In case you aren't aware, the GOP has declared war on academia. Our crime? I've never really understood but it's time to PUSH BACK. Ask your university what it's doing. And, make the calls and visits, especially to GOP Senators. nytimes.com/2017/11/16/opi…
2. Maybe the idea is to punish blue states, since that's where a large number of research universities are located?
3. Maybe it's more performative than that--like voting to take away tax cuts for teachers who buy school supplies--just part of an elaborate attack on teachers' unions and academics as part of the GOP culture war.
4. I could almost excuse that because at least I would know it's meaningless pettiness, just an act for the base in the bread and circus of GOP culture-hate.
5. But what really gives me pause is the fact that this all seems organized--the attacks on campus free speech, attacks on researchers, defunding of science and the humanities, the attacks on teachers, the push for guns on campuses.
6. And the end game is what? Market space and subsidies for more for-profit universities who don't produce research? Fewer Americans producing research? Fewer international students?
7. Anyone who spends five minutes looking at the postwar history of American universities knows they have been engines of class mobility.
8. And they save money for government labs and private R&D by doing research and teaching leading to competitiveness for American firms. Both of these are supposed to be core GOP values, right?
9. I'm starting to conclude that we've entered a time when conventional GOP thinking has gone out the window. A fanatical belief in trickle down, privatization, and economic nationalism has replaced any ability to look critically at the value of knowledge production in the USA.
10. They have fully digested the "American Exceptionalism" kool aid, & they believe that people experience social mobility by magic & the US achieves market dominance b/c of the colors on our flag. A reckoning is coming. The American century is over. This tax bill is exhibit A.
