Bravery in the Face of Anticipatory Obedience

Well, the election has come and gone, and its impact most certainly varies depending on where you are. On my campus, the reaction suggests that the outcome was not what many students and faculty were expecting, and the anxiety I anticipated in my last piece has come to pass (and more quickly than I expected as well). The day following the election, class attendance seemed down (judging by the sparsely populated classrooms I passed on the way to teach my classes), and the spirit among my students was funereal. I know that your campus’s vibe may have been different, but while in general we seem to have picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off, I don’t know that we are all able to just start all over again. Many of us expect that the attacks on inclusivity will continue, that the incoming presidential administration will try to advance its stated goal of abolishing the Department of Education, and that more state legislatures will feel emboldened to follow Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s lead in undermining higher education and academic freedom. As I write this, The New Republic is reporting that Christopher Rufo, who has been central to the conservative overhaul of New College of Florida, will soon meet with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago to discuss how to get the “woke” out of the nation’s colleges and universities.