What's really striking is the total capitulation/collaboration of university managers. This was evident even before Trump's arrival on the scene with the suppression of campus protests as long ago as UC Davis in 2011. The managers went all-in (over the top, in many cases) for DEI when it seemed politically wise, and dumped it just as fast when the wind changed.
I'm afraid I am a pessimist as well. It's not that you cannot run a good university system serving the public through education, conservation and research on less money - most countries do. It is the nature of the cuts, their elimination of fields not congenial to vocational training, and (we are seeing a lot of this in Indiana, as well as other states) state governments as well as the federal government inserting itself into curricular and administrative issues where they have neither expertise nor experience nor any interest in delving deeper into the subject beyond pursuing very short term political goals - "professors are the enemy" and all that (I'm amazed that red state politicians didn't think they meant that about professors at, say, Auburn, Mississippi State, or Texas A&M). I would trade off fewer dollars for being left to self-govern, an arrangement that produced the best collection of universities in the world.
A lot of this was in motion at Indiana prior to Trump's reelection -- prioritizing academic programs that generated huge research indirects (ironic now), configuring program hiring to fit state business and federal needs, shutting the door to new majors that had no clear vocational fit. I could go on (as the paragraphs I just deleted would testify).
I feel the way Paul does, but I don't think it's rational. We're 31 days in, caught in a typhoon of ignorance with no time to take its measure. We have no way of knowing what types of resilience may emerge and how a dynamic of ignorant destruction may generate its own backlash and create very different matrices of possibility. It's appropriate to feel as though once alliances are upended they can never be reformed. But we don't know that's true. "America can never again be trusted" is actually a good way of thinking if it leads an outcome of, "We and America have learned many lessons." It's not as though things were headed in a good direction before Trump II, either in universities or in the world. Brexit predates Trump I.
We think linearly about what will flow from this downpour, but nothing is linear in the real world, and the complexity of a rapid current can't be predicted without methods we have no time to imagine and deploy. Let's not get too caught up in doom loops. It's better to focus on strategies to avoid the eddies and recognize where there's leverage to change direction. (I don't think I made it through that metaphor.) The Project 2025 crew thinks it knows how this is all going to go -- four years of linear thinktankitude went into their big plan! That belief is a huge disadvantage to them if we can shed the shock and drop the awe and learn how to coordinate on creative response to emergent opportunities (by which I do not mean protest marches calling for open borders and other marvels that somehow taught America to pay attention to academics and hate them. (I know: Why not delete those paragraphs too?)
I do wonder what will be left of some disciplines. I wonder how to advise students in political science who had aspired to federal careers and/or experiences. Law school? Will there be any law left to practice at this rate? The demise of the PMF? It's shocking, but know it shouldn't be. It's hard to know what the path forward is.
What's really striking is the total capitulation/collaboration of university managers. This was evident even before Trump's arrival on the scene with the suppression of campus protests as long ago as UC Davis in 2011. The managers went all-in (over the top, in many cases) for DEI when it seemed politically wise, and dumped it just as fast when the wind changed.
I'm afraid I am a pessimist as well. It's not that you cannot run a good university system serving the public through education, conservation and research on less money - most countries do. It is the nature of the cuts, their elimination of fields not congenial to vocational training, and (we are seeing a lot of this in Indiana, as well as other states) state governments as well as the federal government inserting itself into curricular and administrative issues where they have neither expertise nor experience nor any interest in delving deeper into the subject beyond pursuing very short term political goals - "professors are the enemy" and all that (I'm amazed that red state politicians didn't think they meant that about professors at, say, Auburn, Mississippi State, or Texas A&M). I would trade off fewer dollars for being left to self-govern, an arrangement that produced the best collection of universities in the world.
A lot of this was in motion at Indiana prior to Trump's reelection -- prioritizing academic programs that generated huge research indirects (ironic now), configuring program hiring to fit state business and federal needs, shutting the door to new majors that had no clear vocational fit. I could go on (as the paragraphs I just deleted would testify).
I feel the way Paul does, but I don't think it's rational. We're 31 days in, caught in a typhoon of ignorance with no time to take its measure. We have no way of knowing what types of resilience may emerge and how a dynamic of ignorant destruction may generate its own backlash and create very different matrices of possibility. It's appropriate to feel as though once alliances are upended they can never be reformed. But we don't know that's true. "America can never again be trusted" is actually a good way of thinking if it leads an outcome of, "We and America have learned many lessons." It's not as though things were headed in a good direction before Trump II, either in universities or in the world. Brexit predates Trump I.
We think linearly about what will flow from this downpour, but nothing is linear in the real world, and the complexity of a rapid current can't be predicted without methods we have no time to imagine and deploy. Let's not get too caught up in doom loops. It's better to focus on strategies to avoid the eddies and recognize where there's leverage to change direction. (I don't think I made it through that metaphor.) The Project 2025 crew thinks it knows how this is all going to go -- four years of linear thinktankitude went into their big plan! That belief is a huge disadvantage to them if we can shed the shock and drop the awe and learn how to coordinate on creative response to emergent opportunities (by which I do not mean protest marches calling for open borders and other marvels that somehow taught America to pay attention to academics and hate them. (I know: Why not delete those paragraphs too?)
Excellent post!
I do wonder what will be left of some disciplines. I wonder how to advise students in political science who had aspired to federal careers and/or experiences. Law school? Will there be any law left to practice at this rate? The demise of the PMF? It's shocking, but know it shouldn't be. It's hard to know what the path forward is.