The Geopolitical War on U.S. Higher Education

Abstract

This essay presents three main arguments about the post 9/11 assaults on higher education. First, I claim that the current war is a direct outgrowth of the cold war and the culture wars. The tactics now in use by the right borrow from these two previous assaults on higher education by combining the politics of panic of the McCarthy era with the fear that multiculturalism will lead to a devastating erosion of American national identity and values. Second, this war, like the two that preceded it, is geopolitical. That is, it is a war that has as its goal a particular vision of the United States and the globe, one which is a direct outgrowth of Pax Americana, manifest destiny, the cold war, and neoliberal globalization. My third point is that the right's assault on higher education is typically disguised as a defense of student rights—such as the right to academic freedom, the right to transparency in reporting facts about universities, the right to fairness and balance in courses and curricula, the right to be taught about the greatness of the nation and of Western civilization, the right to exposure to conservative faculty, etc.—but really the assault is on the student.