President Trump’s crusade against higher education is not without precedent.
Campus politics have long been a source of contention, especially among conservatives. For nearly a century, in one way or another, parents and politicians have raised concerns about the ideological extremes of the ivory tower.
For their part, universities have long struggled to find the right balance between encouraging new ideas and protecting unpopular ones – with mixed success.
In some ways, it’s a generational tug-of-war over what sort of society we want to be. And in real time that conflict can get ugly.
During the Cold War, the House Un-American Activities Committee led a national campaign to root out suspected Communists. The Red Scare didn’t just target Hollywood. It took on the State Department, the Pentagon, the union hall, the newsroom, and the faculty lounge.
The essential concern from McCarthyites was that universities had become too foreign, too global, courting ideas some perceived as a threat to traditional American values. Sound familiar?
During the Red Scare, campus liberals dismissed the criticism as xenophobic paranoia, a threat to academic freedom and First Amendment rights. But, in the short term, that didn’t protect people. Teachers and students alike were vulnerable. Some universities pushed back. Many cooperated. It was hard not to.
In 1949, the University of California actually went so far as to force faculty members to sign loyalty oaths. Thirty-one professors refused and lost their jobs. They were only reinstated in 1951 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the loyalty oath unconstitutional.
No professors were ever proven to be communist agitators, but plenty lost their careers, smeared as “un-American.” Blacklisting was a midcentury version of cancel culture.
Then, as of now, both sides have laid a claim to the moral high ground.
Critics of campus politics now note that progressives have increasingly sought to police free speech, shouting down speakers they don’t like, and sometimes canceling teachers and students whose views offend one group or another.
Trump is also tapping into the outrage many parents have about the staggering cost of higher education. Why does it now cost so much to send your kids to college? How much of that money goes to ideological, not educational infrastructure? And, most importantly, will my kids learn the critical thinking skills they’ll need to succeed?
Previous generations have grappled with similar issues.
In 1951, William F. Buckley published God & Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom”. He was 25 years old, having just graduated from Yale a few years earlier.
Buckley complained that his alma mater had abandoned its founding principles, namely Christian values, embracing atheism and collectivism instead. The book was one of the opening salvos in the modern conservative movement.
Buckley nursed a lifelong disdain for tweedy professor types. He famously quipped, “I’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 members of the faculty of Harvard University.”
Harvard has long had the reputation of being the Kremlin on the Charles. The crimson cupola of Dunster House does vaguely resemble a Russian onion dome, but it’s actually modeled on Tom Tower at Christ Church, a landmark of the English aristocracy.
Not that Harvard has ever seemed to mind being seen either way.
A 1930 op-ed on campus communism in The Crimson put it this way: “Harvard has her share of reds of all shades from a pinkish tint to a dark blood-red and Harvard is rather fond of them in a very mild sort of way. They add to the variety of the college scene.”
That tolerance of radical views lasted long enough for Fidel Castro to visit Cambridge in April 1959, just a few months after he seized power in Cuba. (During that same trip, Castro also visited Mount Vernon, the home of an American revolutionary general.)
When Castro got to Cambridge, so many people wanted to hear his speech that Harvard ended up hosting it in Soldiers Field football stadium, the only venue big enough to handle the crowd.
But two years later, a Harvard-educated president authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion aimed at overthrowing Castro. The U.S. considered the Cuban dictator a pariah for the rest of his days.
The pendulum can swing fast and land hard.
During the 1960s, campus politics challenged the patience of the powers that be in new and disruptive ways. The civil rights movement inspired student activists like Mario Savio at Berkeley to lead the Free Speech Movement, culminating in a student takeover of Sproul Hall in December 1964.
Outrage over the student protests helped launch Ronald Reagan’s political career. Reagan campaigned for California governor vowing to “clean up the mess at Berkeley.” Reagan built a brand around being the “happy warrior” for such causes, and it carried him all the way to the White House.
By the end of the 1960s, angry protests against the Vietnam War metastasized to college campuses across the country. Student protests helped end Lyndon Johnson’s presidency and eventually were a major factor in bringing an end to an unpopular war.
In New England, Brown University served as the “strike center,” coordinating protest rallies with campuses in Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine. Students and faculty alike took part in the resistance.
President Nixon, whose decision to invade Cambodia led to an escalation of both the war and the anti-war protests, took care to be publicly respectful of the protesters and their right to express their views within the boundaries of the law.
But in private, he was candid about his dislike for intellectuals and Ivy Leaguers.
Nixon’s secret Oval Office tapes captured him bad-mouthing the Ivy League presidents. “Oh, I won’t let those sons of bitches ever in this White House again,” he’s heard saying. “Never. Never. None of them. They’re finished. The Ivy League schools are finished.”
The Ivy League schools survived Nixon, just as they will probably survive Trump. The next few years will likely bring major challenges on college campuses. But also, quite possibly, some healthy self-examination.
This story was reported by The Public’s Radio.
