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.”
Send those two to Gaza
Mr turley, you are a lawyer, can you just sue people
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/chris-rufo-known-for-dei-and-crt-panics-tries-to-make-the-indian-question-a-thing
This is the reason why you don’t see colleges welcoming conservative “thought leaders.” Rufo is literally on the board of New College of Florida and openly questions whether we have too many Indians in America. When the Manhattan Institute tries to back the Great Replacement Theory and Bo French, trying to find artificial “balance” is the equivalent of making sure we have flat earthers and Creationists on the science faculty.
#. It’s all follow the money. DJT is trying to take feds out of everything that isn’t specifically in the Constitution. Education goes back to States. Fed equalization blocks deleted and governors can attract business and hussle for their daily bread. It’s truly a den of thieves.
DJT is trying to carry money out of the Federal budget to put into his own pockets. If he cannot direct it to his own companies directly, he directs it to those who make contributions to his own companies.
Congrats, Barack, you had your chance.
“Polls show record lows in the public trust in our universities and colleges as revenues decline and closures increase.”
And where does this mistrust originate but from messages passed along by the millionaires paid by billionaires to convince the lower and middle class to become minions.
And how much is Linda McMahon worth? Apparently $3.2 Billion, but not from education. It’s from the production of mindless spectacle. This paper from her is more of the same.
“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.”
Yet the policies go far beyond that single area. They also are uninterpretable, having no standard by which any of the requirements might be judged. They are designed to allow for anyone in power to claim they are not being met as an excuse to take control. For example, if “transparency” is claimed not to be met then rescind any federally backed loans for students who might attend and cut all research funding unless the governing board is replaced with Trump selections.
How is it that conservatives are so weak-minded they are unable to produce strong arguments to change the direction they claim education is heading in? Instead of a marketplace of ideas conservatives fall back to brute force and economic coercion even as the billionaires lay plans to eliminate the value of human labor.
So, the polls show record lows in the public trust in our universities and colleges. This is not surprising in the least because there no longer are such things as “colleges” and “universities”.
“Colleges” and universities” have virtually all be replaced with Leftist Indoctrination Entities (aka “LIEs”). The LIEs are now assemply lines for indoctrinating students fully into Far-Leftist ideology, programming them to love Islamic Terrorism, love transgenders, love slavery, love class warfare, love socialism, love communisim, hate liberty and freedom, hate America, hate Israel, and hate civilization. Graduates of LIEs are hopelessly stupid. However, they will make good, obedient, mentally impaired serfs for China and Russia. LIE gradutes can’t read, can’t write, can’t perform basic mathematics, and can’t think.
Why are conservatives unable to use the same techniques to indoctrinate people to hate gays and lesbians and minorities? Why can’t conservatives use the same techniques to teach reading and writing and mathematics?
Why was a top conservative, Senator Eric Schmitt, unable to comprehend that women play basketball when the entire party is laser focused on protecting women’s basketball from a non-existent threat?
DUMB POST
AI—Artificial Intelligence (i.e., SI—Super Intelligence)
Congress has absolutely NO power to regulate the technology and software industry per Article 1, Section 8.
The 2026 technology and software industry would have been equivalent to the precision-manufacturing and scientific-instrument industry in 1789.
Article I, Section 8, makes no mention of regulating that sector or any similar sector.
Any attempt to regulate AI (i.e., SI) would be irrefutably unconstitutional.
America was designed and established to protect, secure, and guarantee rights and freedoms for individuals and to severely limit and restrict government power.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
“Why stop at the teachers union? Keep going, firefighters unions, police unions, civil servants unions. None are covered by the 1st amendment. Right?”
– X
Exactly and Exactly.
Only owners of private property may “claim and exercise” dominion.
Only elected officials may “claim and exercise” dominion over public property.
Hire, fire, pay, direct, etc.
Set prices, wages, rent, etc.
Any organization that usurps and exercises dominion in either case is an illegitimate criminal organization.
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
OT
Public schools should inclde as required reading, I MUST BETRAY you, a novel about a high school boy in Communist Romania.
It will end the flirtation with communism/socialism quickly.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/i-must-betray-you_ruta-sepetys/29570312/item/56303191/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=pmax_high_vol_scarce_under_$10_17389091670&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17400878150&gbraid=0AAAAADwY45hioIAyvX8sPhybhQJH0gsiA&gclid=CjwKCAjwifjVBhBKEiwAYx4K9NjvaxaA-dOw_-MB5mnTvKlu6l-7OAJxVdjp3j6ZGOI6aqpX-2332RoCQoQQAvD_BwE#idiq=56303191&edition=60354791