The right's 60-year war on higher education

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The right’s 60-year war on higher education
Trump's attacks on elite universities echo the right-wing playbook Ronald Reagan created nearly six decades ago

By James Thornton Harris
Published April 6, 2025 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) "ow far do we go in tolerating these people & this trash under the excuse of academic freedom & freedom of expression? . . . Hasn't the time come to take on those neurotics in our faculty group and lay down some rules of conduct for the students comparable to what we'd expect in our own families?"

No, this is not a threat from President Donald Trump in 2025.

It is an excerpt from an August 1967 letter from Ronald Reagan, who had been elected the governor of California six months prior, to Glenn Dumke, the chancellor of the California State University system.

Trump's ongoing attacks on higher education echo the right-wing playbook that Reagan created nearly six decades ago. In a 2024 campaign video, Trump declared that "We are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all. We are going to have real education in America." The goal, he said, would be to take back "our once-great educational institutions from the radical left."

....(snip)....

Steve Brint, a historian at the University of California, Riverside, observed that by repeatedly cracking down on university protests, "Reagan created a blueprint for the long-term success of the Republican Party as the voice of conservative 'middle America' and 'the silent majority.'" ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/04/06/the-rights-60-year-on-higher-education/