Moral Capital and Locus of Control

Moral capital has become a contested currency in American public life. It is deployed by political elites to justify austerity, by campus executives to rationalize managerial authority, and by think tanks to discipline the working class. Yet moral capital also rises from below—from students building mutual-aid networks, from adjuncts organizing for fair wages, from communities confronting the harms universities have helped produce. In an era defined by climate peril, surveillance capitalism, and proliferating wars, the stakes of who controls moral capital—and who gets to exercise real agency—have never been higher.

At the center of this struggle lies a fraught psychological and sociological concept: locus of control. Higher education constantly toggles between narratives of internal control (grit, resilience, personal responsibility) and external control (the market, political pressures, funding cycles). Powerful actors encourage an internal locus of control when it shifts blame downward, and an external locus of control when it shields institutional failure. Students, staff, and faculty live suspended in this contradiction, expected to absorb the consequences of decisions made far above them.

Quality of Life as Moral Imperative

Quality of Life—once peripheral to higher education policy—is now a defining moral issue. Students and workers contend with unstable housing, food insecurity, unsafe campuses, inaccessible mental health care, and relentless economic pressures. For many, these burdens are compounded by existential crises: climate anxiety, global conflicts, democratic backsliding, and precarity amplified by technological surveillance.

Institutions often portray these crises as personal challenges requiring self-management. But Quality of Life is not an individual moral failure; it is a metric of collective conditions. When a university community’s quality of life declines, it signals a profound imbalance between agency and structure—a distorted locus of control.

The Industry’s Manufactured Moral Capital

Universities have long crafted narratives that elevate their own moral standing while displacing responsibility onto individuals. The “grateful striver” student, the “self-sacrificing” adjunct, the “visionary” president—these tropes protect managerial systems from scrutiny and allow elites to accumulate moral capital even as Quality of Life deteriorates for everyone else.

This manufactured moral authority collapses under existential pressures. As campuses confront heatwaves, flooding, militarized policing, housing crises, widening wars, and state-sanctioned surveillance, it becomes impossible to sustain the fiction that individuals can simply “grit” their way to stability.

Reclaiming Moral Capital 

Moral capital is not owned by institutions. It can be reimagined, reclaimed, and reoriented. Four longstanding modes of internal discipline—temperance, celibacy, critical thinking, and solidarity—take on new urgency when placed in the context of planetary and political crisis.

Temperance

Temperance, stripped of its historical misuse, becomes a strategy of mindful refusal in the face of consumption-based exploitation. It includes rejecting burnout culture, resisting technological tools that monitor student behavior, and refusing to internalize blame for systemic failures. In an era of climate breakdown, temperance also signifies ecological responsibility—a modest but meaningful form of internal control aligned with global survival rather than institutional convenience.

Celibacy

Broadly interpreted, celibacy represents intentional self-limitation that protects one’s emotional and cognitive bandwidth. Amid surveillance-driven social media, algorithmic manipulation, and institutions that increasingly commodify student identity, celibacy can be a form of psychological sovereignty. It creates space for reflection in a world designed to keep people reactive, distracted, and easily governed.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking remains the academy’s most subversive tradition—especially when deployed against the university itself. It helps students analyze the interplay between personal agency and systemic constraint. It equips them to understand climate injustice, militarism, and the geopolitics of knowledge production. And it exposes the ways mass surveillance—from learning analytics to campus police technologies—erodes autonomy and shifts the locus of control away from individuals and communities toward powerful institutions.

Solidarity

Solidarity transforms private moral commitments into collective action. It breaks the isolation manufactured by surveillance systems, precarity, and competitive academic cultures. Solidarity has historically been the source of the most effective nonviolent strategies—from civil rights sit-ins to anti-war mobilizations to student debt strikes. Today, as geopolitical conflicts escalate and authoritarian tendencies rise, the power of organized nonviolence becomes an existential necessity. It is one of the few tools capable of confronting militarized policing, resisting state repression, and challenging the corporate infrastructures that profit from crisis.

Nonviolent Strategies in an Era of Global Threat

Nonviolent action remains a potent form of moral capital—and one of the most effective forms of collective agency. Research across conflicts shows that sustained, mass-based nonviolent movements often outperform violent struggles, especially against highly resourced opponents. For universities, which increasingly collaborate with defense contractors, data brokers, and state surveillance agencies, nonviolent resistance has become both a safeguard and a moral compass.

Sit-ins, teach-ins, encampments, divestment campaigns, and labor actions reassert external locus of control as something communities can influence—not by force, but by moral clarity, strategic discipline, and the refusal to comply with harmful systems.

Mass Surveillance as a Threat to Moral Agency

Mass surveillance is now woven into the fabric of academic life. Learning management systems track student behavior down to the minute. Proctoring software uses biometrics to police exams. Campus police drones and public-private security networks feed data into law enforcement databases. Administrative dashboards quantify student “risk” and worker “efficiency” in ways that reshape institutional priorities.

This surveillance apparatus corrodes moral capital by reducing human judgment to automated metrics. It also distorts locus of control: individuals are told to take responsibility while being monitored and managed by opaque systems far beyond their influence.

Reclaiming agency requires dismantling or limiting these systems, demanding transparency, and reasserting human dignity in spaces now governed by algorithms.

Toward a More Honest Locus of Control

Moral capital and locus of control are not academic abstractions. They are lived realities shaped by climate disruption, war, inequality, and surveillance. Higher education must stop using moral narratives to deflect responsibility and instead cultivate practices that reinforce real agency: temperance, celibacy, critical thinking, solidarity, and the disciplined power of nonviolent resistance.

In a world marked by existential threats, reclaiming moral capital from below is not simply an intellectual exercise—it is a condition for survival, and a pathway to collective liberation.

Sources
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Erica Chenoweth & Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works
Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Astra Taylor, Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone

The New Cold War in the Americas: Power, Proxy, and the People Caught in Between

The Western Hemisphere is entering a new and dangerous phase of global rivalry—one shaped by old imperial habits, new economic pressures, and resurgent great-power maneuvering. From Washington to Beijing to Caracas, political leaders are escalating tensions over Venezuela’s future, reviving a familiar script in which Latin America becomes the proving ground for foreign powers and a pressure cooker for working-class people who have no say in the geopolitical games unfolding above them.

What looks like a confrontation over oil, governance, or regional security is better understood as a collision of neoliberal extraction, colonial legacies, and competing empires, each claiming moral authority while pursuing strategic advantage. In this moment, it is essential to remember what history shows again and again: ordinary people—soldiers, students, workers—pay the highest price for elite ambitions.

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A Long Shadow: U.S. Intervention in Latin America Since the 1890s

The U.S. role in Latin America cannot be separated from its imperial foundations. Over more than a century, Washington has repeatedly intervened—militarily, covertly, and financially—to shape political outcomes in the region:

• 1898–1934: The “Banana Wars.” U.S. Marines were deployed throughout the Caribbean and Central America to secure plantations, protect U.S. investors, and maintain favorable governments in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Honduras.

• 1954: Guatemala. The CIA overthrew democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz after he challenged United Fruit Company landholdings.

• 1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion. A failed U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

• 1973: Chile. U.S. support for the coup against Salvador Allende ushered in the Pinochet dictatorship and a laboratory for neoliberal economics.

• 1980s: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala. Funding death squads, supporting Contra rebels, and fueling civil wars that killed hundreds of thousands.

• 1989: Panama. A full-scale U.S. invasion to remove Manuel Noriega, with civilian casualties in the thousands.

• 2002: Venezuela. U.S. officials supported the brief coup against Hugo Chávez.

• 2020s: Economic warfare continues. Sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and support for factions opposing Nicolás Maduro all sustain a long-running pressure campaign.

This is not ancient history. It is the operating system of U.S. hemispheric influence.

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China’s Expanding Soft Power and Strategic Positioning

While the U.S. escalates military signaling toward Venezuela, China is expanding soft power, economic influence, and political relationships throughout Latin America—including with Venezuela. Beijing’s strategy is centered not on direct military confrontation but on long-term infrastructure, trade, and diplomatic partnerships designed to reduce U.S. dominance.

Recent statements from Beijing underscore this shift. Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly backed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, describing China and Venezuela as “intimate friends” as the U.S. intensifies military pressure in the region. China’s role extends beyond rhetoric: loans, technology transfers, energy investments, and political support form a web of influence that counters U.S. objectives.

This is the new terrain: the U.S. leaning on sanctions and military posture, China leveraging soft power and strategic alliances.

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Russia as a Third Power in the Hemisphere

Any honest assessment of the current geopolitical climate must include Russia, which has expanded its presence in Latin America as part of its broader campaign to counter U.S. power globally. Moscow has supplied Venezuela with military equipment, intelligence support, cybersecurity assistance, and diplomatic cover at the United Nations. It has strengthened ties with Nicaragua, Cuba, and other governments willing to challenge U.S. regional dominance.

Russia’s involvement is not ideological; it is strategic. It seeks to weaken Washington’s influence, create leverage in distant theaters, and embed itself in the Western Hemisphere without deploying large-scale military forces. Where China builds infrastructure and invests billions, Russia plays the spoiler: complicating U.S. policy, reinforcing embattled leaders when convenient, and offering an alternative to nations seeking to escape U.S. hegemony.

The result is a crowded geopolitical arena in which Venezuela becomes not just a domestic crisis but a theater for multipolar contention, shaped by three major powers with very different tools and interests.

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Neoliberalism, Colonialism, and the Repeating Pattern

Viewed in historical context, today’s crisis is simply the newest iteration of a long-standing pattern:

1. Colonial logics justify intervention. The idea that Washington must “manage” or “stabilize” Latin America recycles the paternalism of earlier eras.

2. Neoliberal extraction drives policy. Control over energy resources, access to markets, and geopolitical leverage matter more than democracy or human well-being.

3. Foreign powers treat the region as a chessboard. The U.S., China, and Russia approach Latin America not as sovereign equals but as terrain for influence.

4. People—not governments—bear the cost. Sanctions devastate civilians. Military escalations breed proxy conflicts. Migration pressures rise. And working-class youth are recruited to fight battles that are not theirs.

This is why today’s developments must be understood as part of a wider global system that treats nations in the Global South as resources to exploit and battlegrounds to dominate.

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A Warning for Those Considering Enlistment or ROTC

In moments like this, the pressure on young people—especially working-class youth—to join the military increases. Recruiters frame conflict as opportunity: tuition money, job training, patriotism, adventure, or stability. But the truth is starker and more political.

Muhammad Ali’s stance during the Vietnam War remains profoundly relevant today. He refused the draft, famously stating that the Vietnamese “never called me [a slur]” and declaring that he would not fight a war of conquest against people who had done him no harm.

The same logic applies to today’s geopolitical brinkmanship. Young Americans are asked to risk their lives in conflicts that protect corporate interests, reinforce imperial ambitions, and escalate global tensions. Venezuelan workers, Chinese workers, Russian workers, and U.S. workers are not enemies. They are casualties-in-waiting of decisions made by governments and corporations insulated from the consequences of their actions.

Before enlisting—or joining ROTC—young people deserve to understand the historical cycle they may be pulled into. Wars in Latin America, proxy or direct, have never served the interests of everyday people. They serve empires.

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Sources

• Firstpost. “Xi Backs Maduro, Calls China and Venezuela ‘Intimate Friends’ as Trump Steps Up Military Pressure.”

• Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism

• Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine

• Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change

• U.S. Congressional Research Service reports on U.S. policy in Venezuela and China-Latin America relations

• UN Human Rights Council documentation on sanctions and civilian impact

America Under Fire: Political Violence, Systemic Oppression, and the Role of Higher Education

The ambush shooting of two National Guardsmen near the White House on November 27, 2025, by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, is the latest in a growing wave of politically motivated violence that has engulfed the United States since 2024. Lakanwal opened fire on uniformed service members stationed for heightened security, wounding both. Federal authorities are investigating whether ideological motives drove the attack, which comes against a backdrop of escalating domestic and international tensions. This ambush cannot be understood in isolation. It is part of a larger pattern of domestic political violence that has claimed lives across ideological lines. 

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University during a campus event in September 2025. Minnesota state representative Mary Carlson and her husband were murdered in their home by a man impersonating law enforcement, while a state senator and spouse were injured in the same spree. Governor Josh Shapiro survived an arson attack on his residence earlier this year. Even Donald Trump was the target of an assassination attempt in July 2024. Added to this grim tally are incidents such as the 2025 Manhattan mass shooting, in which young professionals, including two Jewish women, Julia Hyman and Wesley LePatner, were killed, and the Luigi Mangione case, in which a former student allegedly killed a corporate executive in New York. Together, these incidents reveal a nation in which lethal violence increasingly intersects with politics, identity, and ideology.

The domestic escalation of violence cannot be separated from broader structures of oppression. Migrants and asylum seekers face detention, family separation, and deportation under the authority of ICE, often in conditions described as inhumane, creating fear and vulnerability among refugee communities. Routine encounters with law enforcement disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other marginalized communities. Excessive force and lethal policing add to communal distrust, reinforcing perceptions that violence is a sanctioned tool of the state. Political rhetoric compounds the problem. President Trump and other political leaders have repeatedly framed immigrants, political opponents, and even students as threats to national security, implicitly legitimizing aggressive responses and providing fodder for extremist actors.

The domestic situation is further complicated by U.S. foreign policy, which has often contributed to global instability while modeling the use of violence as an instrument of governance. In Palestine, military aid to Israel coincides with attacks on civilians and infrastructure that human-rights organizations describe as ethnic cleansing or genocide. In Venezuela, U.S. sanctions, threats, and proxy operations have intensified humanitarian crises and political instability. Complicity with the governments of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Russia enables human-rights abuses abroad while emboldening domestic actors who mimic state-sanctioned violence. These global policies reverberate at home, influencing public discourse, shaping extremist narratives, and creating a climate in which political and ideological violence is increasingly normalized.

Higher education sits at the nexus of these domestic and global pressures. Universities and colleges are not merely observers; they are active participants and, in some cases, victims. The assassination of Charlie Kirk on a campus underscores that institutions of learning are no longer insulated from lethal political conflict. Alumni, recent graduates, and professionals—such as the victims of the Manhattan shooting—are affected even after leaving school, revealing how closely academic networks intersect with broader societal risks. International and refugee students, particularly from Afghan and Middle Eastern communities, face heightened anxiety due to restrictive immigration policies, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the real threat of violence. Faculty teaching topics related to immigration, race, U.S. foreign policy, or genocide are increasingly targeted by harassment, threats, and institutional pressures that suppress academic freedom. The cumulative stress of political violence, systemic oppression, and global conflicts creates trauma that universities must address comprehensively, both for students and faculty.

Higher education cannot prevent every act of violence, nor can it resolve the nation’s deep political fractures. But it can model ethical and civic engagement, defending inquiry and speech without succumbing to fear or political pressure. It can extend support to vulnerable communities, promote critical thinking about the domestic roots of political violence and the consequences of U.S. foreign policy, and foster ethical reflection that counters the normalization of aggression. Silence or passivity risks complicity. Universities must recognize that the threats affecting campuses, alumni, and students are interconnected with broader systems of power and oppression, both domestic and global.

From the White House ambush to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, from the Minnesota legislators’ murders to the Manhattan mass shooting, from Luigi Mangione’s high-profile killing to systemic violence enforced through ICE and police overreach, and amid the influence of incendiary political rhetoric and U.S. complicity in violence abroad, the United States is experiencing an unprecedented convergence of domestic and international pressures. Higher education sits at the center of these converging forces, and how it responds will shape not only campus safety and academic freedom but also the broader civic health of the nation. The challenge is immense: to uphold democratic values, protect communities, and educate students in a society increasingly defined by fear, extremism, and violence.

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Sources

Reuters. “FBI probes gunman’s motives in ambush shooting of Guardsmen near White House.” The Guardian. Coverage on suspect identification and political reaction. AP News. Statements by national leaders following attacks. Washington Post. Analysis of domestic violent extremism and political violence trends. People Magazine. Reporting on Minnesota legislator assassination. NBC/AP. Statements by Gov. Josh Shapiro after Charlie Kirk’s killing. Utah Valley University and local ABC/Fox affiliates on the Kirk shooting. Jewish Journal, ABC7NY. Coverage of Manhattan mass shooting and Jewish victims. Reuters. Luigi Mangione case and court proceedings. Human Rights Watch / Amnesty International reports on Palestine, Venezuela, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. Brookings Institute. Analysis of political violence and domestic extremism. CSIS. “Domestic Extremism and Political Violence in the United States.”

The Mis-education of Global Elites

For generations, global elites have been positioned—socially, politically, financially—as the people best equipped to shape a better world. They have had the resources to eliminate poverty, curb climate catastrophe, restrain war, expand healthcare, reform universities, and make democratic participation meaningful. Instead, the world they have built is defined by widening inequality, ecological collapse, and a global crisis of legitimacy. Their failure is not accidental. It is the product of a profound mis-education: a system that trains elites not in stewardship or solidarity, but in domination, extraction, and self-preservation.

Across the United States, the U.K., Europe, and increasingly the Gulf States and East Asia, elite education has become a finishing school for rulers rather than a training ground for genuine public servants. These institutions—rich in endowment, selective in admission, steeped in prestige—construct worldviews that normalize inequity as efficiency, privatization as innovation, and austerity as necessity. Instead of interrogating the historical and structural forces that produce suffering, elite curricula often neutralize them, reducing political economy to management science and social justice to branding.

This mis-education manifests in global leadership failures. The same graduates who enter parliaments, presidential cabinets, central banks, multinational boards, and international NGOs routinely oversee policies that accelerate inequality and erode the public sphere. Many come from universities with unparalleled research capacity and moral rhetoric, yet preside over housing crises, medical debt catastrophes, and planetary degradation. They authorize wars but rarely experience them. They tout meritocracy while gatekeeping opportunity. They celebrate entrepreneurship while dismantling public goods. Their philanthropic initiatives—often built from profits derived through tax avoidance, monopolization, and labor exploitation—give the appearance of benevolence without altering the underlying systems of harm.

Carter G. Woodson’s warning in The Mis-education of the Negro echoes eerily here: “When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.” Global elites, educated into a narrow ideology that glorifies markets and hierarchy, do not need to be coerced into maintaining destructive systems—they do so voluntarily, believing themselves enlightened.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the corporate education complex itself. Elite universities produce the analysts who rationalize austerity, the managers who coordinate privatization, the consultants who reengineer public institutions to mimic corporations, and the financiers who define the metrics of success. They also cultivate the ideological insulation that shields elites from accountability. When their policies trigger chaos, the explanation is never structural, only technical: markets corrected, externalities emerged, populists disrupted stability. The mis-education of elites ensures they cannot see failure as their own.

Global institutions—from the IMF and World Bank to the UN and WTO—have mirrored this mindset. Their leaders, mostly trained in the same corridors of prestige, have promoted development models that prioritize capital mobility over community well-being, and foreign investment over local sovereignty. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence that structural adjustment, privatized healthcare, or financialization intensify human suffering, the elite worldview persists. The inability—or unwillingness—to imagine alternative systems is not an intellectual deficiency but the logical outcome of an education designed to reproduce power, not challenge it.

Meanwhile, those most affected by global crises—workers, migrants, debtors, students, the poor—are told to adapt, innovate, or sacrifice. They are bombarded with entrepreneurial rhetoric and resilience talk while their material conditions worsen. Political leaders lament social fragmentation but continue to funnel wealth upward. University administrators speak of inclusion while expanding administrative hierarchies and outsourcing labor. Energy executives promise transitions while drilling new pipelines. Tech CEOs warn about misinformation while building the infrastructure that spreads it.

The result is a world where the legitimacy of elites is evaporating. From Santiago to Paris, Lagos to Minneapolis, Delhi to London, mass movements are demanding accountability from institutions that have proven incapable of self-reform. The global backlash against inequality, authoritarianism, and corporate hegemony is not a misunderstanding—it is a recognition that the systems run by elites have failed.

If there is to be a better world, the mis-education of elites must be confronted directly. That means transforming the mission of universities from prestige accumulation to public purpose; replacing managerialism with democratic governance; centering histories of resistance rather than merely histories of empire; teaching economic justice instead of market worship; and training leaders who measure success not by shareholder value or rankings but by human flourishing.

Elites have long claimed exclusive expertise in solving the world’s problems. They have had centuries—and trillions—to prove it. They have failed miserably. A new generation of thinkers, activists, workers, and communities is already building the alternatives. Whether global elites choose to learn from them—or continue along their well-worn path of extraction and denial—will determine the next century.

For now, the record is clear: the institutions that shaped the world’s most powerful people were never designed to create justice. And they haven’t.

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Academic Sources

Baldwin, Davarian L. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. Bold Type Books, 2021.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Stanford University Press, 1996.
Giroux, Henry A. Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education. Haymarket Books, 2014.
Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Khan, Shamus Rahman. Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton University Press, 2011.
Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. Oxford University Press, 1956.
Mkandawire, Thandika. “Institutional Monocropping and Monotasking in Africa.” UNRISD, 2007.
Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology. Harvard University Press, 2020.
Saul, John Ralston. Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West. Free Press, 1992.
Sklair, Leslie. The Transnational Capitalist Class. Wiley-Blackwell, 2000.
Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited. W.W. Norton, 2017.
Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-education of the Negro. Associated Publishers, 1933.

Remembering SNCC and CORE

To remember CORE (est. 1942 in Chicago) and SNCC (est. 1960) is to remember a democracy built not by elites but by everyday people—students, sharecroppers, domestic workers, bus drivers, teachers, and the poor and working class across the Jim Crow South and the segregated North. It is to remember Ella Baker’s wisdom, Diane Nash’s determination, Bob Moses’s quiet power, Fannie Lou Hamer’s moral force, James Farmer’s strategic brilliance—and also the thousands of unnamed organizers who risked everything without ever appearing in a textbook, a documentary, or a university lecture hall. Their names may not be widely known, but their work forms the backbone of the freedom struggle.

CORE and SNCC and were never celebrity movements. They were people-powered, grassroots engines of democracy. They were built by individuals who knocked on doors in rural counties where Black voter registration hovered near zero; who faced armed sheriffs, Klan mobs, and white citizens’ councils; who farmed during the day and attended movement meetings at night; who ferried activists to safe houses; who housed Freedom Riders despite threats of arson and lynching; who cooked for mass meetings; who walked into county courthouses where their presence alone was an act of political defiance. These unnamed contributors shaped history as much as the well-known leaders, and their invisibility in public memory is itself a measure of how selectively the United States remembers the struggle for justice.

Ella Baker insisted from the beginning that the movement’s strength rested in ordinary people discovering their own power. That is why she pushed for “group-centered leadership,” refusing the myth that liberation depends on a single, heroic figure. Her practice of listening deeply—and her belief that the least recognized people held the deepest wisdom—permeated SNCC’s organizing culture. It is a challenge to institutions today, especially universities that still cling to hierarchical models of governance and expertise.

CORE’s early commitment to interracial, nonviolent direct action emerged from a similar belief in collective action. Its activists—people like James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, and George Houser—helped introduce the tactics that would soon reverberate across the nation: sit-ins, freedom rides, boycotts, and jail-ins. CORE’s work in northern cities also exposed the hypocrisy of institutions—including universities—that claimed moral high ground while upholding segregation in housing, employment, and policing.

SNCC’s field secretaries—Charles McDew, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, and Prathia Hall, and so many others—did work that higher education still struggles to fully comprehend. Their organizing went far beyond protest; it involved listening to community elders, teaching literacy classes, building independent political organizations, challenging disenfranchisement at every level, and nurturing local leadership. Behind each of those actions were dozens of unnamed individuals who opened their homes, shared their limited resources, and stood guard against retaliation.

Remembering the unnamed is not sentimental. It is foundational. The freedom struggle was sustained by people whose names were never printed, whose stories never made the evening news, and whose families bore the consequences. Many were fired from their jobs, evicted from their homes, or harassed by police. Some disappeared from public life after the movement years, carrying trauma with little public recognition or support. Their sacrifices made the Civil Rights Movement possible, and higher education owes them a debt it has never acknowledged.

Today’s universities still wrestle with the structures the movement confronted: racialized inequality, policing, surveillance, donor influence, and hierarchical authority. Many of the same dynamics SNCC and CORE challenged—white paternalism, economic exploitation, authoritarian governance—are alive in campus politics and in the broader “college meltdown,” where austerity, privatization, and predatory actors erode public trust and opportunity.

To honor SNCC, CORE, and the thousands of unnamed organizers is to affirm that democracy emerges from the ground up. It means recognizing that real change requires more than symbolic gestures or PR-friendly “initiatives.” It demands revisiting Ella Baker’s core insight: strong people do not need strong leaders—they need structures that cultivate collective power.

Remembering them means acknowledging that the freedoms we now take for granted—voting rights, desegregation, access to education—were won not by institutions, but by people who challenged institutions. And it means seeing the present clearly: that grassroots organizing, from campus movements to community struggles, remains essential to confronting the crises of inequality, debt, climate, surveillance, and governance that define our era.

To remember SNCC and CORE is to remember not just the famous, but the countless unnamed: the hosts, the watchers, the singers, the marchers, the jailmates, the caretakers, the strategists, the frightened but determined teenagers, the elders who said “yes,” and the ones who insisted that freedom was worth the risk. Their legacy is the true measure of democracy—and a guide for what higher education must become if it is to serve justice rather than power.

Sources
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s.
Thomas F. Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice.
Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle.
James Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement.
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years.
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.
Danielle L. McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street.
SNCC Digital Gateway, Duke University.

America’s Creepiest College Presidents

Across the United States, a quiet but unmistakable chill has settled over many college campuses. It isn’t the weather. It’s the behavior of a particular class of leaders—the college presidents whose decisions, priorities, and public personas have begun to feel, for lack of a better word, creepy. Not criminal, necessarily. Not always abusive in the legal sense. Just profoundly unsettling in ways that undermine trust, erode shared governance, and push higher education further into the shadows of authoritarianism and corporate capture.

This piece introduces criteria for what makes a college president “creepy,” highlights examples of the types of leaders who fit the mold, and invites reader feedback to build a more accountable public record.

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Criteria for a “Creepy” College President

“Creepy” here is not about personality quirks. It’s about behavior, power, and material consequences. Based on the reporting and analysis at HEI, we propose the following criteria:

1. First Amendment Hostility

Presidents who suppress speech, restrict student journalism, punish dissent, or hide behind overbroad “time, place, and manner” rules fall squarely into this category. The creepiness intensifies when universities hire outside PR firms or surveillance contractors to monitor campus critics, including students and faculty.

2. Student Rights Violations

Presidents who treat students as risks rather than people, who hide data on assaults, who enable over-policing by campus security, or who weaponize conduct codes to silence protest movements—from Palestine solidarity groups to climate activists—fit the profile.

3. Civil Rights Erosion

Administrators who undermine Title IX protections, retaliate against whistleblowers, protect abusive coaches, or ignore discrimination complaints are not just negligent—they’re institutionally creepy. Their public statements about “inclusion” often ring hollow when compared with their actions behind closed doors.

4. Worker Rights Suppression

Union busting. Outsourcing. Wage stagnation. Anti-transparency tactics. Presidents who preach community while crushing collective bargaining efforts, freezing staff pay, or firing outspoken employees through “restructuring” deserve a place on any such list.

5. Climate Denial or Delay

Presidents who sign glossy climate pledges yet continue fossil-fuel investments, partner with extractive corporations, or suppress environmental activism on campus epitomize a uniquely twenty-first-century creepiness: a willingness to sacrifice future generations to maintain donor relationships and boardroom comfort.

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Examples: The Multi-Modal Creep Typology

Rather than name only individuals—something readers can help expand—we outline several recognizable types. These composites reflect the emerging patterns seen across U.S. higher education.

The Surveillance Chancellor

Obsessed with “campus safety,” this president quietly expands the university’s security apparatus: license plate readers at entrances, contracts with predictive-policing vendors, facial recognition “pilots,” and backdoor relationships with state or federal agencies. Their speeches emphasize “community,” but their emails say “monitoring.”

The Union-Busting Visionary

This leader talks the language of innovation and social mobility while hiring anti-union law firms to intimidate graduate workers and dining staff. Their glossy strategic plans promise “belonging,” but their HR memos rewrite job classifications to avoid paying benefits.

The Donor-Driven Speech Regulator

Terrified of upsetting trustees, corporate sponsors, or wealthy alumni, this president cracks down on student protests, bans certain speakers, or manipulates disciplinary procedures to neutralize campus activism. They invoke “civility” while undermining the First Amendment.

The DEI-Washing Chief Executive

This president loves diversity statements—for marketing. Meanwhile, they ignore racial harassment complaints, target outspoken faculty of color, or cut ethnic studies under the guise of “realignment.” Their commitment to equity is perfectly proportional to the next accreditation review.

The Climate Hypocrite

At Earth Day, they pose with solar panels. In the boardroom, they argue that divesting from fossil fuels is “unrealistic.” Student climate groups often face administrative smothering, and sustainability staffers are rotated out when they ask uncomfortable questions.

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Why “Creepiness” Matters

Creepy leaders normalize:

• an erosion of democratic rights on campus,

• the quiet expansion of surveillance,

• the targeting of vulnerable students and workers, and

• a form of managerial governance that undermines the public purpose of higher education.

Higher education is supposed to be a refuge for inquiry, dissent, creativity, and collective imagination. Presidents who govern through fear—whether subtle or overt—pose a deeper threat than those who merely mismanage budgets. They hollow out the civic core of academic life.

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A Call for Reader Feedback

HEI is building a more comprehensive and accountable registry of America’s Creepiest College Presidents, and we want your help.

• Who on your campus fits these criteria?

• Which presidents (past or present) deserve examination?

• What specific stories, patterns, or documents should be highlighted?

• What additional criteria should be added for future reporting?

Send your confidential tips, analyses, and suggestions. Together, we can shine light into administrative corners that have remained dark for far too long.

Higher Education Inquirer welcomes further input and encourages readers to share this article with colleagues, student groups, labor organizers, and university newspapers.

Generation Z and the Fractured American Dream: Class Divide, Debt, and the Search for a Future

For Generation Z, the old story of social mobility—study hard, go to college, work your way up—has lost its certainty. The class divide that once seemed bridgeable through education now feels entrenched, as debt, precarious work, and economic volatility blur the promise of progress.

The new economy—dominated by artificial intelligence, speculative assets like cryptocurrency, and inflated housing markets—has not delivered stability for most. Instead, it’s widened gaps between those who own and those who owe. Many young Americans feel locked out of wealth-building entirely. Some have turned to riskier bets—digital assets, gig work, or start-ups powered by AI tools—to chase opportunities that traditional institutions no longer provide. Others have succumbed to despair. Suicide rates among young adults have climbed sharply in recent years, correlating with financial stress, debt, and social isolation.

And echoing through this uncertain landscape is a song that first rose from the coalfields of Kentucky during the Great Depression—Florence Reece’s 1931 protest hymn, “Which Side Are You On?”

Come all you good workers,
Good news to you I’ll tell,
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell.

Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

Nearly a century later, those verses feel newly urgent—because Gen Z is again being forced to pick a side: between solidarity and survival, between reforming a broken system or resigning themselves to it.

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The Class Divide and the Broken Ladder
Despite record levels of education, Gen Z faces limited social mobility. College remains a class marker, not an equalizer. Students from affluent families attend better-funded universities, graduate on time, and often receive help with housing or job placement. Working-class and first-generation students, meanwhile, navigate under-resourced campuses, heavier debt, and weaker professional networks.

The Pew Research Center found that first-generation college graduates have nearly $100,000 less in median wealth than peers whose parents also hold degrees. For many, the degree no longer guarantees a secure foothold in the middle class—it simply delays financial independence.

They say in Harlan County,
There are no neutrals there,
You’ll either be a union man,
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

The metaphor still fits: there are no neutrals in the modern class struggle over debt, housing, and automation.

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Debt, Doubt, and the New Normal
Gen Z borrowers owe an average of around $23,000 in student loans, a figure growing faster than any other generation’s debt load. Over half regret taking on those loans. Many delay buying homes, having children, or even seeking medical care. Those who drop out without degrees are burdened with debt and little to show for it.

The debt-based model has become a defining feature of American life—especially for the working class. The price of entry to a better future is borrowing against one’s own.

Don’t scab for the bosses,
Don’t listen to their lies,
Us poor folks haven’t got a chance
Unless we organize.

If Reece’s song once called miners to unionize against coal barons, its spirit now calls borrowers, renters, adjuncts, and gig workers to collective resistance against financial systems that profit from their precarity.

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AI and the Erosion of Work
Artificial intelligence promises efficiency, but it also threatens to hollow out the entry-level job market Gen Z depends on. Automation in journalism, design, law, and customer service cuts off rungs of the career ladder just as young workers reach for them.

While elite graduates may move into roles that supervise or profit from AI, working-class Gen Zers are more likely to face displacement. AI amplifies the class divide: it rewards those who already have capital, coding skills, or connections—and sidelines those who don’t.

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Crypto Dreams and Financial Desperation
Locked out of traditional wealth paths, many young people turned to cryptocurrency during the pandemic. Platforms like Robinhood and Coinbase promised quick gains and independence from the “rigged” economy. But when crypto markets crashed in 2022, billions in speculative wealth evaporated. Some who had borrowed or used student loan refunds to invest lost everything.

Online forums chronicled not only the financial losses but also the psychological fallout—stories of panic, shame, and in some tragic cases, suicide. The new “digital gold rush” became another mechanism for transferring wealth upward.

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The Real Estate Wall
While digital markets rise and fall, real estate remains the ultimate symbol of exclusion. Home prices have climbed over 40 percent since 2020, while mortgage rates hover near 8 percent. For most of Gen Z, ownership is out of reach.

Older generations built equity through housing; Gen Z rents indefinitely, enriching landlords and institutional investors. Without intergenerational help, the “starter home” has become a myth. In America’s new class order, those who inherit property inherit mobility.

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Despair and the Silent Crisis
Behind the data lies a mental health emergency. The CDC reports that suicide among Americans aged 10–24 has risen nearly 60 percent in the past decade. Economic precarity, debt, housing insecurity, and climate anxiety all contribute.

Therapists describe “financial trauma” as a defining condition for Gen Z—chronic anxiety rooted in systemic instability. Universities respond with mindfulness workshops, but few confront the deeper issue: a society that privatized risk and monetized hope.

They say in Harlan County,
There are no neutrals there—
Which side are you on, my people,
Which side are you on?

The question lingers like a challenge to policymakers, educators, and investors alike.

---

A Two-Tier Future
Today’s economy is splitting into two distinct realities:

• The secure class, buffered by family wealth, education, AI-driven income, and real estate assets.

• The precarious class, burdened by loans, high rents, unstable work, and psychological strain.

The supposed democratization of opportunity through technology and education has in practice entrenched a new feudalism—one coded in algorithms and contracts instead of coal and steel.

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Repairing the System, Not the Student
For Generation Z, the American Dream has become a high-interest loan. Education, technology, and financial innovation—once tools of liberation—now function as instruments of control.

Reforming higher education is necessary, but not sufficient. The deeper work lies in redistributing power: capping predatory interest rates, investing in affordable housing, curbing speculative bubbles, ensuring that AI’s gains benefit labor as well as capital, and confronting the mental health crisis that shadows all of it.

Florence Reece’s song endures because its question has never been answered—only updated. As Gen Z stands at the intersection of debt and digital capitalism, that question rings louder than ever:

Which side are you on?

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Sources

• Florence Reece, “Which Side Are You On?” (1931).

• Pew Research Center, “First-Generation College Graduates Lag Behind Their Peers on Key Economic Outcomes,” 2021.

• Dēmos, The Debt Divide: How Student Debt Impacts Opportunities for Black and White Borrowers, 2016.

• EducationData.org, “Student Loan Debt by Generation,” 2024.

• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Gen Z Student Debt and Wealth Data Brief, 2022.

• CNBC, “Gen Z vs. Their Parents: How the Generations Stack Up Financially,” 2024.

• WUSF, “Generation Z’s Net Worth Is Being Undercut by College Debt,” 2024.

• Newsweek, “Student Loan Update: Gen Z Hit with Highest Payments,” 2024.

• The Kaplan Group, “How Student Debt Is Locking Millennials and Gen Z Out of Homeownership,” 2024.

• CDC, Suicide Mortality in the United States, 2001–2022, National Center for Health Statistics, 2023.

• Brookings Institution, “The Impact of AI on Labor Markets: Inequality and Automation,” 2024.

• CNBC, “Crypto Crash Wipes Out Billions in Investor Wealth, Gen Z Most Exposed,” 2023.

• Zillow, “U.S. Housing Affordability Reaches Lowest Point Since 1989,” 2024.

"Peak Higher Education" Book Debuts January 6, 2026 (Bryan Alexander)

Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Looming Academic Crisis by Bryan Alexander debuts January 6, 2026.  Here's a synopsis. 

Over the past decade, American colleges and universities have seen enrollment decline, campuses close, programs cut, faculty and staff laid off, and public confidence erode. In Peak Higher Ed, futurist Bryan Alexander forecasts what the next decade might hold if we continue down this path. He argues that the United States has passed its high-water mark for postsecondary education and now faces a critical turning point. How will higher ed institutions respond to this wave of change and crisis?

Combining data-driven research with scenario modeling, Alexander outlines a powerful framework for understanding what led to this moment: declining birthrates, surging student debt, rising tuition, shifting political winds, and growing skepticism about the value of a college degree. He maps out how these forces, if left unchecked, could continue to reshape academia by shrinking its footprint, narrowing its mission, and jeopardizing its role in addressing the planet's most pressing challenges, from climate change to artificial intelligence. Alexander explores how institutions might adapt or recover, presenting two possible futures: a path of managed descent and a more hopeful course of reinvention.

Peak Higher Ed examines the fraying of the "college for all" consensus, the long shadow of pandemic-era disruptions, and the political polarization that has placed universities in the crosshairs. Written for educators, policymakers, students, and anyone invested in the future of higher learning, this book offers a deeply informed, unflinching look at the road ahead and the choices that will determine whether colleges and universities retreat from their peak or rise to a new one.

The College Meltdown: A Retrospective

[In 2017, we collaborated with Crush the Street on a video describing the College Meltdown.]  

“Education is not merely a credentialing system; it is a humanizing act that fosters connection, purpose, and community.”

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Origins

The College Meltdown began in the mid-2010s as a blog chronicling the slow collapse of U.S. higher education. Rising tuition, mounting student debt, and corporatization were visible signs, but the deeper crisis was structural: the erosion of public accountability and mission.

By 2015, the warning signs were unmistakable to us. On some campuses, student spaces were closed to host corporate “best practices” conferences. At many schools, adjunct instructors carried the bulk of teaching responsibilities, often without benefits, while administrators celebrated innovation. Higher education was quietly being reshaped to benefit corporations over students and communities — a true meltdown.

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Patterns of the Meltdown

Enrollment in U.S. colleges began declining as early as 2011, reflecting broader demographic shifts: fewer children entering the system and a growing population of older adults. Small colleges, community colleges, and regional public universities were hardest hit, while flagship institutions consolidated wealth and prestige.

Corporate intermediaries known as Online Program Managers (OPMs) managed recruitment, marketing, and course design, taking large portions of tuition while universities retained risk. Fully automated robocolleges emerged, relying on AI-driven templates, predictive analytics, and outsourced grading. While efficient, these systems dehumanized education: students became data points, faculty became monitors, and mentorship disappeared.

“Robocolleges and AI-driven systems reduce humans to data points — an education stripped of connection is no education at all.”

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Feeding the AI Beast

As part of our effort to reclaim knowledge and influence public discourse, we actively contributed to Wikipedia. Over the years, we made more than 12,000 edits on higher education topics, ensuring accurate documentation of predatory practices, adjunct labor, OPMs, and corporatization. These edits both informed the public and, inadvertently, fed the AI beast — large language models and AI systems that scrape Wikipedia for training data now reflect our work, amplifying it in ways we could never have predicted.

“By documenting higher education rigorously, we shaped both public knowledge and the datasets powering AI systems — turning transparency into a tool of influence.”

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Anxiety, Anomie, and Alienation

The College Meltdown documented the mental health toll of these transformations. Rising anxiety, feelings of anomie, and widespread alienation were linked to AI reliance, dehumanized classrooms, insecure faculty labor, and societal pressures. Students felt like credential seekers; faculty suffered burnout.

“Addressing the psychological and social effects of dehumanized education is essential for ethical recovery.”

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Trump, Anti-Intellectualism, and Fear in the Era of Neoliberalism

The project also addressed the broader political and social climate. The Trump era brought rising anti-intellectualism, skepticism toward expertise, and a celebration of market logic over civic and moral education. For many, it was an era of fear: fear of surveillance, fear of litigation, fear of being marginalized in a rapidly corporatized, AI-driven educational system. Neoliberal policies exacerbated these pressures, emphasizing privatization, metrics, and competition over community and care.

“Living under Trump-era neoliberalism, with AI monitoring, corporate oversight, and mass surveillance, education became a space of anxiety as much as learning.”

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Quality of Life and the Call for Rehumanization

Education should serve human well-being, not just revenue. The blog emphasized Quality of Life and advocated for Rehumanization — restoring mentorship, personal connection, and ethical engagement.

“Rehumanization is not a luxury; it is the foundation of meaningful learning.”

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FOIA Requests and Whistleblowers

From the start, The College Meltdown relied on evidence-based reporting. FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests were used to obtain internal communications, budgets, and regulatory filings, shining light on opaque practices. Whistleblowers, including adjunct faculty and staff at universities and OPMs, provided firsthand testimony of misconduct, financial malfeasance, and educational dehumanization. Their courage was central to the project’s mission of transparency and accountability.

“Insider testimony and public records revealed the hidden forces reshaping higher education, from corporate influence to predatory practices.”

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Historical Sociology: Understanding the Systemic Collapse

The importance of historical sociology cannot be overstated in analyzing the decline of higher education. By examining the evolution of educational systems, we can identify patterns of inequality, the concentration of power, and the commodification of knowledge. Historical sociology provides the tools to understand how past decisions and structures have led to the current crisis.

“Historical sociology reveals, defines, and formulates patterns of social development, helping us understand the systemic forces at play in education.”

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Naming Bad Actors: Accountability and Reform

A critical aspect of The College Meltdown was the emphasis on naming bad actors — identifying and holding accountable those responsible for the exploitation and degradation of higher education. This included:

• University Administrators: Prioritizing profit over pedagogy.

• Corporate Entities: Robocolleges and OPMs profiting at the expense of educational quality.

• Political Figures and Ultraconservatives: Promoting policies that undermined public education and anti-intellectualism.

“Holding bad actors accountable is essential for meaningful reform and the restoration of education's ethical purpose.”

[In 2016, we called out several bad actors in for-profit higher education, including CEOs Jack Massimino, Kevin Modany, and Todd Nelson.] 

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Existential Aspects of Climate Change

The blog also examined the existential dimensions of climate change. Students and faculty face a dual challenge: preparing for uncertain futures while witnessing environmental degradation accelerate. Higher education itself is implicated, both as a contributor through consumption and as a forum for solutions. The looming climate crisis intensifies anxiety, alienation, and the urgency for ethical, human-centered education.

“Climate change makes the stakes of education existential: our survival, our knowledge, and our moral responsibility are intertwined.”

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Mass Speculation and Financialization

Another critical theme explored was mass speculation and financialization. The expansion of student debt markets, tuition-backed bonds, and corporate investments in higher education transformed students into financial instruments. These speculative dynamics mirrored broader economic instability, creating both a moral and systemic crisis for the educational sector.

“When education becomes a commodity for speculation, learning, mentorship, and ethical development are subordinated to profit and risk metrics.”

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Coverage of Protests and Nonviolent Resistance

The College Meltdown documented student and faculty resistance: tuition protests, adjunct labor actions, and campaigns against predatory OPM arrangements. Nonviolent action was central: teach-ins, sit-ins, and organized campaigns demonstrated moral authority and communal solidarity in the face of systemic pressures, litigation, and corporate intimidation.

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Collaboration and Resistance

Glen McGhee provided exceptional guidance, connecting insights on systemic collapse, inequality, and credential inflation. Guest authors contributed across disciplines and movements, making the blog a living archive of accountability and solidarity:

Guest Contributors:
Bryan Alexander, Ann Bowers, James Michael Brodie, Randall Collins, Garrett Fitzgerald, Erica Gallagher, Henry Giroux, David Halperin, Bill Harrington, Phil Hill, Robert Jensen, Hank Kalet, Neil Kraus, the LACCD Whistleblower, Wendy Lynne Lee, Annelise Orleck, Robert Kelchen, Debbi Potts, Jack Metzger, Derek Newton, Gary Roth, Mark Salisbury, Gary Stocker, Harry Targ, Heidi Weber, Richard Wolff, and Helena Worthen.

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Lessons from the Meltdown

The crisis was systemic. Technology amplified inequality. Corporate higher education rebranded rather than reformed. Adjunctification and labor precarity became normalized. Communities of color and working-class students suffered disproportionately.

Dehumanization emerged as a central theme. AI, automation, and robocolleges prioritized efficiency over mentorship, data over dialogue, and systems over human relationships. Rising anxiety, anomie, and alienation reflected the human toll.

“Rehumanization, mentorship, community, transparency, ethical accountability, and ecological awareness are essential to restore meaningful higher education.”

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Looking Forward

As higher education entered the Trump era, its future remained uncertain. Students, faculty, and communities faced fear under neoliberal policies, AI-driven monitoring, mass surveillance, litigation pressures, ultraconservative influence, climate crises, and financial speculation. Will universities reclaim their role as public goods, or continue as commodified services? The College Meltdown stands as a testament to those who resisted dehumanization and anti-intellectualism. It also calls for Quality of Life, ethical practice, mental well-being, environmental responsibility, and Rehumanization, ensuring education serves the whole person, not just the bottom line. 

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Sources and References

• Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid. Doubleday, 2006.

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

• Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Crown, 2010.

• Nelson, Alondra. Body and Soul. University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

• Paucek, Chip. “2U and the Growth of OPMs.” EdSurge, 2021. link

• Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Basic Books, 2010.

• Alexander, Bryan. Academia Next. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

• U.S. Department of Education. “Closed School Information.” 2016–2020. link

• Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Student Debt Statistics, 2024. link

• Wayback Machine Archive of College Meltdown Blog: link