Powerful Adversaries

Ladelle Mcwhorter

doi:10.3390/h7030075

Abstract

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 contains yet another assault on higher education in its unprecedented tax on private university endowment income. This paper argues, first, that this and other attacks should not be seen as anti-intellectual efforts to dismantle higher education but rather as intellectually elitist efforts to rid universities of certain programs and personnel and, second, that viewing these efforts as motivated primarily by racism and (hetero)sexism is an analytical and political mistake. Women’s, gender, and sexualities studies programs undermine basic assumptions that ground contemporary right-wing political and economic policy—namely, individualism and economism—by presenting empirical evidence and developing theoretical frameworks focused on historical formations of power networks that produce subjects, preferences, and systems of oppression. The main goal of the radical right is not to purge women and people of color from academia, but to prevent analysis and discussion that reveals the inadequacy of right-wing ontological commitments and neoliberal social theory.

Highlights

The main goal of the radical right is not to purge women and people of color from academia, but to prevent analysis and discussion that reveals the inadequacy of right-wing ontological commitments and neoliberal social theory
Economistic rationalists are totally committed to the ontological priority of individuals and preferences that supposedly belong to individuals, whereas WGSS work both refutes and refuses this sort of ontological individualism at almost every turn
Feminist theorists have disputed radical ontological individualism for as long as feminist theory has existed as an academic field

Summary

Discerning the Primary Targets

Recent Gallup and Pew polls suggest that many Americans are losing regard for the nation’s universities, more carefully worded Civis and Eschelon polls show that most. Buckley implies that taxing investment income would make universities answerable to Congress and, force them to fire administrators and stop offering frivolous courses (and presumably fire the professors who teach them). Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party (Mayer 2010), is not the only force behind the new tax and other attacks on higher education over the last three decades, but their influence must not be underestimated They are on a systemic offensive to rid universities of certain kinds of programs and prevent discussion of certain kinds of theories and ideas and to reshape them in accord with their own programmatic—and, yes, intellectual—commitments. That is exactly what the forces behind the new tax and so many of these attacks on higher education want universities not to do

Discerning the Intellectual Aims

Feminist Critiques of Individualism

Findings

Conclusion