turns out, we really were creating the future on campus. Too bad it has turned out to be a dystopian future, i.e., biological men invading women's spaces under the banner of "inclusivity."
Sharing the history of politics in higher education sets a strong foundation. It helps readers understand the current political landscape in universities.
The 1980s and '90s culture wars may have softened support by grownups but they ensured a steady stream of students who wanted to be where the action was. I'm quite sure many universities would have closed without the extra enrollment that the culture wars ensured, in those years before international students also began filling seats.
“But the current crisis stems largely from conservative control of government. Many leading politicians who came of age during the culture wars of the latter 20th century are building on the cultural grievances that blossomed during that era to punish the academy. They support President Donald Trump’s cuts to university research and his determination to end the diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which they see as the cornerstone of higher education’s embrace of identity politics.”
I thought this was an excellent, informative piece until I got to the above penultimate paragraph.
Prior to that, my major complaint was the lack of explicit mention of how leftist ideology has become more radically oppressor-oppressed, and moved beyond those grievance studies major and infected most university departments and with which the administrations ranged from actively complicit to completely unwilling to curb any excesses.
I also thought the piece was quite well balanced and fair. I.e. pretty close to down the middle.
But your quoted claim is unbelievably leftist-biased framing.
Because even if we accept that it is the most recent flashpoint for “crisis” as *leftists* define crisis, and even if I agree that the 2021-2024 status quo direction would have continued had Kamala Harris won, your frame is beyond “blaming the victim”, it is exonerating the perpetrators.
And that’s apart from the without evidence assertion at the end of the paragraph. DEI as practiced by the universities this decade is prima facie racist. It is hardly the cornerstone of identity politics. But it is the barest minimum of what needed to be removed, both because much of it is plainly illegal and all of it is now overtly illiberal.
I was in college during the first half of the 1990s, and it was there that my originally relatively moderate politics took a sharp turn towards the “right” in opposition to “political correctness.” At the time, this phenomenon was largely confined to academia. Now, so many of the themes that started in academia have a high profile in the larger society.
I was a contemporary of Gitlin, graduating undergrad in 1970 , and clearly remember when he first coined "identity politics" in 1973 when he wrote about why the "new left" proposed by the likes of SDS fell apart.
Before Gitlin, Bayard Rustin raised concerns about the Black Power movement distorting/abandoning MLK's vision of colilition building, and he went so far as to critize the establishment of Black Studies programs in colleges, for all of which he was written off as a neo-conservative. This battle goes way back in time.
I would note that it turns out the pre WW2 American Academe was far larger than the numbers we're given (the Fed gov's Biennial Survey of Education in the United States will contemporaneous to the times tell you that and as it notes it doesnt include all forms). What ended being put in the Great Books of the Western canon after WW2 turned out to be most Eastern European viewpoints that excluded what Anglo-American and west German and some others put up high.
Also, theres so many other matters than cultural stuff. Heck, you focus on 80s/90s, well Bayh-Dole was 80 and effects set in over a decade or so, not the only thing,
Excellent article. Thanks Team Wendell!
"Like any perfect storm, a number of ill winds pushed in the same direction at the same time, including rising tuition that has propelled the national student debt to more than $1.8 trillion, or more than Americans owe on all of their credit cards. But the seeds of doubt about higher education in the United States were unquestionably sown during those culture wars that metastasized during the 1980s and ‘90s. And nothing drove that conflict more than the push to center some college curriculum, and increasingly the bulk of campus politics, around so-called identity issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Those trends would generate a backlash in the wider body politic."
I don't think it's fair to equate Gitlin (a thoughtful supporter of free speech) with Limbaugh, who sought to suppress the left. I also think it's strange to say that a radical decline in public trust from 2015-2025 was caused by the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. The fact is that mainstream Republican politicians continued in the 2000s to recognize the value of higher education despite their criticisms of it. What changed was Donald Trump, and his takeover of the Republican Party to make partisan power an obsession, where all institutions that did not bow before him were deemed enemies of the state. While Trumpism and the far right takeover of the Republican Party can be explained in part by Rush Limbaugh, and the culture wars created a useful enemy out of universities, the rise of right-wing radicalism is much more complicated than the campus culture wars can explain.
It's flat out wrong to suggest that in the '80s, campus life was devoid of real-world activism. The struggles around a bi-lateral nuclear freeze in the early 80s, the anti-apartheid/Free South Africa campaign and the push to get universities to divest their holdings there in the mid-80s, and the opposition to US interventionism in Central America throughout the decade were all vibrant and widespread. I know, I was active in all three at US San Diego. For some of us, even in the Age of Reagan, "the 60s" were not yet over.
But the release from prison and subsequent election to the presidency of South Africa of Nelson Mandela, the nuclear detente with the Soviet Union, and the easing of the struggles in Central America marked a distinct vibe shift and a turn in the direction to identity politics. This turn was energized by a new imperative that had first entered the lexicon in the late '80s--"diversity." That concept, along with the emergence at about the same time of "Queer Theory," set us on the course we are dealing with now.
But Gitlin was wrong to suggest that the rise of identity politics on campus somehow marked the end of real-world activism. The neo-Marxist, triple-headed hydra of race, class, and gender, along with the "intersectional" ideology they spawned, rocked campus life. And before too long, they were rocking life off campus, too. Turns out, we really were creating the future on campus. Too bad it has turned out to be a dystopian future, i.e., biological men invading women's spaces under the banner of "inclusivity."
It's important to get this history right.