From a Google Image Search - BBC
When did Elise Stefanik become the Grand Inquisitor of College Presidents? She has been calling college presidents in front of the Committee on Education and the Work Force since students began demonstrating on college campuses on issues related to the war between Israel and Hamas taking place in Gaza. This is not a discussion of events in Israel or Gaza.
We heard Donald Trump declare his love for the poorly educated. We have seen the rabid attacks on liberal (woke) colleges from the increasingly right-wing Republicans such as Ron DeSantis with the banning of books, dictating how racial history can be taught, putting age limits on gender discussions. However, there is a larger movement by Republicans (conservatives) to move away from public schools to charter schools, to take funds for schools out of the federal budget and make this a state responsibility, and to shut down the Department of Education (Project 2025). Republicans want prayers back in our schools, they don't care to cater to matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion. They believe the problems faced in our culture and our cities are caused by Americans without religious affiliations, by "illegal" immigrants, and by the demands of diverse groups. Conservatives fantasize that they can return America to an imagined "state of grace" that never actually existed by combining church and state. They pretend that this was the intention of our founders who were led astray by humanitarian issues about slavery (or something).
Colleges and universities, Republicans (conservatives) say, have become too liberal (or woke), forcing America to lose its national identity, and turning our republic into a socialist state. They argue that humanitarianism and globalism are bad for humans who should not be coddled or given opportunities to live on benefits from the government. It ruins their work ethic they say. Conservatives believe that unfettered capitalism provides everyone with opportunities to grow their wealth and that possessing wealth proves that you are valued and loved by God. They like to think that every person has an equal opportunity to amass riches and that each individual must take responsibility for his/her failures.
Republicans tell us all that the humanities curricula at colleges and universities are diabolically designed by left-wing educators to turn out liberals, and that being a liberal is wrong, very wrong. It is liberals who are fomenting chaos in the world by being too weak to ensure law and order, border security, a strong economy, and world peace. Although Republican Presidents have not managed to tame these cultural issues either, it is the Democrats, conservatives say, who are responsible for answering the demands of diverse student groups to provide courses that illuminate all the world's cultures and governments, thus changing the values of America. There is no empirical proof that these Conservative premises are correct and in fact, there is more proof that these are not valid premises, always depending on your future worldview.
It does seem that these two approaches (liberal v conservative) to education lead to different outcomes. Which approach will offer humans an organically evolved society and which will require massive policing to establish severe cultural limits seems obvious. Since it is the conservative view that humans are not causing climate change, severe cultural limits may lead to disorganized adaptations to changing climate conditions, when preplanning and implementation of adaptations could save many cultures (and hurt many fortunes hoarded by the wealthy).
We are seeing the proliferation of and increased attendance at Christian colleges. "In fact, the total full-time, first-time undergraduate enrollment market share of Christian institutions has grown from 5% in 2011 to 9% in 2021. Overall, just under a third of college-bound high school students are interested in attending a faith-based institution. A subset of these students is looking for a Christian college, with numbers dropping substantially outside the Bible Belt."
https://www.encoura.org/resources/wake-up-call/how-can-christian-colleges-grow-their-funnels/#
"There are approximately 600 private Christian colleges in the US. This number rises to over 700 if special-focus arts and technical institutions are included.
Of these, 182 are Catholic colleges, while most of the rest are affiliated with a Protestant denomination. There are only 2 Orthodox colleges in the US."
https://www.degreechoices.com/blog/best-christian-colleges-in-the-us/
This is not an argument about which demonstrators have "right" on their side, or what rules college demonstrators should abide by. I will leave that discussion to the media which is considering these questions daily.
This article questions the credibility of Elise Stefanik as an inquisitor of college presidents who have student demonstrations on their campuses. There are no correct answers to the questions Stefanik asks in the hearings she leads. She sneers at all answers equally. College presidents are falling like flies. Many of these presidents are women and women of color who only recently arrived above the glass ceiling. Elise Stefanik has sworn absolute loyalty to Donald Trump, and she is a rabid conservative who hates liberal colleges and would be happy to wipe out any hint of liberal thought in America.
Elize Stefanik's position is constitutionally correct, but we have been watching a philosophical coup occur within our federal government even though our political parties are equally split and margins in the House are slim, Republicans are using conservative policy to change America into a Christian Conservative state whether there is a conservative in the Presidency or not.
Republicans are using constitutional loopholes to hammer home conservative doctrine to the frustration of Democrats who continue to believe that we must address climate changes due to burning fossil fuels and that this is no time to pull back into isolationism and ersatz religious orthodoxies (that do not jive with any Bible we have ever read).
Elise Stefanik and the Republicans (conservatives) are salivating at this chance to demonize colleges they consider too liberal or woke. Meanwhile, social media discusses the disadvantages of certain college majors that may not lead directly to jobs and extolls the advantages of training programs that lead directly to jobs. College degrees change mindsets. They do encourage a more global understanding, and this is something that conservatives are against. We must make it impossible for an anti-intellectual like Elise Stefanik (ironically, a graduate of Harvard University) to sit in a position that governs our schools and universities.
From a Google Image Search - Minding the Campus - Academic Freedom
The New Yorker asks, "What kind of right is academic freedom?" in an article entitled Tower in Flames by Louis Menand (A Critic at Large). Some of the discussion is germane to what is happening in the congressional investigations of college presidents.
"The congressional appearance last month by Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, was a breathtaking "What was she thinking?" episode in the history of academic freedom. It was shocking to hear her negotiating with a member of Congress over disciplining two members of her own faculty, by name, for things they had written or said. The next day, in what appeared to be a signal to Congress, Shafik had more than a hundred students, many from Barnard, arrested by New York City police and booked for trespassing--on their own campus. But Columbia made their presence illegal by summarily suspending the protesters first. If you are a university official, you never want law-enforcement officers on your campus. Faculty particularly don't like it. they regard the campus as their jurisdiction, and they have complained that the Columbia administration did not consult with them before ordering the arrests. Calling in law enforcement did not work at Berkely in 1964, at Columbia in 1968, at Harvard in 1969, or at Kent State in 1970."
...
"Academic freedom is related to, but not the same as, freedom of speech in the First Amendment sense. In the public square you can say or publish ignorant things, hateful things, in many cases false things, and the state cannot touch you. Academic freedom doesn't work that way. Academic discourse is rigorously policed. It's just that the police are professors."
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"Some students report that they don't feel free to express their views because what they say might be received as hurtful or offensive by other students, and instructors find themselves second-guessing the texts they assign, since students may refuse to engage with works that they find politically objectionable. Instructors worry about being anonymously reported and subjected to an institutional investigation. Instructors and students can also, needless to say, suffer trial by social media. These are not great working conditions for the knowledge business. You may lose an argument in an academic exchange, but you have to feel free, in the classroom, to have your say without sanction."
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"Academic freedom is an understanding, not a law. It can't just be invoked. It has to be asserted and defended. That's why it's so disheartening that leaders of great universities appear reluctant to speak up for the rights of independent inquiry and free expression for which Americans have fought. Even after Shafik offered up faculty sacrifices on the congressional altar and called in the N.Y.P.D., Republicans responded by demanding her resignation. If capitulation isn't working, not much is lost by trying some defiance."
Allowing Republicans with a political agenda to suppress any liberal thoughts is hair-raising because it is an authoritarian move against academic freedom which in the long run should not be tolerated and will backfire. Attacking universities and college professors, deciding what college presidents should and should not say based on a political point of view, is an attack on the heart and soul of our democracy.