Thread by @biblioracle

The publishers (@belt_publishing) of "Sustainable. Resilient. Free." probably wouldn't appreciate me screenshooting a whole chapter, but I have a solid chunk in the book that seems relevant today's news. A teaser. beltpublishing.com/products/susta…

To figure out how to respond to what's happening today, I think it's important to know the distant history as well as the more recent history of how we got to this moment.

I make the case (and it's a good one) that the door to the present right wing siege of public institutions was opened by "centrist" journalists and academics who ginned up a panic about snowflake students as a move to reconsolidate their own power in their elite institutions.

I name names in the chapter, but won't bother here because I don't have the time to duke it out on Twitter with a certain high profile academic who searches his own name here, but it's the folks many of you are thinking of particularly a book that rhymes with "smoddling."

To the extent there was anything worth worrying about, it was all happening at elite private schools and were far more attributable to weird, often local, dynamics that attach to these places. Imagine a bunch of dynamics like that Yale Law story about Tiger Mom and dad.

But those relatively isolated incidents were used to smear all of higher education, and in the case of the smoddling book, an entire generation of students who are supposedly stricken by a sudden rise of a mass pathology, as though this is something that happens. (It isn't.)

The narrative forms, is embraced by people in power, & becomes something like conventional wisdom, even though none of it is true. People routinely cite the smoddling book to me clearly without having ever read it or considering its central thesis, which again, doesn't make sense

Without the aid of the v. concerned centrists, the right wing propagandists like TPUSA remain relatively fringe, but given the opening, they're now treated as legitimate voices in the debate, including by the org that's concerned with viewpoint diversity. insidehighered.com/blogs/just-vis…

We're through the rabbit hole now. The co-founder of the viewpoint diversity organization eagerly participates in public discussions of whether or not education schools are a "menace." Please tell me how this is a service to the academy if you have an answer.

Somehow the same guy who is helping launder the opinions of right wing organizations attacking higher ed is also our go-to on solving political polarization, go figure.

I digress. In Sustainable. Resilient. Free. I offer some advice to institutions when they're under siege which has some specifics, but essentially boils down to being more proactive about sharing your positive narrative, and don't be distracted by bad faith bullshit.

And remember that some of that bad faith bullshit is coming from people who claim to be friendly to your institution. They aren't.

Anyway, check out Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Public Higher Education, for sale where books are sold, but best bought directly from @belt_publishing beltpublishing.com/collections/pr…