Will higher education survive the MAGA onslaught?
From Columbia to Caltech, the second Trump administration has borne down on universities as part of a wider campaign to upend the knowledge systems and deliberative institutions that have been essential to modern democracy. But this isn’t the first time American universities have faced down such a threat. In The Know-Nothing Campaign Against Higher Learning, literary and film critic James Chandler spotlights an American tradition of hostility to intellectual life.
But the discourse surrounding MAGA’s assault on universities goes beyond the book. You can read expanded thoughts from Chandler and fresh commentary from our other contributors here in the coming weeks and months.
Dispatches from the author
Commentary from our contributors
Expert voices engage The Know-Nothing Campaign Against Higher Learning.
Richard Bourke, Cambridge Professor of the History of Political Thought, wonders whether we should excuse universities for the current predicament in which they find themselves.
President of the New York Academy of Sciences Nicholas Dirks puts Chandler’s pamphlet in conversation with the far-right assault on DEI and critical race theory.
Looking back at past and present examples of tension between government and universities, Guggenheim Fellow Jerome McGann invites to ask, “What is higher learning?”
Drawing on Chandler’s interrogation of kayfabe in the Trump administration, playwright Colin Murphy traces a historical line between Trump’s theatrical geopolitics and the Peloponnesian War.
Jennifer Pitts, chair of University of Chicago’s political science department, weighs the finer points of cynicism, irony, and trolling as explored in Chandler’s pamphlet.
Former President of the University of Chicago Don Michael Randel highlights the disconnect between the Trump administration’s stated policy goals and the assault on universities.
The conversation elsewhere
Pundits, professors, and politicians are discussing The Know-Nothing Campaign and its concerns across media and the university ecosystem.
Students protesting at Columbia University on April 18, 2024, courtesy Wikimedia Commons
Learn more about James Chandler’s The Know-Nothing Campaign Against Higher Learning at Prickly Paradigm Press.