by College Fix Staff
The fresh president of the American Association of University Professors recently called Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance a “fascist.”
On August 8th statementTodd Wolfson, an anthropologist at Rutgers University whose research “is a blend of traditional and cybernetic ethnography,” disagreed with Vance’s claim that universities are “the enemy” and that they “are dedicated to ‘deception and lies, not truth.’”
According to Vance, these accusations were made at the 2021 Conservative National Conference. Inside higher education.
IN his speechThe vice presidential candidate also called universities “very hostile institutions” that “give credence to some of the most absurd ideas that exist in our country.”
“If any of us want to do what we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to attack the universities in this country honestly and aggressively,” Vance said.
In a statement, Wolfson (pictured above) said Vance’s appointment represented a “turning point” for “the future of American higher education.”
“With Vance, America’s far-right authoritarian leaders have managed to bring a fascist who vows to ‘aggressively attack the universities of this country’ within striking distance of their goal: the destruction of American higher education as we know it,” Wolfson said.
More from Wolfson’s statement:
Vance’s characterization of professors as “the enemy” and his praise of Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán’s takeover of public universities as “the closest conservatives have ever come to addressing leftist domination of universities” are clear. If he and his dark-money funders were to gain power, their goal would be to seize control of American higher education and bend it to their will. Ironically, they would utilize fear and disinformation to turn colleges and universities into what the far right has falsely accused them of being for years: ideological indoctrination centers. …
While attacks on American higher education are nothing fresh, the scope of the Trump-Vance Project 2025 plan offers a chilling glimpse into an authoritarian future that would transform America’s colleges and universities into thought-control factories by stifling ideas, silencing debate, and crushing autonomy. Project 2025 would reverse decades of progress in access to higher education, eliminate protections for LGBTQ+ students and sexual assault survivors, privatize student loans, end loan forgiveness, and, if its authors are to be believed, abolish the Department of Education altogether. We cannot afford to let this happen.
She-wolf (in the photo) He also criticized conservative efforts to “ban” critical race theory and other “divisive concepts” and to suppress DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) efforts on campus.
Ironically, last year the AAUP in Vance’s home state of Ohio, opposed the efforts establish “Intellectual Diversity Centers at state universities. A local AAUP representative argued that universities “are already open marketplaces of ideas where free inquiry exists.”
While funding diversity centers, among other things, would create more professorships, one Ohio State University professor said, “They’re not great uses of money and therefore unlikely to be implemented well.”
According to the department’s website, Wolfson is co-director Center for Media, Inequality and Change whose aim is to “explore the connections between media, democracy, technology, politics and social justice.”
– – –
Photo “Todd Wolfson” by Rutgers University Department of Communication and Information.
