Pearl River Headlines were blaring today in the Times and elsewhere about Harvard, but this time it had nothing to do with the dispute between the Trump administration and the university about diversity and goodness knows what else. This time the focus was on the fact that for years Harvard had been the number one research university in the world, but now was number three. Where not long ago, there were many US universities on this list, now Harvard was all by its lonesome and the rest of the top ten were all Chinese universities. Various former university presidents and researchers were quoted, and to boil down their remarks, all of them said, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, China was kicking our ass.
Whether MAGA or not, how can we explain the fact that even as we need top flight research, the administration is at war with universities across the country and trying to block or cancel their research funding? Congress seems to understand this better than the president, and reportedly is authorizing funding in the budget, but with the administration and the education department doing crazy talk, that doesn’t mean the funding will actually get to the universities.
When these forces aren’t focusing on universities, they are going after public schools. Reading an adaptation of a law review article in the Poverty & Race newsletter, they helpfully reminded readers that all of this was déjà vu all over again, harkening back to the fight against the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education mandating desegregation of schools. Then Virginia Senator Harry Byrd, an unexcelled hater, launched a strategy he termed “Massive Resistance,” “designed to block desegregation and weaken public education.” Professor Danielle Wingfield draws the parallels between then and now on the fight in the trenches at public schools. Some of her same points also apply to the administration’s strategy in trying to cripple higher education as well.
The playbook for the Massive Resistance was threefold. First, weaponize political rhetoric. Then it was a claim about destroying public education and corrupting white children. Now, the claims would be about “Critical Race Theory” and DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Secondly, it involved censorship and curriculum control. We see that now in the efforts to apply a screen to books in the library and classrooms, as well as the rewriting of history to bury uncomfortable truths about our national past. At the university level, we see punishments of professors and curriculum, including more recently a Texas university trying to block the teachings of Plato. The third part of Byrd’s Massive Resistance deployed “parental rights.” Certainly, we see a new activism around such claims in public schools, but the role of big dollar donors trying to make demands on universities is another face of the same strategy.
Professor Wingfield puts the shoe right back on our feet. She reminds us that “resistance is cyclical, not new,” and we should remember that as we fight the power. She argues that no matter how it seems to be devalued currently, “history and truth are central to democracy.” Finally, she states flatly that “law can be a tool, but not alone.” For a law professor this comment must have had a sting, but we all have to agree that “the struggle over schools has always been more than what happens in the classroom.” She says we need to meet the current “Massive Resistance” with “clarity and courage,” but I felt like I was reading her argue that we needed to put on our marching shoes again.