Universities Are Not the Enemy

While J. D. Vance and the populist Right are attacking universities, other conservatives are working to reform them and win the battle of ideas.

A t the risk of waxing autobiographical, I have found myself in a strange place since J. D. Vance’s VP nomination and the media’s subsequent focus on his academic pedigree.

Vance’s childhood and mine were hardly parallel, as my family was not beset by substance abuse, domestic violence, or anything of that sort. But our backgrounds share certain broad plot points: Heartland kid from a conservative community attends elite East Coast institution — in Vance’s case, Yale Law School, in mine, Yale College — and receives a culture shock.

Most of what I knew about the culture of Yale (or old-money Connecticut WASPs) came from Hollywood — as is the case for many Yale students who do not come from, say, a Northeast boarding school. The TV shows Gossip Girl and Gilmore Girls (similar both in theme and name) formed my imagination of Yale’s culture and student body before I arrived.

In the summer before I left for college, I distinctly remember running around the Mall of America with my mom in a feverish state, looking through racks of pleated pants at Banana Republic and blazers at J. Crew as we attempted to add “professional” clothing to my Minnesotan wardrobe of jeans, T-shirts, and flannel.

Like many other incoming students, I was afraid of being underdressed, underprepared, and uncultured. When I got to campus, however, I quickly realized that my fears were overblown. Although it is true that alumni from Northeast boarding schools are well represented on campus, Yale’s student body hails from across the U.S. — and the globe. As for clothing, jeans and T-shirts were the norm, though students were regularly skewered in the pages of the Yale Daily News for wearing brand items like Canada Goose jackets or Patagonia quarter-zips. Even America’s most elite universities are allergic to their own elitism.

I realize “defender of the Ivy Leagues” is not a title many would desire — but the times demand what they may. Vitriol has lately been spewing from the New Right, denigrating the very foundations of the university. This is a dangerous trend.

Now, of course, many universities do not live up to their name. Instead, they’re pay-for-play degree mills that entice students to go into debt for a degree in something like organizational psychology. Liberal education or civic learning is rarely on the menu. This reality demands university reform — not annihilation.

For starters, the purpose of a university is not to ensure that a graduate gets a well-paying job. That is oftentimes a secondary effect of receiving a good education, but it is decidedly not the goal. In a democratic republic, where the citizens are the sovereign, the fate of the nation relies on the education of the people. A true liberal education — “liberal” as in “the basis of a free society” — fosters critical thinking, the ability of an individual to think for himself, while it familiarizes the student with the underpinnings of Western civilization. Well-educated citizens are a republic’s first line of defense against demagoguery and authoritarianism.

National conservatives, however, seem more interested in demagoguery and authoritarianism than in the preservation of liberal education. The NatCons’ anti-university rhetoric has dovetailed with a fierce anti-intellectualism among the populist New Right.

Yes, the progressive takeover of the Ivy Leagues is a huge problem. Anti-intellectualism is not the way to fight it.

These two statements can be simultaneously true:

1. A hydra of progressive ideology has twisted itself around campuses across America.
2. The mission of a university is good in itself and a boon to civic society.

With regard to Yale, I could offer a litany of criticisms of administrative bloat, the political tilt of the faculty, and the values prevalent on campus — but this does not negate the fact that there are still excellent professors and bright minds on campus. Many leaders, including leaders on the right, emerged not that long ago from Ivy League universities. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, one of the most effective “anti-woke” warriors, graduated from Yale and Harvard. Ben Sasse, former U.S. senator and outgoing president of the University of Florida, where he spearheaded the restoration of liberal education, graduated from Harvard and Yale. Along with the Supreme Court’s most conservative justices, Justice Brett Kavanaugh received his J.D. from Yale Law School. Senator Tom Cotton graduated from Harvard, former congressman Mike Gallagher from Princeton.  And let us not forget, Donald J. Trump received his BA from an Ivy League school, the University of Pennsylvania.

The way to fight an ideology is to put forth better ideas. To put forth the truth. Where does this battle of ideas happen? In the university.

At the second annual National Conservatism Conference in 2021, Vance said as much in his speech, “Universities Are the Enemy”:

Why, ladies and gentlemen, are our school children learning from schoolteachers that America is a fundamentally racist and evil country? Because those same schoolteachers learned it from some progressive professor at a university 10 or 15 years ago. That is the fundamental problem of American truth and knowledge. Today we have created a system where to work in the modern economy, to live a middle-class life, you have to go to a university. That is what our elites tell our young people. And yet, at those universities, they are told that working with your hands is looked down upon. They are told that America is a fundamentally racist and evil country. They are taught — the children who go through this university system — that this country built by our fathers and grandfathers is an evil and terrible place.

What Vance argued against in his speech is not universities themselves but prominent ideas that have seeped into university curricula across the country. Here Vance is deriding a certain species of critical race theory, but he conflates that particular ideology with universities on the whole.

Conservatives’ concern over the progressive tilt of universities is nothing new. William F. Buckley Jr. famously got his start criticizing his alma mater for embracing leftist ideas at the expense of real education. In God and Man at Yale, Buckley says he wants to see the college reformed because he still loves the essence of the place and his experience there.

Buckley’s paternal concern for Yale is a different beast altogether from the right-wing wrath of the NatCons, who believe our elite universities are beyond repair and must be dismantled. If conservatives want to curb the rise of critical theory in higher education, they must fight it head on, on its home turf.

While “anti-woke” efforts at the K–12 level and beyond, like those spearheaded by Governor DeSantis in Florida and Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, have effected real change for the better, these efforts are necessarily limited. The policy initiatives they’ve led treat the symptoms of bad ideas, not their cause.

A sizeable number of conservatives are in fact working to address the source of education’s ills. Sasse made strides in the establishment of the Hamilton Center at Florida, a civic center dedicated to forming civic leaders and advancing the intellectual tradition of liberty. Although he is stepping down as president to care for his wife, who is seriously ill, his legacy — and that of the Hamilton Center — will remain influential as several other state universities dedicate resources to civic education.

Conservatives should be more energized than ever when it comes to reforming our nation’s universities. The universities are not the enemy. Bad ideas are.