It is easy, if you are concerned about the future of higher education, to focus on the continual war of rhetoric, budget, and legislation coming from Governor Ron DeSantis, Christopher Rufo, and the Florida GOP because that definitely requires our attention, yet ...
... to focus almost exclusively on that would be to ignore a completely different war against academic freedom being waged nationwide by right-wing "think tanks" like the American Enterprise Institute, the National Review Institute, or the Manhattan Institute, along with old standbys like the Heritage Foundation -- and one that, in the long run envisions the political neutering of high education in the public square.
They're beginning the process now, obscured by the peals of thunder and bright lightning created in Florida, by using dryly "intellectual" op-eds in places like Christopher Rufo's Manhattan Institute mouthpiece City Journal by people like Dr. Joshua T. Katz, formerly a Linguistics professor at Princeton, who became "formerly" either for inappropriate sexual relationship with one or more female undergraduates or because Princeton wanted him out of the way because his conservative views bothered the ruling elites there.
Given those circumstances, it is hardly surprising in today's climate that the Right has made Dr. Katz into one of its "poster child" academic heroes or the Dr. Katz himself has become a critic of Universities speaking out -- as Universities -- on the social and political issues of the day.
