The decline of higher education into an ideological echo chamber has been widely discussed on this and other sites. Polls show record lows in the public trust in our universities and colleges as revenues decline and closures increase. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon responded to this meltdown with a common-sense call for greater transparency and tolerance. The response from teacher unions has been nothing short of hysteria, led by Randi Weingarten at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Todd Wolfson at the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) — two of the most polarizing and political figures in teaching.
Secretary McMahon released a policy statement titled “National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards.” I encourage you to read it. Few Americans would disagree with the call for universities to post policies on how they can achieve greater intellectual diversity and openness in both admissions and hiring.
Not surprisingly, the AFT and AAUP went into a full cardiac arrest at the notion that universities would adopt such policies, let alone work to restore integrity and balance to higher education.
In a public letter, they denounced the policy as “galling.” The letter was a telling moment from the two organizations most responsible for the politicization of education.
The AFT and AAUP merged not long ago, destroying the AAUP’s traditional role as a neutral advocate for academic freedom. Under Wolfson, the organization has become blatantly political, even abandoning its long apolitical stance and issuing its first political endorsement this year. It was for radical Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
I recently debated Todd Wolfson, President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), over the loss of institutional neutrality in higher education. In the debate, I raised AAUP’s own abandonment of neutrality principles, which Wolfson acknowledged. While the viewers overwhelmingly supported a return to neutrality principles, Wolfson was undeterred.
The alliance with AFT and Weingarten is crushingly predictable. Weingarten personifies what I have called the “education cartel,” where teacher unions receive massive contracts and pension agreements from Democratic allies and then turn around and send massive political contributions to those same allies. The losers in this symbiotic relationship are of course the students and their families.
Weingarten is “credited” with turning the teachers’ union into an extension of the Democratic Party, often appearing at political rallies with her signature high-volume screeds:
As public support and revenue for both public education and higher education plummet, these figures are doubling down. The last thing that they want to see is the restoration of neutrality or balance. That is why a policy calling for such reforms is so anathema to them. These organizations are now political organizations that use their dues to pursue radical agendas.
I previously criticized the selection of Wolfson, who promised to make the AAUP more of a “fighting organization” for liberal causes. A Rutgers University anthropologist and former union leader, Wolfson is a political activist who doubled down on the ideological intolerance that now defines higher education.
As promised, the AAUP quickly became a more radical and activist organization. It adopted an anti-Israel boycott policy and unleashed attacks on Trump supporters as “fascists.” It has targeted civics centers as conservative breeding grounds. Trinity College Professor Isaac Kamola, the director of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF), explains that they want to unleash “naming and shaming and discrediting and undermining the legitimacy” of such programs.
So, as trust in higher education hits new lows, the AAUP is accelerating that decline by doubling down on ideological bias and political activism. In reality, the AAUP represents only a small fraction of university professors but is often viewed as speaking for the teaching academy as a whole.
I have previously written about the similar liberal agenda of the American Bar Association despite plunging membership among lawyers. The ABA now represents just 17 percent of the bar.
The AAUP currently has roughly 50,000 members. There are an estimated 1.5 million university and college professors in the United States. Both the ABA and AAUP have become captive to the most ideological elements of their membership. That agenda has overwhelmed the original apolitical mission of these groups.
The loss of the AAUP as a neutral arbiter for academic freedom is tremendous. As Wolfson acknowledged in our debate, it was once a voice for neutrality, avoiding ideological and political causes. It was central to the articulation of neutrality principles and core academic freedom values. We need such an organization now more than ever.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Well, now we have poked the dragon in it’s underbelly and it is screaming loudly. Did that dragon truly believe that we couldn’t see what has happened to education these past 60+ years? I am glad that the republicans took their heads out of the sand (or their posteriors – which ever suits the description better) and finally noticed the destruction that our media/education industry has caused to several generations of young people and to our cultural institutions as well. I doubt, at this point, short of a catastrophe of some magnitude, that we can totally undo the poisoning of our society.
Last night, on the FNC, Rahm Emanuel distanced himself from both the progressive and traditional wings of the DNC by taking on the dismal state of American education. Of all the potential DNC candidates for POTUS in the 2028 election, Emanuel could be a real threat. The others are mostly lunatics with small but loud followings.
If he expects to carry this banner, Emanuel will have to confront the likes of Weingarten and Wolfson. To placate them, he would have to endorse their bad policies but I think he’s smart enough to know that an issue as powerful and potentially game-changing as education cannot be defended on the status quo and the views of those like Weingarten and Wolfson.
An old Chinese proverb says, “In chaos, there are opportunities.” Emmanuel may be thinking of this.
The good professor calls Weingarten and Wolfson (sounds like a snake pit law firm in Philly or Baltimore, …, no?) “two of the most polarizing and political figures in teaching.” While both people are turbocharged polarizing political insects, the problem with his label, of course, is that it misidentifies their line of work. It is not “teaching” in which they engage, but instead is blatant indoctrination. Some of it is Marxist in nature; some of it is racist in nature; but all of it is hypocritical and irrational in nature.