Penn State professor explains chilling effect Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ has on academia: ‘It smells like fascism’
For two months, my academic colleagues and I have been wondering: in the academic branch of the culture wars, where will the Trump regime strike first?
On the day after the election, the American Association of University Professors released a statement, “Higher Education after the 2016 Election,” which enumerated some of Donald Trump’s likely assaults on academic freedom. The statement mentions Trump’s odious, incendiary remarks about women, minorities, and immigrants, which “on some campuses had a chilling effect on the rights of students and faculty members to speak out.” It mentions Trump’s denial of climate change, and the likelihood of his appointing Supreme Court justices hostile to public employee unions. And it warns that “his call for an ‘ideological screening test’ for admission to the United States could make it difficult for universities to attract students and scholars from other countries and to engage in the international exchange of ideas so vital to academic freedom.”
We knew the attacks on tenure would not come directly from Washington; that’s not how American higher education works. It is largely administered by the states, so that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), would need support from wingnuts in state legislatures to follow the Wisconsin model and gut tenure. Dutiful wingnuts in Iowa and Missouri have already introduced such bills.
But after that, which way to go? The way of Arizona wingnuts, who wanted to eliminate all courses and events that promote “social justice toward a race, gender, religion, political affiliation, social class or other class of people”? The way of Virginia wingnuts, who hounded climate scientist Michael Mann in the belief that his emails contained the secret admission that he and his colleagues were making it all up? The way of Florida wingnuts, who simply forebade the use of the term “climate change”?
I was thinking they would come for the scientists first– that this oil-soaked administration and its enablers would shut down the EPA, close the NSF to all climate research, and forbid the NIH from tracking the health results of the ensuing environmental devastation. I have been arguing for a quarter-century now with my friends in the sciences, trying to persuade them that the bitter ideologues who cannot abide the term “multiculturalism” are just as anti-intellectual about the sciences as about the humanities, and that throwing a few provocative performance artists to the wolves will not lighten the sled enough to save them.
For two months, my academic colleagues and I have been wondering: in the academic branch of the culture wars, where will the Trump regime strike first?
On the day after the election, the American Association of University Professors released a statement, “Higher Education after the 2016 Election,” which enumerated some of Donald Trump’s likely assaults on academic freedom. The statement mentions Trump’s odious, incendiary remarks about women, minorities, and immigrants, which “on some campuses had a chilling effect on the rights of students and faculty members to speak out.” It mentions Trump’s denial of climate change, and the likelihood of his appointing Supreme Court justices hostile to public employee unions. And it warns that “his call for an ‘ideological screening test’ for admission to the United States could make it difficult for universities to attract students and scholars from other countries and to engage in the international exchange of ideas so vital to academic freedom.”
We knew the attacks on tenure would not come directly from Washington; that’s not how American higher education works. It is largely administered by the states, so that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), would need support from wingnuts in state legislatures to follow the Wisconsin model and gut tenure. Dutiful wingnuts in Iowa and Missouri have already introduced such bills.
But after that, which way to go? The way of Arizona wingnuts, who wanted to eliminate all courses and events that promote “social justice toward a race, gender, religion, political affiliation, social class or other class of people”? The way of Virginia wingnuts, who hounded climate scientist Michael Mann in the belief that his emails contained the secret admission that he and his colleagues were making it all up? The way of Florida wingnuts, who simply forebade the use of the term “climate change”?
I was thinking they would come for the scientists first– that this oil-soaked administration and its enablers would shut down the EPA, close the NSF to all climate research, and forbid the NIH from tracking the health results of the ensuing environmental devastation. I have been arguing for a quarter-century now with my friends in the sciences, trying to persuade them that the bitter ideologues who cannot abide the term “multiculturalism” are just as anti-intellectual about the sciences as about the humanities, and that throwing a few provocative performance artists to the wolves will not lighten the sled enough to save them.
