Chris Rufo and Right Wing "Civil Rights"

Chris Rufo’s recent article in City Journal, titled "New Right-Wing Civil-Rights Regime", is a prime example of ideological revisionism that fails to engage with history in any meaningful way. At its core, Rufo presents an interpretation of the civil rights movement and its aftermath that is both profoundly ahistorical and dangerously reductionist. While attempting to frame his argument as a critique of the modern Left’s grip on civil rights law, Rufo distorts the legacy of the 1960s civil rights movement and misrepresents the real challenges of racial justice in America today.

Chris Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and a prominent figure in the battle against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, has gained significant influence in recent years for his aggressive campaigns to shift the national discourse on race and education. Rufo's rise to prominence coincided with his efforts to expose and denounce critical race theory (CRT) in public education, a tactic that has been instrumental in shaping conservative rhetoric around race. His latest article continues this trend, proposing that the Trump administration's attack on DEI programs in higher education represents a necessary correction to what he perceives as a Left-wing racialist agenda.

However, Rufo’s understanding of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its legacy is highly problematic. The article begins by referencing Christopher Caldwell’s The Age of Entitlement, a book that has been influential in certain conservative circles. Caldwell’s thesis, which Rufo echoes, argues that the Civil Rights Act marked a "fundamental departure" from America’s constitutional tradition. According to Caldwell (and by extension, Rufo), the Act, initially a noble effort to combat racial discrimination, eventually "consumed core American freedoms" and has been weaponized to entrench "left-wing racialist ideology" in American institutions. This narrative, however, overlooks the essential purpose of the Civil Rights Act—to eliminate legally sanctioned racial discrimination and provide equal protection to marginalized groups.

Rufo’s invocation of Caldwell’s book is troubling because it oversimplifies the historical context of civil rights legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not the beginning of a long, slow descent into tyranny, as Rufo suggests, but rather the long-overdue correction of centuries of systemic racism. The idea that it was somehow a “departure” from constitutional principles is a misguided reading of both the Act’s intent and the broader history of American law. To frame the Act’s enforcement mechanisms and subsequent civil rights policies as a threat to "core American freedoms" is a distortion that erases the basic reality of racial oppression in the U.S. before and after its passage.

The Legacy of White Supremacy and Structural Racism

What Rufo and those who echo his arguments fail to acknowledge is the enduring legacy of white supremacy and structural racism that has pervaded American society for centuries. The very system of racial discrimination that the Civil Rights Act sought to dismantle is far from a relic of the past; it is woven into the fabric of American institutions, policies, and practices in ways that continue to disadvantage Black people and other people of color.

One glaring example is the practice of redlining, where federal policies explicitly denied mortgage loans and insurance to Black families and other communities of color in favor of white neighborhoods. The result was the creation of segregated, impoverished urban spaces that continue to suffer from disinvestment and lack of opportunity to this day. In many cities, predominantly Black neighborhoods were intentionally situated near polluting industries, highways, and other environmentally harmful sites—leading to environmental racism. For example, toxic waste was often dumped in or near Black communities, subjecting these populations to higher rates of asthma, cancer, and other health problems. These practices are a direct manifestation of a racist infrastructure that systematically devalued the lives and health of Black and Brown Americans.

Similarly, housing policies throughout the 20th century—especially during the post-WWII era—were designed to exclude Black families from the expanding suburban dream. The GI Bill, which offered housing subsidies to veterans returning from World War II, was administered in ways that largely excluded Black servicemen from accessing these benefits. As a result, millions of white families were able to buy homes and build wealth, while Black families were largely left out, forcing many into substandard housing or limited to racially segregated neighborhoods with fewer opportunities for economic mobility.

The effects of segregation are not limited to housing, however. In education, the legacy of white supremacy has created an unequal system that continues to affect Black and Latinx students today. While Brown v. Board of Education (1954) officially declared school segregation unconstitutional, de facto segregation still exists in many schools due to housing patterns, local funding disparities, and state and federal neglect. Predominantly Black schools often face chronic underfunding, inadequate facilities, and higher teacher turnover rates, all of which contribute to a less equitable education for students of color. The persistent racial achievement gap in standardized testing, college admissions, and career prospects is not an accident, but the direct result of this long-standing inequality in education.

In the workplace, systemic discrimination continues to be a major problem. Job discrimination against Black and Brown workers has been documented for decades, whether in hiring practices, wage disparities, or promotions. Studies show that applicants with “ethnic-sounding” names are less likely to be called back for job interviews, even when their resumes are identical to those of their white counterparts. Even in fields like law, medicine, and finance—where education and credentials are paramount—racial minorities face significant barriers to advancement.

The criminal justice system is perhaps the most visible example of how structural racism is still a significant issue in the United States. The over-policing of Black neighborhoods, mass incarceration, and the disproportionate sentencing of Black Americans for similar offenses compared to their white counterparts are stark reminders of how racial inequality remains embedded in American institutions. Rufo’s argument that we have moved past the systemic racism embedded in our society ignores this reality, while conveniently minimizing or disregarding the lived experiences of Black and Brown communities.

"Colorblindness" as a Historical Evasion

Rufo goes on to argue that the Right, for years ambivalent about civil rights law, has now discovered its “winning argument”—one grounded in “colorblind equality.” This is where the article takes a dangerous turn, suggesting that policies such as affirmative action and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are the result of a Left-wing plot to institutionalize racial discrimination. The article not only misrepresents the goals of such programs but also fundamentally misunderstands the role they play in a society that has never fully reckoned with its history of racial inequities.

The notion of “colorblindness” as the ideal model of equality, promoted by Rufo and others, is deeply problematic. While it may sound appealing in theory, in practice, colorblindness ignores the structural realities of race in America. It’s an abstraction that overlooks the lived experiences of racial minorities and fails to address the historical and ongoing disadvantages they face. In higher education, for example, DEI policies are designed not to perpetuate discrimination but to provide opportunities for those who have been historically excluded from academic spaces. Rufo’s argument that these policies are a form of “racialist discrimination” is not only misleading but actively harmful, suggesting that efforts to correct inequality are themselves a form of bigotry.

Chris Rufo’s Avoidance of Class in His Analysis

One of the most glaring omissions in Rufo’s analysis is his near-total avoidance of class as a factor in understanding systemic inequality. Rufo's focus is almost exclusively on race, specifically on how he perceives racial policies to be privileging one group over another, but he does not consider the ways in which class and economic status intersect with race to perpetuate inequality. This avoidance of class, particularly in the context of economic mobility and working-class struggles, weakens his entire argument and distorts the reality of how racism operates in modern American society.

Rufo’s critique of the modern civil rights regime seems to entirely ignore the vast disparities in wealth, income, and opportunity that are not simply a product of racial identity but of class-based systems of power. For example, his focus on “colorblind” equality in education does not account for the fact that the richest Americans, regardless of their racial background, have access to a far superior education and resources than the poor, who are disproportionately Black, Latinx, or Indigenous. The education gap that Rufo claims is a result of racial policies is also a direct consequence of economic inequality, where low-income communities—largely communities of color—are unable to access the same quality of education as wealthier, predominantly white communities. Acknowledging this would complicate Rufo’s narrative, as it would challenge the simplistic framing of a racial conflict between different ethnic groups, rather than a structural critique of the class divide in America.

Moreover, Rufo’s call for a “colorblind” society effectively erases the fact that poverty and economic disempowerment are racialized in ways that cannot be understood without examining the intersection of race and class. By focusing solely on racial hierarchy without addressing the role that economic disparity plays in sustaining social divisions, Rufo contributes to a larger ideological erasure of class struggle from the national conversation. His avoidance of class is a deliberate one, as it allows him to cast the issue of racial justice solely in terms of “identity politics” and to dismiss efforts aimed at addressing material inequality as divisive or unnecessary.

Who Will Be Receptive to This Propaganda?

While Rufo's article represents a highly selective interpretation of civil rights history, it will likely resonate with certain groups whose political and cultural leanings align with his critique of left-wing ideologies. These are individuals who believe that the modern civil rights agenda, particularly in the form of DEI and affirmative action programs, has gone too far and is now harmful to the interests of "oppressor" groups like white people, men, and even some Asian Americans. This demographic includes:

1. Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers: Many who align with conservative or libertarian ideologies are drawn to the narrative that civil rights policies have become a tool of social engineering, seeking to dismantle traditional values in the name of racial and gender equality. Rufo’s emphasis on "colorblind" policies will appeal to those who see government intervention as an overreach and prefer individual merit over group-based policies.

2. Populist Right-Wing Activists: The article will likely resonate with populist voters who view institutions like the Ivy League universities as bastions of elitism and left-wing ideologies. These individuals are often distrustful of academic institutions, the media, and governmental institutions, and Rufo’s framing of DEI as racialist discrimination plays into their fears of being "marginalized" in favor of minority groups.

3. Cultural War Foot Soldiers: Many of Rufo’s ideas are packaged as part of the broader culture wars. His framing of CRT, DEI, and "wokeness" as threats to American values is designed to rally those who feel alienated by changes in cultural norms, especially regarding race, gender, and identity. This group tends to be more reactive to what they perceive as a breakdown in social order, and Rufo provides a coherent narrative that positions them as defenders of a traditional, meritocratic society.

4. Right-Wing Media Consumers: The article is likely to appeal to consumers of right-wing media who are already attuned to the language of cultural decline and political correctness. These readers will be receptive to Rufo’s framing because it aligns with familiar themes promoted by conservative pundits.

In the end, Rufo’s narrative is one that is carefully designed for a particular audience—a segment of the American populace that feels threatened by the cultural shifts around race, identity, and equality. By presenting a revisionist history of civil rights and ignoring the deeply embedded structural inequalities of class, race, and economics, Rufo continues to peddle an ideological framework that is more about cultural warfare than actual justice.

National Day of Mourning: Higher Education’s Long Reckoning With Indigenous Oppression

[Editor's note: United American Indians of New England host the National Day of Mourning. Their website is at United American Indians of New England - UAINE.]

Each November, while much of the United States celebrates Thanksgiving, Indigenous communities and their allies gather in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and across the country for the National Day of Mourning. It is a day that confronts the mythology of national innocence and replaces it with historical clarity. For Higher Education Inquirer, the significance of this day extends directly into the heart of American higher education—a system built, in no small part, on the expropriation of Indigenous land, the exploitation of Native Peoples, and the continued structural racism that shapes their educational opportunities today.

From the earliest colonial colleges to the flagship research institutions of the twenty-first century, U.S. higher education has never been separate from the project of settler colonialism. It has been one of its instruments.

Land, Wealth, and the Origins of the University

America’s oldest colleges—Harvard, Yale, William & Mary, Dartmouth—were founded within the colonial order that dispossessed Indigenous communities. While missionary language framed some of these institutions’ early purposes, they operated through an extractive logic: the seizure of land, the conversion of cultural worlds, and, eventually, the accumulation of immense academic wealth.

The Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 expanded this pattern on a national scale. Recent research documented by the “Land-Grab Universities” project shows that nearly eleven million acres of Indigenous land—taken through coercive treaties, forced removal, or outright theft—were funneled into endowments for public universities. Students today walk across campuses financed by displacements their own institutions have yet to fully acknowledge, let alone remedy.

Higher Education as an Arm of Assimilation

The United States also used education as a tool for forced assimilation. The Indian boarding school system, with the Carlisle Industrial School as its model, operated in partnership with federal officials, church agencies, and academic institutions. Native children were taken from their families, stripped of their languages, and subjected to relentless cultural destruction.

Universities contributed research, training, and personnel to this system, embedding the logic of “civilizing” Indigenous Peoples into the academy’s structure. That legacy endures in curricula that minimize Indigenous knowledge systems and in institutional cultures that prize Eurocentric epistemologies as default.

Scientific Racism, Anthropology, and the Theft of Ancestors

American universities played a central role in producing scientific racism. Anthropologists and medical researchers collected Indigenous remains, objects, and sacred items without consent. Museums and university labs became repositories for thousands of ancestors—often obtained through grave robberies, military campaigns, or opportunistic scholarship.

The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was designed to force institutions to return ancestors and cultural patrimony. Yet decades later, many universities are still out of compliance, delaying repatriation while continuing to benefit from the research collections they amassed through violence.

Contemporary Structural Racism in Higher Education

The oppression is not confined to history. Structural racism continues to constrain Native Peoples in higher education today.

Native students remain among the most underrepresented and under-supported groups on American campuses. Chronic underfunding of Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) reflects a broader political disregard for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. Meanwhile, elite institutions recruit Native students for marketing purposes while failing to invest in retention, community support, or Indigenous faculty hiring.

Some universities have begun implementing land acknowledgments, but these symbolic gestures have little impact when institutions refuse to confront their material obligations: returning land, committing long-term funding to Indigenous programs, or restructuring governance to include tribal representatives.

What a Real Reckoning Would Require

A genuine response to the National Day of Mourning would require far more than statements of solidarity. It would involve confronting the ways American higher education continues to profit from dispossession and the ways Native students continue to bear disproportionate burdens—from tuition to cultural isolation to the racist violence that still occurs on and around campuses.

Real accountability would include:

• Full compliance with NAGPRA and expedited repatriation.
• Transparent reporting of land-grant wealth and the return or shared governance of those lands.
• Stable, meaningful funding for TCUs.
• Hiring, tenure, and research policies that center Indigenous scholarship and sovereignty.
• Long-term institutional commitments—financial, curricular, and political—to Indigenous communities.

These steps require institutions to shift from performative recognition to structural transformation.

A Day of Mourning—And a Call to Action

The National Day of Mourning is not merely a counter-holiday. It is a reminder that the United States was founded on violence against Native Peoples—and that its colleges and universities were not passive beneficiaries but active participants in that violence.

For higher education leaders, faculty, and students, the question is no longer whether these histories are real or whether they matter. They are documented. They are ongoing. They matter profoundly.

The real question is what institutions are willing to give up—land, power, wealth, or narrative control—to support Indigenous liberation.

On this National Day of Mourning, HEI honors the truth that Indigenous survival is an act of resistance, and Indigenous sovereignty is not a symbolic aspiration but an overdue demand. The future of higher education must move through that truth, not around it.

Sources
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
The Land-Grab Universities Project (High Country News & Land-Grab Universities database).
David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee.
Margaret D. Jacobs, A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World.
NAGPRA regulations and compliance reports.

“Wypipo” and Higher Education: Unpacking Race, Privilege, and Power in U.S. Colleges

What Does “Wypipo” Mean?

“Wypipo” mimics the pronunciation of “white people” but carries critical connotations. It is often used to call out behaviors associated with whiteness, including racial entitlement, cultural tone-deafness, and systemic blindness to inequities. The term serves as both a cultural critique and an assertion of resistance against normalized white dominance.

Higher Education and “Wypipo”: The Landscape

U.S. colleges and universities remain sites where whiteness shapes admissions, curriculum, governance, and culture. Predominantly white institutions (PWIs) continue to reinforce racial disparities despite diversity initiatives (Espenshade & Radford, 2009; Alon, 2015). Curricula center Eurocentric perspectives, while faculty and administrative leadership remain disproportionately white (Turner, González, & Wong, 2011).

Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA, and Liberty University: Conservative “Wypipo” Powerhouses

Among the most prominent embodiments of “Wypipo” influence in higher education are conservative activist Charlie Kirk and his organization, Turning Point USA (TPUSA). Founded in 2012, TPUSA has become a major force in conservative campus organizing, advancing a right-wing political agenda centered on opposition to what it terms “woke” ideology and critical race theory.

Charlie Kirk’s activism includes extensive social media campaigns, campus chapters, and large-scale conferences that mobilize predominantly white student bases. His rhetoric often frames racial justice efforts as threats to free speech and traditional values, casting “wokeness” as a form of indoctrination (Cowan, 2020). Kirk’s influence extends into shaping public policy and funding flows, leveraging connections with major donors and political figures.

Liberty University, founded by evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Sr., is a key institutional partner in this conservative higher education ecosystem. Liberty positions itself as an alternative to mainstream universities, promoting Christian conservative values with significant political and financial resources. Its student body and leadership largely reflect a white evangelical demographic that aligns with Kirk’s messaging. Together, TPUSA and Liberty University represent a coordinated cultural and political push that sustains whiteness as a dominant force in higher education debates (Harriot, 2021).

Michael Harriot’s Insights on “Wypipo” and Power

Journalist and cultural critic Michael Harriot has explored how whiteness functions not only as racial identity but as a system of social control. In his work, Harriot emphasizes the performative and often self-interested nature of white activism and the ways white power adapts to preserve itself, including in educational settings (Harriot, 2017).

Harriot’s analyses illuminate how figures like Kirk and institutions like Liberty University deploy cultural narratives that obscure systemic racism while mobilizing racial resentment. This dynamic reinforces “Wypipo” dominance under the guise of protecting free expression or traditional values, often at the expense of marginalized students and faculty.

How “Wypipo” Reveals Structural Inequities

The use of “Wypipo” challenges higher education stakeholders to recognize whiteness as an active, often unmarked, structure of privilege. Critical race theory frames whiteness as a form of property and power that shapes institutional policies, resource distribution, and cultural norms (Harris, 1993; Lipsitz, 1998).

This perspective calls on predominantly white faculty, administrators, and students to examine their roles in perpetuating inequities, even unconsciously (DiAngelo, 2018). It also critiques diversity efforts that focus on surface inclusion without addressing deeper power imbalances (Ahmed, 2012).

Controversy and Necessity of the Term

While “Wypipo” can be provocative and controversial, it forces a confrontation with realities often softened or ignored in polite discourse. Scholars argue that such language is essential for disrupting entrenched whiteness and fostering honest conversations about race and power (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017).

Toward Equity Beyond “Wypipo”

True progress requires dismantling systemic racism in admissions, curriculum, governance, and campus climate. This means elevating marginalized voices, redistributing power, and holding institutions accountable (Gasman, Kim, & Nguyen, 2011; Harper, 2012). Programs rooted in critical race pedagogy and institutional change show promise for fostering inclusive educational spaces (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

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References

• Ahmed, S. (2012). On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Duke University Press.

• Alon, S. (2015). Race, gender, and the stratification of college science majors. Sociology of Education, 88(3), 259–280.

• Bowen, W. G., & Bok, D. (1998). The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton University Press.

• Cowan, T. (2020). The culture war on campus: Turning Point USA and conservative student activism. Journal of Higher Education Politics and Policy, 22(1), 45–62.

• Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2017). Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (3rd ed.). NYU Press.

• DiAngelo, R. (2018). White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press.

• Espenshade, T. J., & Radford, A. W. (2009). No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life. Princeton University Press.

• Gasman, M., Kim, J., & Nguyen, T.-H. (2011). Engaging faculty of color in the academy: Lessons from multiple perspectives. The Journal of Higher Education, 82(2), 152–182.

• Harper, S. R. (2012). Race without racism: How higher education researchers minimize racist institutional norms. The Review of Higher Education, 36(1), 9–29.

• Harriot, M. (2017). The Case for Reparations—and Why White America’s Resistance Is About Power. The Root.

• Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791.

• hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge.

• Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.

• Leonardo, Z. (2004). The Color of Supremacy: Beyond the Discourse of 'White Privilege'. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(2), 137–152.

• Lipsitz, G. (1998). The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Temple University Press.

• Sander, R. (2012). Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It. Basic Books.

• Smith, W. A., Allen, W. R., & Danley, L. L. (2007). “Assume the position…you fit the description”: Psychosocial experiences and racial battle fatigue among African American male college students. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(4), 551–578.

• Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23–44.

• Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M. B., Nadal, K. L., & Esquilin, M. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist, 62(4), 271–286.

• Turner, C. S. V., González, J. C., & Wong, K. (2011). Faculty women of color: The critical nexus of race and gender. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 4(4), 199–211.

Scientific Authority: A Century of Bias in the Name of Progress

For more than a century, the authority of “science” has been used not only to cure disease or explain the universe but also to justify bigotry, exploitation, and exclusion. From eugenics to IQ testing, from biological determinism to race science, various pseudoscientific movements have cloaked prejudice in the language of objectivity and legitimacy. This history—still echoing in higher education, medicine, and public policy—demands deeper public understanding.

Eugenics and the Birth of Scientific Racism

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as evolutionary theory gained public attention, a darker interpretation emerged: eugenics, the idea that human populations could be improved through selective breeding. Championed by Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, eugenics quickly became a popular movement in the United States and Europe. Its adherents—often university-educated scientists and physicians—used statistical arguments and anatomical studies to promote forced sterilizations, anti-immigration laws, and the institutionalization of people deemed “unfit.”

Elite universities like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford were central to the eugenics movement. Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, supported restrictions on Jewish enrollment, while professors like Charles Davenport led major eugenics research projects, funded by the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation. These efforts culminated in U.S. policies such as the Immigration Act of 1924 and Supreme Court rulings like Buck v. Bell (1927), which legitimized the sterilization of “feeble-minded” individuals. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes infamously wrote, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

The Globalization of Bigoted Science

Eugenics was not limited to the United States. In Germany, American eugenic ideas influenced Nazi racial laws and programs. German doctors and scientists adopted race hygiene as state policy under Hitler, leading to sterilizations, medical experiments, and mass murder—what began as “science” ultimately culminated in the Holocaust.

Yet after World War II, even as Nazi atrocities were exposed, many in the West continued promoting soft forms of scientific bigotry under different names. Race-based intelligence theories were repackaged for Cold War audiences. Psychological studies, for instance, used IQ testing—originally developed by Alfred Binet for individualized education—as tools to argue for the innate intellectual inferiority of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant populations. American psychologists like Arthur Jensen and later Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein (The Bell Curve, 1994) insisted on a genetic basis for racial disparities in intelligence and income. Their ideas were roundly criticized but widely circulated in elite circles and conservative think tanks.

Medical Racism and Human Experimentation

Bigotry under the banner of science was not limited to intelligence testing. In medicine, scientific racism was used to justify brutal experimentation on marginalized populations. The most infamous case is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932–1972), in which Black men in Alabama were denied treatment for syphilis by the U.S. Public Health Service so researchers could observe the disease’s natural progression. These men were never told they had syphilis, even after penicillin became widely available in the 1940s.

In Puerto Rico and other U.S. colonies, women were used in early birth control trials without informed consent. Poor people, incarcerated people, and mentally ill individuals were also subjected to invasive procedures under the guise of scientific advancement.

Even today, racial biases continue to shape medical education and practice. Myths such as Black people having “thicker skin” or feeling less pain still influence clinical decision-making, leading to disparities in treatment and outcomes.

The Rhetoric of “Objectivity” and the Persistence of Bias

What makes science-based bigotry particularly dangerous is the claim to objectivity. Unlike openly ideological or religious justifications for inequality, scientific arguments seem neutral, rational, and data-driven. This gave them an air of credibility that allowed policymakers, judges, and educators to embed discriminatory practices into laws, institutions, and curricula.

Throughout the 20th century, bigoted science influenced criminal justice (through phrenology and “criminal anthropology”), education (through tracking and segregated schooling), and labor markets (through biased aptitude testing and “merit-based” hiring). University researchers were frequently at the forefront of these movements, aided by philanthropic funding and government contracts.

Resistance from Within Science

It is important to note that many scientists, doctors, and educators resisted these abuses. Activists like W.E.B. Du Bois, a sociologist and the first Black American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard, used empirical research to debunk racist theories. In the mid-20th century, geneticists like Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould challenged biological determinism, showing that racial categories have no firm biological basis and that environmental factors play a dominant role in shaping intelligence and behavior.

Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man (1981) exposed the flawed data and assumptions behind IQ science and craniometry. Lewontin, meanwhile, demonstrated that genetic variation within racial groups far exceeded variation between them, undercutting race as a meaningful biological concept.

Legacy and Modern Manifestations

Despite these corrections, echoes of science-based bigotry persist. Racial disparities in standardized testing, policing algorithms, facial recognition software, and genetic research reflect uncritical assumptions about “objectivity” and “merit.” Tech companies and university researchers now traffic in new forms of algorithmic bias that often reproduce the old hierarchies under new names.

Moreover, white supremacist groups and alt-right ideologues continue to misuse evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and social psychology to justify racial segregation and misogyny. The internet has made this misinformation harder to regulate and easier to disseminate.

Scientific Authority

The history of science-based bigotry reveals a troubling pattern: when scientific authority is wielded without ethical oversight or historical awareness, it can become a weapon of oppression. Higher education institutions—many of which played central roles in promoting pseudoscientific racism—must reckon with this legacy. That means more than issuing apologies or renaming buildings; it requires a critical reassessment of how knowledge is produced, validated, and applied.

Understanding the misuse of science in the past is essential to ensuring that the knowledge of the future uplifts rather than excludes. A truly democratic science must be self-critical, historically informed, and deeply engaged with questions of power and justice.

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Sources:

• Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. W.W. Norton, 1981.

• Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Harvard University Press, 1985.

• Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Doubleday, 2006.

• Lombardo, Paul A. Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

• Lewontin, Richard C. “The Apportionment of Human Diversity.” Evolutionary Biology, vol. 6, 1972, pp. 381–398.

• Allen, Garland E. "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910–1940: An Essay in Institutional History." Osiris, vol. 2, 1986, pp. 225–264.

• Duster, Troy. Backdoor to Eugenics. Routledge, 2003.

• Reverby, Susan M. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy. University of North Carolina Press, 2009.You said:

PragerU and the Culture War: Manufacturing Myths in Higher Education and Beyond

In the evolving landscape of American media and education, PragerU stands out as a well-funded propaganda machine disguised as an educational institution. Despite the name, Prager University is not a university. It does not grant degrees, offer accredited courses, or submit to academic oversight. Instead, it produces short, emotionally charged videos designed to reshape young minds around a rigid conservative ideology—an ideology increasingly aligned with Christian nationalism, market fundamentalism, and historical denialism.

Founded in 2009 by talk radio host Dennis Prager, PragerU emerged during the rise of social media and deepening political polarization. The timing was ideal. With traditional civics education struggling and digital content consumption rising, PragerU began churning out five-minute videos purporting to teach the "real truth" about history, race, gender, economics, and science. These slickly produced segments claim to correct misinformation, but in reality they deliver a narrow worldview fueled by grievance, nostalgia, and moral panic.

PragerU content routinely distorts established historical and scientific knowledge. It reframes American slavery as a common global occurrence, rather than as a foundational atrocity that has shaped U.S. legal and economic systems to this day. It minimizes climate change, portraying it as exaggerated fearmongering driven by radical environmentalists, even as the scientific consensus grows increasingly dire. And it routinely dismisses systemic racism, patriarchy, and wealth inequality as myths invented by the political left to divide Americans.

This style of storytelling directly contradicts the evidence-based approaches found in the work of sociologist James Loewen and historian Howard Zinn. Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me exposed how mainstream K–12 textbooks sanitize U.S. history by ignoring racism, class struggle, and colonialism. Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States took it further, reframing the American narrative through the voices of the marginalized—the enslaved, the working class, women, and the indigenous. While Loewen and Zinn sought to challenge students to think critically and question power, PragerU does the opposite. It seeks to reassure students that the status quo is righteous and that questioning it is dangerous.

PragerU’s rise also coincides with real, deeply rooted problems in American education. There are serious and measurable deficiencies in literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking among U.S. students and even adults. These educational gaps leave many people vulnerable to simplistic narratives and emotionally charged misinformation. PragerU does not aim to fill those gaps with rigorous content; it exploits them. Its materials demand little from viewers beyond ideological alignment. The videos offer no footnotes, no peer-reviewed sources, and no intellectual challenge—just certainty delivered with polish.

And yet, increasingly, these materials are being welcomed into public school classrooms. In states like Florida and Oklahoma, conservative lawmakers and school officials have approved or endorsed PragerU content as part of the curriculum. This insertion of ideologically driven material into state-sanctioned education is not just alarming—it’s part of a broader attempt to reshape how young people see their country and their place in it.

The broader culture war that PragerU is part of is not simply about liberal versus conservative. It’s about whether education should cultivate independent thinking and historical awareness—or obedient loyalty to a sanitized narrative. PragerU paints itself as a corrective to “leftist indoctrination,” but what it offers is another form of indoctrination: one that demands allegiance to a version of America that never existed, where racism was a glitch, climate change is hysteria, and capitalism is above critique.

Its media tactics are savvy. PragerU’s videos are short, colorful, and emotionally potent—perfectly crafted for young viewers raised on TikTok and YouTube. While teachers fight to hold students’ attention with limited resources, PragerU offers a packaged worldview that feels easy and affirming. But this ease comes at the cost of intellectual development. True learning requires struggle, contradiction, and evidence—not comforting stories that confirm one’s existing biases.

What’s missing from PragerU’s content is precisely what makes education meaningful: complexity, context, and the capacity to think beyond slogans. When students read Lies My Teacher Told Me or A People’s History, they may feel discomfort, but they also grow. They learn that history is not a patriotic myth but a contested and dynamic struggle over meaning and power.

To respond to PragerU’s growing reach, educators and the public must take the real problems in education seriously. Media literacy, civic education, and historical thinking should be reinforced, not removed. Students must be equipped not just with facts, but with the tools to evaluate competing narratives and sources of information. Schools and universities must resist pressure to adopt content that fails basic tests of intellectual honesty and academic rigor.

PragerU is not simply another voice in a pluralistic conversation. It is part of a movement to reduce education to ideological messaging. It thrives on a public that has been failed by underfunded schools, fractured media, and growing economic insecurity. But recognizing this reality does not mean surrendering to it.

If the goal is to prepare young people to navigate a complex world, we must choose truth over comfort, questioning over certainty, and education over indoctrination.

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For more investigations into education and media, follow the Higher Education Inquirer.

How Right-Wing Ideology is Reshaping K–12 Education in Conservative States

In red states across the country, conservative ideology is reshaping K–12 education. Legislatures and governors have used their political power to exert greater control over what children learn in public schools. These changes reflect a broader cultural war playing out in classrooms, as political leaders seek to influence the future of American identity, history, and morality—often at the expense of marginalized students and professional educators.

In Texas, lawmakers have pushed for sweeping restrictions on how race, gender, and history are taught. Laws such as HB 3979 and Senate Bill 3 prohibit teachers from discussing so-called “divisive concepts,” including systemic racism and white privilege. These laws also mandate that educators present controversial historical topics in a “neutral” manner, which critics argue whitewashes the truth and undermines historical accuracy. Meanwhile, efforts by the Texas State Board of Education have promoted materials with religious overtones, such as the optional Bluebonnet Learning curriculum, which includes biblical references and is seen by many as a step toward religious indoctrination in public schools.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has led an aggressive campaign to root out what he calls “woke ideology” in public education. Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” prohibits instruction that could make students feel discomfort based on their race or sex, effectively chilling honest discussions about American history and inequality. The state has also expanded the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law to restrict classroom discussion on gender identity and sexual orientation from kindergarten through high school. At the same time, Florida has approved conservative content from groups like PragerU, a media organization criticized for promoting historical revisionism and partisan propaganda. Book bans and library censorship have surged under the pretext of parental rights, with thousands of titles—often involving LGBTQ characters or themes of racial justice—removed from shelves across the state.

In Oklahoma, State Superintendent Ryan Walters has become a national symbol of Christian nationalist education policy. Under his leadership, Oklahoma has moved to require Bible instruction in classrooms and to place physical copies of the Bible in every public school, a decision halted by the courts but still championed by Walters. The state’s curriculum standards now include directives for students to examine supposed discrepancies in the 2020 presidential election, encouraging distrust in democratic institutions. Walters has also made inflammatory public statements against teachers who discuss racism or gender identity, creating a hostile climate for educators and students alike.

Similar measures have taken hold in other Republican-led states. Arizona, Tennessee, Idaho, and Iowa have passed legislation banning instruction on critical race theory, even in schools where CRT was never part of the curriculum. These laws are often written vaguely, leading to confusion and fear among educators about what is permissible in the classroom. Across these states, teacher resignations are rising, and lawsuits are mounting, as educators refuse to remain silent in the face of increasing state surveillance and ideological control.

The rise of privatization further complicates the picture. Voucher programs and education savings accounts are being promoted under the banner of “school choice,” which critics argue undermines public education by redirecting taxpayer dollars to private and religious schools. In Florida and Texas especially, these efforts coincide with the ideological push to dismantle public trust in public education.

Christian nationalism has become an undercurrent of the new educational movement, with politicians and advocacy groups pushing for prayer in schools, Bible-based curricula, and faith-oriented discipline policies. In some cases, this aligns with efforts to incorporate conservative Christian morality into science education, including the promotion of abstinence-only sex education and skepticism about evolution.

The cumulative effect of these actions is the erosion of academic freedom, the marginalization of LGBTQ and nonwhite students, and the politicization of what should be a fact-based and inclusive educational system. Teachers are under pressure to self-censor. Students are being taught a sanitized, sometimes distorted version of American history. School libraries are being stripped of diverse perspectives. And voters are often unaware of the long-term damage being done in the name of “parental rights” and “traditional values.”

These changes are not merely symbolic. They reflect a fundamental struggle over who controls the narrative of American identity. As right-wing politicians in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and other red states reshape K–12 education, they are laying the groundwork for a future electorate steeped in selective memory, limited exposure to diversity, and an education system more responsive to political power than to pedagogy.

This ideological restructuring of K–12 education carries deep and lasting consequences for higher education. Students emerging from these red-state school systems may come to college with significant gaps in knowledge, diminished critical thinking skills, and exposure to misinformation presented as fact. A student who has never been taught about systemic racism, who has been told to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election, or who has grown up fearing open conversations about gender and sexuality, may find the university classroom bewildering—or threatening.

As a result, colleges and universities, particularly public institutions, are seeing increasing polarization in their student bodies. Some students enter ready for open discourse and academic exploration, while others arrive suspicious of professors, defensive about their beliefs, or wholly unprepared for the demands of college-level coursework. Faculty, in turn, face the difficult task of correcting misinformation without triggering political backlash or student grievances rooted in the ideological conditioning of their high school years.

There are broader administrative and cultural consequences. As universities work to build inclusive campuses that serve diverse student populations, they are being accused by conservative lawmakers and media outlets of promoting “woke indoctrination.” Funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs is being cut in states like Florida and Texas, as political leaders seek to exert greater control over what happens on college campuses. The message is clear: challenge the narrative, and you risk losing public support and state money.

Meanwhile, teacher shortages—already critical in many parts of the country—are worsening as qualified educators flee repressive school environments. The erosion of K–12 education quality leads to declining college readiness, which in turn affects admissions, retention, and graduation rates. Colleges may have to invest more in remedial programs and rethink traditional academic benchmarks to accommodate students whose schooling was stunted by political interference.

Higher education is also at risk of becoming a battlefield in the next phase of the culture war. As red states seek to bring public universities “in line” with state-approved ideologies, academic freedom and institutional autonomy are increasingly under threat. What begins in elementary classrooms does not stay there—it eventually shapes the electorate, the labor force, and the national discourse.

The right-wing assault on public education is not only a challenge to teachers and students—it is a challenge to democracy and the free exchange of ideas. As the K–12 system becomes a proving ground for ideological control, the mission of higher education as a space for critical inquiry and social mobility is being steadily undermined. What’s at stake is not just what children learn—but whether future generations will be allowed to think freely at all.

A Century of American Exploitation: Oil, Crypto, and the Struggle for Latin America’s Universities

Latin America—a region of thirty-three countries stretching from Mexico through Central and South America and across the Caribbean—has spent more than a century fighting against foreign exploitation. Its universities, which should anchor local prosperity, cultural autonomy, and democratic life, have instead been repeatedly reshaped by foreign corporations, U.S. government interests, global lenders, and now crypto speculators. Yet the region’s history is also defined by persistent, courageous resistance, led overwhelmingly by students, faculty, and Indigenous communities.

Understanding today’s educational crisis in Latin America requires tracing this long arc of exploitation—and the struggle to build systems rooted in equity rather than extraction.

1900s–1930s: Bananas, Oil, and the Rise of the “Banana Republics”

Early in the 20th century, American corporations established vast profit-making empires in Latin America. United Fruit Company—today’s Chiquita Banana—dominated land, labor, and politics across Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Standard Oil and Texaco secured petroleum concessions in Venezuela and Ecuador, laying foundations for decades of foreign control that extracted immense wealth while leaving behind environmental devastation, as seen in Texaco’s toxic legacy in the Ecuadorian Amazon between 1964 and 1992.

Universities were bent toward these foreign interests. Agricultural programs were geared toward serving plantation economies, not local farmers. Engineering and geological research aligned with extractive industries, not community development.

Resistance did emerge. Student groups in Guatemala and Costa Rica formed part of early anti-oligarchic movements, linking national sovereignty to university reform. Their demands echoed global currents of democratization. Evidence of these early student-led struggles appears in archival materials and Latin American scholarship on university reform, and culminates in the influential 1918 Córdoba Manifesto in Argentina—a radical declaration that attacked oligarchic, colonial universities and demanded autonomy, co-governance, and public responsibility.

1940s–1980s: Coups, Cold War Interventions, and the Deepening of U.S. Oil Interests

During the Cold War, exploitation intensified. In Guatemala, the CIA-backed overthrow of democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 protected United Fruit’s land holdings. Universities were purged or militarized, and critical scholars were exiled or killed.

In Chile, the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende—supported by American corporate giants such as ITT and Anaconda Copper—ushered in a brutal dictatorship. Under Augusto Pinochet, thousands were murdered, tortured, or disappeared, while the Chicago Boys imported radical neoliberal reforms that privatized everything, including the higher education system.

Throughout the region, oil deals disproportionately favored American companies. Mexico and Venezuela saw petroleum wealth siphoned off through arrangements that benefited foreign investors while leaving universities underfunded and politically surveilled. Scholarship critical of foreign intervention was marginalized, while programs feeding engineers and economists to multinational firms were expanded.

Student resistance reached historic proportions. Chilean students and faculty formed the core of the anti-dictatorship movement. Mexico’s students rose in 1968, demanding democracy and university autonomy before being massacred in Tlatelolco. CIA declassified documents reveal that student uprisings across Latin America in the early 1970s were so widespread that U.S. intelligence considered them a regional threat.

1990s–2000s: Neoliberalism, Privatization, and the Americanization of Higher Education

In the 1990s, neoliberalism swept the region under pressure from Washington, the IMF, and the World Bank. After NAFTA, Mexico’s universities became increasingly aligned with corporate labor pipelines. In Brazil, Petrobras’ partnerships with American firms helped reshape engineering curricula. Private universities and for-profit models proliferated across the region, echoing U.S. higher ed corporatization.

Hugo Chávez captured the broader sentiment of resistance when he declared that public services—including education—cannot be privatized without violating fundamental rights.

Students fought back across Latin America. In Argentina and Brazil they contested tuition hikes and privatization. In Venezuela, the debate shifted toward whether oil revenue should fund tuition-free universities.

Indigenous Exclusion, Racism, and the Colonial Foundations of Inequality

One of the greatest challenges in understanding Latin American education is acknowledging the deep racial and ethnic stratification that predates U.S. exploitation but has been exacerbated by it. Countries like Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and Guatemala have large Indigenous populations that, to this day, receive the worst education—much like Native American communities relegated to underfunded reservation schools in the United States.

Racism remains powerful. Whiter populations enjoy greater economic and educational access. University admission is shaped by class and color. These divisions are not accidental; they are a machinery of control.

There have been important exceptions. Under President Rafael Correa, Ecuador built hundreds of new schools, including Siglo XXI and Millennium Schools, and expanded public education access. In Mexico, the 2019 constitutional reform strengthened Indigenous rights, including commitments to culturally relevant education. Bolivia—whose population is majority Indigenous—has promoted Indigenous languages, judicial systems, and education structures.

But progress is fragile. Austerity, IMF conditionalities, and elite resistance have led to cutbacks, school closures, and renewed privatization across the region. The study you provided on Ecuador documents Indigenous ambivalence, even hostility, toward Correa’s universal education plan—revealing how colonial wounds, cultural erasure, and distrust of state power complicate reform and provide openings for divide-and-conquer strategies long exploited by ruling classes.

These contradictions deepen when Indigenous movements—rightfully demanding no mining, no oil extraction, and protection of ancestral lands—collide with leftist governments reliant on resource extraction to fund public services. This tension is especially acute in Ecuador and Bolivia.

2010s–Present: Crypto Colonialism and a New Frontier of Exploitation

Cryptocurrency has opened a new chapter in Latin America’s long history of foreign-driven experimentation. El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin in 2021, promoted by President Nayib Bukele, transformed the country into a speculative test lab. Bukele has now spent more than $660 million in U.S. dollars on crypto, according to investigative reporting from InSight Crime. Universities rushed to create blockchain programs that primarily serve international investors rather than Salvadoran students.

In Venezuela, crypto became a survival tool amid hyperinflation and economic collapse. Yet foreign speculators profited while universities starved. Student groups warned that crypto research was being weaponized to normalize economic chaos and distract from public-sector deterioration.

Resistance has grown. Salvadoran students have protested the Bitcoin law, demanding that public resources focus on infrastructure, health, and education. Venezuelan students call for rebuilding social programs rather than chasing speculative financial technologies.

Contemporary Student Resistance: 2010s–2020s

Across the region, student movements remain powerful. The Chilean Winter of 2011–2013 demanded free, quality public education and challenged Pinochet’s neoliberal legacy. The movement culminated in the 2019 uprising, where education reform was central.

Mexico’s UNAM students continue to resist corruption, tuition hikes, gender violence, and the encroachment of corporate and foreign interests. The 1999–2000 UNAM strike remains one of the longest in modern higher education.

Colombian students have forced governments to negotiate and invest billions in public universities, framing their struggle as resistance to neoliberal austerity shaped by U.S. policy.

Argentina continues to face massive austerity-driven cuts, sparking protests in 2024–2025 reminiscent of earlier waves of resistance. Uruguay’s Tupamaros movement—largely student-led—remains a historical touchstone.

Every country in Latin America has experienced student uprisings. They reflect a truth that Paulo Freire, exiled from Brazil for teaching critical pedagogy, understood deeply: education can either liberate or oppress. Authoritarians, privatizers, and foreign capital prefer the latter, and they act accordingly.

Today’s Regional Education Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the system into further crisis. Children in Latin America and the Caribbean lost one out of every two in-person school days between 2020 and 2022. Learning poverty now exceeds 50 percent. Entire generations risk permanent economic loss and civic disenfranchisement.

Infrastructure is collapsing. Rural and Indigenous communities suffer the worst conditions. Public investment is chronically insufficient because governments are trapped in cycles of debt repayment to international lenders. Ecuador has not seen a major public-investment program in a decade, as austerity and IMF repayments dominate national budgets.

The result is a system starved of resources and increasingly vulnerable to privatization schemes—including U.S.-style online coursework, ideological “instruction kits,” and for-profit degree mills.

Latin American Universities as Battlegrounds for Sovereignty

Latin America’s universities are shaped by the same forces that have dominated the region’s history: oil extraction, agribusiness, foreign capital, neoliberalism, structural racism, debt, and now crypto speculation. Yet universities have also been homes to transformation, rebellion, cultural resurgence, and hope.

Across more than a century, students—Indigenous, Afro-descendant, mestizo, working-class—have been the region’s fiercest defenders of public education and national sovereignty. Their resistance continues today, from Quito to Buenos Aires, from Mexico City to Santiago.

For readers of the Higher Education Inquirer, the lesson is clear: the struggle for higher education in Latin America is inseparable from the struggle for democracy, racial justice, Indigenous autonomy, and freedom from foreign domination. The region’s ruling elites and international lenders understand that an educated public is dangerous, which is why they starve, privatize, and discipline public schools. Students understand the opposite: that education is power, and that power must be reclaimed.

The next chapter—especially in countries like Ecuador—will depend on whether students, teachers, and communities can defend public education against the dual forces that have undermined it for more than a century: privatizers and fascists.

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Sources (Selection)

National Security Archive, CIA Declassified Documents (1971)
InSight Crime reporting on El Salvador Bitcoin expenditures
Luciani, Laura. “Latin American Student Movements in the 1960s.” Historia y Memoria (2019)
The Córdoba Manifesto (1918)
UNESCO, World Bank data on learning poverty (2024)
Latin American studies on United Fruit, Standard Oil, Texaco/Chevron in Ecuador
LASA Forum: Analysis of Indigenous responses to Correa’s education reforms
Periodico UNAL: “The Student Rebellion: Córdoba and Latin America”
Multiple regional news sources on Argentina’s 2024–2025 education protests

The Right-Wing Roots of EdTech

The modern EdTech industry is often portrayed as a neutral, innovative force, but its origins are deeply political. Its growth has been fueled by a fusion of neoliberal economics, right-wing techno-utopianism, patriarchy, and classism, reinforced by racialized inequality. One of the key intellectual architects of this vision was George Gilder, a conservative supply-side evangelist whose work glorified technology and markets as liberating forces. His influence helped pave the way for the “Gilder Effect”: a reshaping of education into a market where technology, finance, and ideology collide, often at the expense of marginalized students and workers.

The for-profit college boom provides the clearest demonstration of how the Gilder Effect operates. John Sperling’s University of Phoenix, later run by executives like Todd Nelson, was engineered as a credential factory, funded by federal student aid and Wall Street. Its model was then exported across the sector, including Risepoint (formerly Academic Partnerships), a company that sold universities on revenue-sharing deals for online programs. These ventures disproportionately targeted working-class women, single mothers, military veterans, and Black and Latino students. The model was not accidental—it was designed to exploit populations with the least generational wealth and the most limited alternatives. Here, patriarchy, classism, and racism intersected: students from marginalized backgrounds were marketed promises of upward mobility but instead left with debt, unstable credentials, and limited job prospects.

Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn of Harvard Business School popularized the concept of “disruption,” providing a respectable academic justification for dismantling public higher education. Their theory of disruptive innovation framed traditional universities as outdated and made way for venture-capital-backed intermediaries. Yet this rhetoric concealed a brutal truth: disruption worked not by empowering the disadvantaged but by extracting value from them, often reinforcing existing inequalities of race, gender, and class.

The rise and collapse of 2U shows how this ideology plays out. Founded in 2008, 2U promised to bring elite universities online, selling the dream of access to graduate degrees for working professionals. Its “flywheel effect” growth strategy relied on massive enrollment expansion and unsustainable spending. Despite raising billions, the company never turned a profit. Its high-profile acquisition of edX from Harvard and MIT only deepened its financial instability. When 2U filed for bankruptcy, it was not simply a corporate failure—it was a symptom of an entire system built on hype and dispossession.

2U also became notorious for its workplace practices. In 2015, it faced a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit after firing an enrollment director who disclosed her pregnancy. Women workers, especially mothers, were treated as expendable, a reflection of patriarchal corporate norms. Meanwhile, many front-line employees—disproportionately women and people of color—faced surveillance, low wages, and impossible sales quotas. Here the intersections of race, gender, and class were not incidental but central to the business model. The company extracted labor from marginalized workers while selling an educational dream to marginalized students, creating a cycle of exploitation at both ends of the pipeline.

Financialization extended these dynamics. Lenders like Sallie Mae and Navient, and servicers like Maximus, turned students into streams of revenue, with Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities (SLABS) trading debt obligations on Wall Street. Universities, including Purdue Global and University of Arizona Global, rebranded failing for-profits as “public” ventures, but their revenue-driven practices remained intact. These arrangements consistently offloaded risk onto working-class students, especially women and students of color, while enriching executives and investors.

The Gilder Effect, then, is not just about technology or efficiency. It is about reshaping higher education into a site of extraction, where the burdens of debt and labor fall hardest on those already disadvantaged by patriarchy, classism, and racism. Intersectionality reveals what the industry’s boosters obscure: EdTech has not democratized education but has deepened inequality. The failure of 2U and the persistence of predatory for-profit models are not accidents—they are the logical outcome of an ideological project rooted in conservative economics and systemic oppression.

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Sources

• EdSurge. “What a New Strategy at 2U Means for the Future of Online Higher Education.” August 5, 2022. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-08-05-what-a-new-strategy-at-2u-means-for-the-future-of-online-higher-education

• Newswire. “2U Faces Lawsuit for Pregnancy Discrimination.” June 2015. https://www.newswire.com/news/2u-faces-lawsuit-for-pregnancy-discrimination

• Christensen, Clayton M. and Michael B. Horn. Disrupting Class. McGraw-Hill, 2008.

• McMillan Cottom, Tressie. Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy. The New Press, 2017.

• Cellini, Stephanie Riegg. “For-Profit Higher Education: An Assessment of Costs and Benefits.” National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012.

• Rosenthal, Elisabeth. An American Sickness. Penguin, 2017.

US Higher Education and the Intellectualization of White Supremacy

US higher education has reflected and reinforced white supremacy, a particular form of racism, for hundreds of years.  Elite US universities were built and maintained through generations of land theft and killing of native peoples, the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, and the use of intellectualized propaganda to maintain the social order.  

Aspects of this ideology continue today and are visible to the well trained mind but invisible to the equally trained white supremacist mind, enough so that allegedly well educated people have the ability to deny or minimize its presence despite overwhelming evidence.  

White supremacy did not end when enslaved people were not held captive at universities.  It did not end with the creation of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.  It did not end when overt racial discrimination was challenged in the 1960s and 1970s or when affirmative action was instituted. It did not end with various types of ethnic studies.  It did not end with the oversampling of groups in health studies. It did not end in the 21^st century when students protested racist speakers or when the names of some rich and famous white supremacists were removed from buildings or endowments.  It did not end with anti-racist studies or when some schools hired people of color for powerful positions.  White supremacy is embedded today not just in history, literature, or criminal justice courses or in the science labs.  

How much white supremacy do you see embedded at your local college or university?  How is this ideology carefully taught?  Are matters of race and ethnicity ignored (color blind racism)?  How can you observe it systematically in the classroom and in the textbooks?  Do you see it in the racial and economic class makeup of the professors and the students?  In funding? In the recruiting of "legacies"? How do schools pit people against each other and invite animosity in the name of freedom of speech?  How much critical thinking is taught?  How much effort have these institutions really made to the correct the effects of hundreds of years of oppression not only at the school, but in the local community? What numbers can you share that expose the presence of white supremacy at your cherished school? 

The Hidden Costs of ROTC — and the Military Path: Why Prospective Enlistees and Supporters Should Think Twice

[Editor's note: This article was written before West Virginia National Guard troops were shot upon in the occupied District of Columbia. That horrific event makes our point even more salient. No matter how desperate someone may be, we implore folks to think twice before signing anything related to military service under the Trump Administration.] 

For many young Americans, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) or other military‑linked opportunities can look like a ticket to education, steady income, and a chance to “see the world.” But the allure of scholarships, structure, and economic opportunity often hides a deeper reality — one that includes moral danger, personal risk, and long-term uncertainty.

Recent events underscore this. On November 24, 2025, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) announced it was opening a formal investigation into Mark Kelly — retired Navy captain, former astronaut, and current U.S. Senator — after he appeared in a video alongside other lawmakers urging U.S. troops to disobey “illegal orders.” The DoD’s justification: as a retired officer, Kelly remains subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and the department said his statements may have “interfered with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.”

This episode is striking not only because of Kelly’s prominence, but because it shows how even after leaving active service, a veteran’s speech and actions can be subject to military law — a stark reminder that joining the military (or training through ROTC) can carry obligations and consequences long after “service” ends.

Moral, Legal & Personal Risks Behind the Promise

When you consider military service — through ROTC or otherwise — it’s important to weigh the full scope of what you may be signing up for:

Potential involvement in illegal or immoral wars: ROTC graduates may eventually be deployed in foreign conflicts — possibly ones controversial or condemned internationally (for example, interventions in places like Venezuela). Participation in such wars raises real moral questions about complicity in human rights abuses, “regime-change,” or other interventions that may lack democratic or legal legitimacy.

Domestic deployment and policing: Military obligations are increasingly stretching beyond foreign wars. Service members — even reservists — can be called in to deal with domestic “disputes,” civil unrest, or internal security operations. This raises ethical concerns about policing one’s own communities, and potential coercion or suppression of civil and political rights.

Long-term oversight and limited freedom: The investigation of Senator Kelly shows that veterans and officers remain under DoD jurisdiction even after service ends. That oversight can restrict free speech, dissent, or political engagement. Those seeking to escape economic hardship or limited opportunities may overlook how binding and enduring those obligations can be — even decades later.

Psychological and bodily danger: Military service often involves exposure to combat, trauma, physical injury — not to mention risks such as sexual assault, racism, sexism, and institutional abuse. Mental health consequences like PTSD are common, and the support systems for dealing with them are widely criticized as inadequate.

Institutional racism, sexism, and inequality: The military is an institution with historic and ongoing patterns of discrimination — which can exacerbate systemic injustices rather than alleviate them. For individuals coming from marginalized communities, the promise of “a way out” can come with new forms of structural violence, exploitation, or marginalization.

Career precarity and institutional control: Even after completing education or training, the reality of “limited choices” looms large. Military obligations — contractual, legal, social — can bind individuals long-term, affecting not just their mobility but their agency, conscience, and ability to critique the system.

Why Economic Incentives Often Mask the Real Costs

For many, the draw of ROTC is economic: scholarships, stable income, a way out of challenging socioeconomic circumstances, or a ticket out of a hometown with limited opportunity. These incentives are real. But as the recent case with Mark Kelly makes clear, the costs — legal, moral, social — can be far greater and more enduring than advertised. What looks like an escape route can become a lifetime of obligations, constraints, and potential complicity in questionable policies.

A Call for Caution, Conscience, and Awareness

Prospective enlistees deserve full transparency. The decision to join ROTC or the military should not be sold merely as an educational contract or a job opportunity — it is an entrance into a deeply entrenched institution, one with power, obligations, and potential for harm. The new controversy around Mark Kelly ought to serve as a wake-up call: if even a decorated former officer and sitting U.S. senator can be threatened decades after service, young people should consider carefully what they may be signing up for.

If you — or someone you care about — is thinking of joining, ask: What kind of wars might I be asked to fight? What does “service” really cost — and who pays?

Sources:

Higher Education Inquirer. Trump Sends West Virginia National Guard to D.C. Without Consulting Mayor Bowser." August 16, 2025. Higher Education Inquirer : Trump Sends West Virginia National Guard to D.C. Without Consulting Mayor Bowser

AP News. “Pentagon says it's investigating Sen. Mark Kelly over video urging troops to defy 'illegal orders'.” November 24, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/4882f76b05dcdfa3060c284c2c84dd12

The Guardian. “Mark Kelly: call for troops to disobey illegal orders is 'non-controversial'.” November 25, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/25/mark-kelly-troops-disobey-illegal-orders-comments

Reuters. “Pentagon threatens to prosecute Senator Mark Kelly by recalling him to Navy service.” November 24, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-threatens-prosecute-senator-mark-kelly-by-recalling-him-navy-service-2025-11-24/

RAND Corporation. “Mental Health and Military Service.” 2022.

Amnesty International. Human Rights Violations in Venezuela. 2023.

U.S. Department of Defense. Reports on Sexual Assault in the Military. 2024.

Washington, H. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Human Experimentation in the United States.

Rosenthal, E. An American Sickness.