The History Behind the Right’s Effort to Take Over American Universities

This type of college takeover is a new, more sinister development in a longstanding conservative practice. The right has spent decades creating parallel and competing structures in areas including political news, social media, and even consumer goods. This time, instead of offering students a conservative alternative in higher education, DeSantis and his allies are gutting an existing institution from the inside.

And they hope this is just the beginning. The right-wing activists behind New College’s transformation are encouraging other governors and administrators to replicate their example, stressing that all public colleges can be “captured, restructured, and reformed” if conservative leaders embrace their model. This push will imperil students’ access to a comprehensive college education, especially in the liberal arts and social sciences where the right’s attacks are targeted.

Conservatives have had a complicated relationship with American higher education over the last century. On one hand, the academy has always been an institution designed to reproduce the middle and upper echelons of Christian society in the United States—something classical liberals from Thomas Jefferson to today’s postliberal academics on the right like Patrick Deneen have historically appreciated and felt worth conserving. 

Read the full essay at TIME Magazine.