Conservatives play offense on higher education

Conservatives have secured multiple victories in the higher education space the past few years, taking advantage of missteps by opponents and a more aggressive movement that is unlikely to slow down its battle with college administrators.  

A major blow to affirmative action, eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and colleges recently implementing neutral position policies are just some of the shifts Republicans have been cheering.

“I think it’s been the best two years for conservatives in higher education in a half century,” said Rick Hess, senior fellow and the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). 

“I think some of these victories are more substantial than others, but I think the trajectory has been very helpful, and that this is a case of where conservatives are winning because they are broadly aligned with the vast majority of what the public thinks is appropriate in higher education,” Hess added.  

Some of the biggest wins for the right have been in the legal arena, with the Supreme Court striking down universal student debt forgiveness and making affirmative action illegal in the college admissions process. 

At the state level, Republican lawmakers are leading the charge to ban DEI offices; Florida offered the most brazen example, with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) taking over New College of Florida.

Meanwhile, schools bruised by the past year’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been tightening up protest rules and implemented policies saying they will no longer be making sociopolitical statements.

Hess said after years of Republicans writing about biases in higher education, the party is taking a turn and is more willing to take these issues head on.  

“Conservatives who were hesitant to fight these fights have now, you know, are no longer in the driver’s seat. Now, in a more populist Republican Party, you see much more appetite and energy for taking on these fights,” he said. 

But this fight has not come without pushback as some decry the changes as a step backwards.

“Right-wing ideologues on the Supreme Court gutted reproductive freedom last year. The very same extremists just obliterated consideration of racial diversity in college admissions,” House Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said when affirmative action was struck down. “They clearly want to turn back the clock. We will NEVER let that happen.”

One of the biggest events that conservatives took credit for this past year was the resignations of three major university presidents: at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia.  

Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) has been at the forefront of the Republican attacks against college presidents over antisemitism allegations on campuses, asking the questions at a House hearing last year that led to the downfall for the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard presidents.  

“What happened, in part, was that you had a group, a cohort, of relatively new presidents. And so happened, all were women, and they were ill-prepared for that kind of congressional grilling,” said John Thelin, professor emeritus of history of higher education and public policy at the University of Kentucky. “And for some reason, in their preparation, they never anticipated they would have to be in the public arena and be particularly effective under that pressure. And so, they really took a hit, and they were they were also at the same time facing internally, a small but very powerful group of conservative donors who were not supporting them.” 

“So, if they were caught off guard, it wasn’t just an accident, it was more that they had not heeded some of the foundations that had been existent but had maybe not been expressed,” he added. 

There have been multiple repercussions to the new environment on college campuses, including the affirmative action decision leading to fewer minority students at top universities. 

And advocates are raising alarms over the changes. 

“So much of this stuff that comes from the right eventually gets absorbed into like liberal and centrist politics,” said Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, a historian of higher education and author of “Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars,” using the pro-Palestinian protests as an example.  

“All of that is to serve right-wing interests, but it’s something that, again, like centrist liberals get behind because either they don’t understand the nuances of the protests, or they see them as disruptive, or they’re buying this right wing trap that they are inherently antisemitic. So I think we should be very clear about what it is we’re facing,” she added.  

The conservative movement say the advances in the past few years was just getting the higher education closer to its purpose. 

“What we’ve seen so far are significant, but small, liberty oriented victories that are not necessarily conservative, to bring colleges back towards the center and what they should be about anyway, which is excellent education, research and dissemination of new knowledge,” said Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow for the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation.