‘Code words and dog whistling’: why the conservative attack on higher education is so efficient
When Claudine Gay resigned as Harvard University president in early January, pundits credited her departure to a successful removal campaign led by conservative activists.
The strategy behind Gay’s ousting wasn’t new, and has been used to advance conservative agendas, influence school curriculum and demonize Black people throughout history. What was different this time was the quick efficacy of the takedown, which, according to some political scientists, historians and lawyers, emboldened conservative activists and could have dangerous implications for the future of education.
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Sustained and coordinated pressure through media coverage helped kick off the campaign against Gay. Critics, mainly conservative activists, used social media and news outlets to claim that she responded inadequately to congressional questioning about antisemitism on campus. Soon thereafter, they levied allegations that she plagiarized some of her work.
Weeks prior to Gay’s resignation, the rightwing activist Christopher Rufo publicized the plan to remove her from office: “We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right. The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.” In an interview with Politico after Gay vacated her post, Rufo described his successful strategy as a three-pronged approach of “narrative, financial and political pressure”.
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, an associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, noted the effectiveness of the plan, and warned of what it could portend considering that these actors have “seen the impact that they can have when they are able to marshal pressure from the media, donors and others”.
He pointed to similar strategies employed in the conservative movement to reshape state legislatures, where activists and lobbyists leverage understaffed and under-resourced statehouses by providing them with research and advice for bills in order to sway them. In his book State Capture, Hertel-Fernandez wrote about how the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council drafts and disseminates bills to apply political pressure. “They can have an outsized impact by diagnosing the weak spot in the institution and going after that,” said Hertel-Fernandez. “Just as they did in the case with Harvard.”
I remember reading an article like this. My main take away was that the effectiveness of right-wing attacks rely on centrist and center-left wing media to spread their message.
We've ended up in this weird asymmetric media situation where the right doesn't take anything from the left seriously but the left takes a lot of the right seriously. The left can't make a persuasive case to the right, but the right can make a persuasive case to the left. And so Christopher Rufo can spread his bullshit while the expertise of scientists in every discipline is rejected out of hand because it has any association with academia.
And what's the alternative?
Having noticed this, I have come to embrace a more radically progressive approach, even though I am personally a more centrist person.
To have the scale balance in the center, if the right moves to their extreme, the left must also move to its extreme.
Yes, this is polarization. But it's also just natural. If the right becomes milder, the left can also become milder.
It's the only way to prevent the Right from shifting the Overton window further right.
I don't know that I think that works though? It feels like what you're saying is, "the path to unity is further division," which feels doomed to fail.
The alternative path to unity involves surrendering to fascists.
We either fight ideologically or we fight physically. Choose a path. Conservatives have forced this choice.
I think physical violence is inevitable at this point, but until the time comes to be a prolific killer of the enemy, we must be prolific defenders of leftism to counterbalance the shift toward fascism.
If you look at the civil war and reconstruction, then yes. The path to unity first went through further division.
I don't think it will ever get that bad. But letting bullies win only further strengthens their convictions.
They have to feel the pain of losing and come to the realisation that polarization will not benefit them.
What happens if people on the right adopt that strategy?
They already did.
I guess things are worse than I thought.
lol. Wisconsin, and North Carolina
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The job of the media is no longer to inform, never forget that. It generates profits, the same as everything else, except most of it is also now owned by billionaires, so even profits take a backseat to whatever whims may cross their minds.
As an ex NPR listener, my ability to understand the power dynamics of news has improved greatly since I stopped listening. Centrism stops you from using your brain, and that's no accident.
I only read the news, which gives me a chance to remind myself that I hate mainstream media framing.