You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here.
It’s not just that President Trump has ramped up the decades-long conservative attacks on colleges. It’s also that some college presidents and board members themselves are repeating right-wing talking points about the shortcomings of American higher education. A recent report by officials at Yale University on declining trust in higher education criticized universities for not hiring enough professors who vote for GOP politicians but largely left out the aggressive Republican efforts to undermine academia. In the latest edition of Right Now, Charlie Eaton, an economic sociologist at University of California, Merced, and John Warner, a columnist at Inside Higher Ed, explain why universities are under siege from both the right and the center-left. Eaton emphasizes the role of oligarchs, who are wary of universities in part because professors put out research that questions wealth inequality in America and industries such as artificial intelligence where the super-rich are growing their fortunes. Warner argued that there is an ideological divide in academia somewhat similar to that in the Democratic Party, with students and professors, particularly those of color, challenging an old guard that doesn’t want to give up influence. Eaton and Warner both say that colleges should change to build more public trust. But not by hiring more Republican professors or cracking down on progressive protestors. Universities, they argue, should lower their prices, connect more with their communities, and more broadly adopt a more public, democratic posture, instead of trying to be elite and exclusive. Marshall Steinbaum, an economics professor at the University of Utah, offered similar ideas in a Right Now episode earlier this year.
