If the American right is losing its war with the American left, it’s because of universities. They are by and large captured by an often left-wing professoriate, from whose pens, mouths and classrooms have come radical new approaches to today’s most controversial issues: race, class and gender.
Indeed, the institution of the American university is the birthplace of critical race theory, queer theory, postcolonialism and the like, which have quickly injected themselves into our national discourse, especially after George Floyd’s murder in summer 2020. So far, the right has abysmally failed to stop this radical intellectual onslaught at the hands of far-left faculty members.
This is probably due to the fact that there are simply far more liberal professors and administrators than there are conservative ones at just about every college campus across the country. While there are a handful of avowed conservative liberal arts colleges in the U.S., there’s really only one, Hillsdale College in Michigan, that has gained national recognition for its role as a bastion against an otherwise liberal takeover of higher education. But Hillsdale is a small private school with limited resources and is hardly well situated to jolt the American university system back to some semblance of political balance.
As a result, some conservative activists outside universities have taken it upon themselves to fight the “hostile takeover” of academia by the left, doing what conservatives within higher education have thus far failed to do.
At the moment, no right-wing crusader has contributed more than Christopher Rufo, who is largely responsible for bringing the existence of critical race theory in elementary and secondary schools to national attention. With the help of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Rufo is bringing the fight against “wokeness” to Florida.
On Jan. 6, DeSantis appointed Rufo and five other conservative thinkers, professors and activists, including the dean of Hillsdale’s School of Government Matthew Spalding, to the New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees.
Aside from failing to meet various state expectations, such as reaching recruitment targets, achieving financial stability and improving graduation and dropout rates, New College has gained a reputation as one of the most progressive state-funded schools in the country. The Princeton Review, for instance, ranks New College third among public colleges that are “making an impact” in student engagement with sustainability and environmentalist efforts.
But now DeSantis, according to Rufo, is aiming to reshape the school into one that will offer an education designed to protect “families against captured bureaucracies,” or in other words to fashion New College into a place where conservative students and their families can be comfortable with their own beliefs.
The announcement predictably ruffled the feathers of many progressives, who identify DeSantis’ attempts to fight left-wing social agendas, often disguised as the battle for ill-defined compassion, as a Trumpian attempt to rewrite history and destroy the alleged political neutrality of public universities. The hyper-progressive Daily Beast, for example, describes DeSantis’ announcement of Rufo’s appointment as “what could be the governor’s hate-fueled march to a Republican presidential nomination.”
Histrionics aside, the new New College appointments do raise important questions concerning the wisdom and rightness of willfully and openly reshaping a state-funded college, even if an underperforming one, into a mouthpiece of conservatism.
The answers to these issues likely lay in a few variables: how one defines conservatism; and whether or not creating an explicitly conservative institution is the right strategy for correcting progressive overreach.
Noticeably what knowing the answers to these problems doesn’t require is answering the question of whether American colleges are by and large liberal or if it even matters that there is an imbalance of political opinions among faculty members and administrators. The data are clear on these issues: there is an enormous imbalance in American colleges that favors the left. 
But what does matter in the question of making conservative institutions is what one considers “conservative,” something about which Rufo, DeSantis and others have been quiet.
If by “conservative” one means getting back to the old roots and goals of the university – fostering open discussions about a variety of viewpoints, free of judgment; diving into and studying the great books of the Western tradition closely, devoid of relativistic theoretical lenses; or pursuing the truth, wherever it may be, then DeSantis and Co. seem to be on the right track.
Indeed, if this is the definition of conservative with which the Florida governor is operating, a reversion back to a former, better model of education, then current professors and students at New College, as well as other politically concerned bystanders should have little to fear. The woke will be able to teach and coexist with non-woke faculty who may have previously felt stifled and censored by progressive leadership. And if progressives have a problem with such an idea, it might be themselves who are intolerant, not DeSantis or Rufo.
But if by conservative one means deletion of history, especially the history that doesn’t cast the U.S. in a particularly attractive light, much like progressives fear that Trump, DeSantis and other anti-woke, anti-critical race theory advocates are doing, the future of the governor and Rufo’s New College project may be ill-fated, for faculty members will be sure to revolt or quit, leaving the school, at least temporarily, defunct and inoperable.
What’s more if this latter conception of conservative prevails, DeSantis’ project will prove hypocritical, simply a pragmatic means of producing an ultimately ineffectual “win” in the American culture war that he can tout to supporters as the calendar races towards presidential campaign season.
The few conservatives remaining in mainstream academia may be welcoming the changes coming to New College and might even be hoping that similar ones will come to their own places of employment. But they should remember that as satisfying it is to see liberal tears shed, and as much needed a victory is in the battle for the preservation of American culture, it can’t, and shouldn’t, come at the heavy cost of hypocrisy.
If conservatives are to win the culture war, they need to win it the right way, by conserving tried and true means and models, in this case, preserving what universities were originally built for centuries ago: the acquisition, articulation and passing on of knowledge.
Benjamin Haines is a 24-year-old graduate student from Shreveport.