Does it make sense for an institution to appease those who are dedicated to destroying it?

The always interesting Silke-Maria Weineck thinks not:

In light of the Republican Party’s longstanding contempt for knowledge and expertise — be it in the context of history, public health, climate change, or ecology — the question is why colleges so far had escaped its venom relatively unscathed . . . I suspect the real reason is this: Despite the common narrative to the contrary, colleges are not, in fact, left-wing institutions. I invite anybody who believes we are hotbeds of socialism to check the salaries and working conditions of non-unionized adjunct faculty members. Rather, they are hierarchical operations largely dedicated to reproducing a social order that benefits the upper-middle class, liberals and conservatives alike — call it the professional-managerial class, if you will, beholden to and sustained by a small-l liberal world order.

Now that the party is increasingly embracing anti-pluralist, protectionist, Christian nationalist, and at times neofascist goals, it is no longer aligned with the PMC’s broader agenda. It is therefore ready to wage open war with colleges, intent on confiscating the social capital they wield.

This is a moment of considerable peril. There is an entire complex of organizations, like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, dedicated to creating the impression that the most pressing threats to free speech and academic freedom originate on the campus left. They are joined, paradoxically, by inexplicably influential individuals like Christoper Rufo, who openly demands the end of what he calls so- called academic freedom.

To be sure, the left has its share of kooks and charlatans, and they occasionally create some misery on campus, but they are not governors, senators, or presidential candidates, and they do not wield the power of the state, which is ultimately, we must remember, the power of violence. My state’s Republican candidate for secretary of state believes that demons are sexually transmitted and calls public schools “government indoctrination camps.” The Republican candidate for attorney general spoke out in favor of banning abortion even for those who cannot survive pregnancy. The GOP’s gubernatorial candidate has suggested that Gretchen Whitmer, the current governor, is not “a real woman.” All three believe or claim to believe that Donald Trump carried Michigan in 2020. Engaging any of them in rational debate would be like getting a raccoon to fetch your newspaper: It’s not necessarily that they don’t know how they could; it’s that they don’t see why they should.

Theocratic ethno-nationalism weaponized in the service of plutocracy (and vice versa) is by its nature the mortal enemy of whatever of value is going on inside a real university. Upper university administrators can’t say this out loud, or not too loudly anyway, given various political and fiscal realities (Always the dollars, as Nicky Santoro observed). Tenured faculty shouldn’t be so demure, and many more should be following Weineck’s example.

Here I’m reminded of noted professor of comparative linguistics Swifty Lazar’s dictum, once uttered in an avuncular mood to a young colleague, that in life one must have either fuck you money or fuck you attitude. Tenure, which isn’t going to exist much longer at many public universities, can if nothing else offer some help in developing and maintaining the latter state of mind, so necessary to public intellectuals at all times, but especially in times like these.