Higher education in a momentous US election year: Racism, the pandemic, science, democracy and the public good
- OiYan Poon, Spencer Foundation
- Brian Pusser, University of Virginia
- Barrett Taylor, University of North Texas
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The United States and with it higher education are facing a truly momentous 2020 presidential election. In its response to the public issues of our time, especially global climate change and then the national and global handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration has challenged research, the scientific method, rationality and the truth. Another casualty is the basic norms of political democracy, where Trump is attempting to undermine the public health option of postal voting so as to secure a win in November. The president has directly attacked the universities on numerous occasions, threatened them with loss of federal funds and tried to use immigration law to force them to remain open for face to face teaching regardless of health and safety. The political right in the US now presents the university as an ‘ideological’ institution, a radical liberal institution, not a source of knowledge, evidence, and intellectual contest in service of the public sphere. This political ‘reimagining’ of the American university has dire consequences, especially if Trump is re-elected, but will be familiar to scholars of higher education in many other national contexts.
The re-election of a Trump government would likely lead to a student loans system more closely tailored to the lending companies rather than student interests and a surge in federal financial support for the for-profit college sector. The administration’s favouritism of some states over others (e.g. Texas and Florida vs. California and New York) could have large implications for federal and state support of higher education going forward. Election outcomes will also bear major implications for the struggle against racism in the US including the Black Lives Matter movement which has been a potent touchstone across the world and among other non-white groups in the US, including Asian Americans. The politics of racism on and off campus is shaping the political terrain city by city and house by house. In some states Republican governments have used racist policies on higher education to marshal support for the Republican party in the lead up to the election. Our three speakers will open up this extraordinary time in the US and invite your questions, discussion and debate.
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OiYan Poon, Ph.D. is a program officer at The Spencer Foundation. She is also an associate professor affiliate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a faculty affiliate in the Higher Education Leadership program at Colorado State University. In her research, she focuses on the racial politics of Asian Americans and college access policies, particularly as animated by debates over race-conscious admissions, or affirmative action, in US higher education.
Brian Pusser is Associate Professor of Higher Education at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on postsecondary policy, international and comparative higher education, political theories of higher education, and the organization and governance of postsecondary institutions in comparative perspective.
Barrett Taylor is an Associate Professor of Higher Education at the University of North Texas in Denton, TX. His research focuses on power and inequality in higher education, with specific attention to higher education politics and policy, institutional stratification and its consequences for students, and the organization of academic work. He is the coauthor (with Brendan Cantwell) of Unequal Higher Education: Wealth, Status and Student Opportunity (Rutgers University Press, 2019).
