As the nation grapples with profound social and economic inequities, U.S. law schools have become a critical yet overlooked institution in perpetuating these disparities. From shaping the legal minds that go on to influence policy to training future attorneys who occupy the nation's corridors of power, law schools are playing an outsized role in entrenching systems of privilege, rather than dismantling them.
One of the most glaring manifestations of this failure is the Trump-era Supreme Court, whose composition has shifted dramatically due to the influence of elite law schools. Justices such as Brett Kavanaugh (Yale Law), Neil Gorsuch (Harvard Law), and Amy Coney Barrett (Notre Dame Law) have reshaped the Court in the image of conservative ideologies. These justices, primarily from elite institutions, have consistently sided with corporate interests over public welfare. Their rulings on critical issues like voting rights (Shelby County v. Holder, 2013), abortion access (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 2022), and corporate regulation (South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., 2018) have had profound consequences, amplifying inequalities and reducing access to justice for marginalized communities. The legal minds trained in these prestigious law schools have moved away from serving the public, instead reinforcing the status quo and further consolidating power in the hands of the wealthy elite.
This trend is compounded by the overwhelming concentration of law school graduates in a handful of sectors, particularly Washington, D.C., and on Wall Street. A report from the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) reveals that nearly 70% of graduates from top law schools—such as Harvard, Yale, and Columbia—secure positions in large corporate law firms or government roles. Meanwhile, those who enter public service or work in underfunded legal fields such as public defense face a starkly different reality. According to the American Bar Association (ABA), the average starting salary for a public defender in 2020 was around $50,000, compared to $190,000 in major corporate law firms. This disparity highlights the economic realities facing graduates who pursue careers in public interest law.
Law schools exacerbate these inequities through their admissions processes, which heavily favor students from affluent backgrounds. A 2019 study by the Equality of Opportunity Projectfound that 70% of students attending Harvard Law, Yale Law, and other Ivy League law schools come from families in the top 20% income bracket, while less than 5% come from the bottom 20%. This financial divide is perpetuated by high tuition costs—Harvard Law's tuition and fees for the 2024 academic year exceed $70,000 annually—making it inaccessible to many who might otherwise have the talent and potential to succeed in law.
Furthermore, law schools’ connections with corporate sponsors and wealthy alumni networks often shape the curriculum and career pathways offered to students. As a result, legal education has become increasingly oriented toward corporate law, perpetuating a system that values prestige and financial gain over social justice. A 2021 report from the American Bar Foundation indicated that nearly half of law school graduates work in the private sector within the first ten years of their careers, most of them in high-paying corporate firms or lobbying groups, which further concentrates legal power in the hands of the elite.
The oversupply of lawyers entering corporate sectors—many of whom attend the nation’s top law schools—has created a system where elite law firms and government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Justice and major regulatory bodies, dominate legal decision-making. This trend is also visible in the disproportionate representation of law school graduates in Washington, D.C., where they shape policy in ways that benefit large corporations and financial institutions, while leaving the needs of the general public unmet.
A central aspect of the legal system that perpetuates inequality is the way the billionaire class profits from the injustice system itself. Wealthy individuals and corporate entities have found ways to exploit the legal system to their advantage, contributing to the concentration of wealth and power. Many billionaires and large corporations fund legal battles designed to weaken regulations, block labor rights, and influence policy decisions that benefit their financial interests.
For example, major private prison companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group, both of which have ties to influential law firms, profit from the mass incarceration of predominantly Black and Latino individuals. These private companies lobby for harsher sentencing laws and immigration policies that fill their prisons, creating a cycle of profit that thrives on systemic inequality. Legal professionals trained in elite law schools frequently represent these corporations, further entrenching the power dynamics that keep vulnerable populations incarcerated.
The billionaire class also reaps the benefits of legal loopholes and tax avoidance schemes facilitated by top-tier law firms. Lawyers trained in Ivy League schools often advise wealthy clients on ways to hide their assets, evade taxes, and exploit the legal system for personal gain, which further exacerbates income inequality. Law firms and the lawyers who work in them profit immensely by providing these services, while the broader public bears the burden of underfunded social programs and public services.
The impact of law schools’ role in the legal system is not a new development, but has historical roots. For much of U.S. history, the courts and legal institutions have played a pivotal role in limiting democracy and reinforcing inequalities. However, there have been pivotal moments when the courts, often driven by lawyers trained in the nation's top schools, expanded democracy and fought for justice.
A key moment in the history of expanding democracy was the work of Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston, both of whom were products of Howard University School of Law—a historically Black institution that stood in stark contrast to the elite, mostly white law schools of their time. Marshall, who went on to become the first African American Supreme Court Justice, and Houston, his mentor, fought tirelessly against segregation and racial discrimination. Houston's strategy, dubbed "the 'liberal' approach to civil rights," involved challenging discriminatory laws through the courts, using legal arguments rooted in equal protection and the promise of the 14th Amendment.
Houston's legal battles laid the groundwork for the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) case, where the Supreme Court, under the influence of Marshall's legal strategies, overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” and declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. This ruling, perhaps one of the most profound examples of the courts expanding democracy, was achieved through the work of legal professionals committed to social justice, many of whom came from institutions outside the mainstream elite law schools.
Unfortunately, the trend of the courts advancing civil rights was not consistent. The Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) decision, where the Supreme Court ruled that African Americans could not be citizens, and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld racial segregation, serve as stark reminders of how the legal system can be wielded to entrench inequality and limit democracy. The very law schools that trained many of the justices responsible for these rulings were also responsible for shaping the legal education that upheld the racist and exclusionary structures of the time.
Today, the cycle of legal education serving the interests of the wealthy and powerful continues. While the courts have sometimes played a role in broadening civil rights and democracy, too often they have sided with corporate interests, limiting progress. Lawyers trained in elite law schools continue to occupy spaces where the rules of the game are rigged in favor of those with wealth and influence.
To reverse this trend, law schools must take deliberate action. They must shift their focus from training lawyers for the highest-paying and most prestigious jobs to producing attorneys who are dedicated to the public good. This includes increasing financial accessibility, offering more scholarships for low-income students, and reevaluating the curriculum to emphasize social justice, public interest law, and equitable legal reforms. Moreover, legal education should challenge the structures of wealth and power, ensuring that future lawyers are equipped to dismantle the systems that benefit billionaires and corporations at the expense of justice.
The influence of law schools in perpetuating inequality cannot be overstated. The future of the legal profession—and, by extension, the justice system—depends on whether these institutions can embrace a new mission: one that fosters true equality under the law and dismantles the structures of privilege that continue to shape our society.
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Trump appears bent on ridding schools of dangerous practices like critical thinking and an unsanitized study of history.
In the initial days of his second term, President Donald Trump issued several executive orders “seeking
to control how schools teach about race and gender, direct more tax
dollars to private schools, and deport pro-Palestinian protesters.” On January 29, 2025, he signed the “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling”
executive order, which mandates the elimination of curricula that the
administration deems as promoting “radical, anti-American ideologies.”
This executive order is not just an attack on critical race theory or
teachings about systemic racism — it is a cornerstone of an
authoritarian ideology designed to eliminate critical thought, suppress
historical truth and strip educators of their autonomy. Under the guise
of combating “divisiveness,” it advances a broader war on education as a
democratizing force, turning schools into dead zones of the
imagination. By threatening to strip federal funding from institutions
that refuse to conform, this policy functions as an instrument of
ideological indoctrination, enforcing a sanitized, nationalistic
narrative that erases histories of oppression and resistance while
deepening a culture of ignorance and compliance.
Concurrently, President Trump issued the “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families”
executive order, aiming to enhance school choice by redirecting federal
funds to support charter schools and voucher programs. This policy
enables parents to use public funds for private and religious school
tuition. While proponents claim that this legislation empowers parents
and fosters competition, in reality, it is a calculated effort to defund
and privatize public education, undermining it as a democratizing
public good. As part of a broader far right assault on education, this
policy redirects essential resources away from public schools, deepening
educational inequality and advancing an agenda that seeks to erode
public investment in a just and equitable society.
In the name of eliminating radical indoctrination in schools, a third executive order,
which purportedly aims at ending antisemitism, threatens to deport
pro-Palestinian student protesters by revoking their visas, warning that even those legally in the country could be targeted
for their political views. In a stark display of authoritarianism,
Trump’s executive order unapologetically stated that free speech would
not be tolerated. Reuters
made this clear in reporting that one fact sheet ominously declared: “I
will … quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on
college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never
before. To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist
protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will
deport you.”
By gutting federal oversight, he is handing the fate of education to
reactionary state legislatures and corporate interests, ensuring that
knowledge is shaped by a state held captive by billionaires and far
right extremists. This is the logic of authoritarianism: to hollow out
democratic institutions and replace education with white Christian
propaganda and a pedagogy of repression. At issue here is an attempt to
render an entire generation defenseless against the very forces seeking
to dominate them.
What we are witnessing is not just an educational crisis but a
full-scale war on institutions that not only defend democracy but enable
it. What is under siege in this attack is not only the critical
function of education but the very notion that it should be defined
through its vision of creating a central feature of democracy, educating
informed and critically engaged citizens.
These executive actions represent an upgraded and broader version of
McCarthyite and apartheid-era education that seeks to dictate how
schools teach about race and gender, funnel more taxpayer dollars into
private institutions, and deport Palestinian protesters. The irony is
striking: The White House defends these regressive measures of
sanitizing history, stripping away the rights of transgender students
and erasing critical race theory as efforts to “end indoctrination in
American education.” In truth, this is not about the pursuit of freedom
or open inquiry, nor is it about fostering an education that cultivates
informed, critically engaged citizens. At its core, this agenda is a
deliberate attack on education as a public good — one that threatens to
dismantle not only public institutions, but the very essence of public
and higher education and its culture of criticism and democracy. The
urgency of this moment cannot be overstated: The future of education
itself is at stake.
In the raging currents of contemporary political and cultural life,
where fascist ideologies are rising, one of the most insidious and
all-encompassing forces at play is the violence of forgetting — a plague
of historical amnesia. This phenomenon, which I have referred to as “organized forgetting,”
describes the systemic erasure of history and its violent consequences,
particularly in the public sphere. This is especially evident in the
current historical moment, when books are banned in
libraries, public schools and higher education across countries, such
as the United States, Hungary, India, China and Russia. Ignoring past
atrocities, historical injustices and uncomfortable truths about a
society’s foundation is not merely an oversight — it constitutes an
active form of violence that shapes both our collective consciousness
and political realities. What we are witnessing here is an assault by
the far right on memory that is inseparable from what Maximillian
Alvarez describes as a battle over power — over who is remembered, who
is erased, who is cast aside and who is forcibly reduced to something
less than human. This struggle is not just about history; it is about
whose stories are allowed to shape the present and the future. Alvarez captures this reality with striking clarity and is worth quoting at length:
Among the prizes at stake in the endless war of politics is history
itself. The battle for power is always a battle to determine who gets
remembered, how they will be recalled, where and in what forms their
memories will be preserved. In this battle, there is no room for neutral
parties: every history and counter-history must fight and scrap and
claw and spread and lodge itself in the world, lest it be forgotten or
forcibly erased. All history, in this sense, is the history of empire — a
bid for control of that greatest expanse of territory, the past.
Organized forgetting also helped fuel the resurgence of Donald Trump,
as truth and reason are being systematically replaced by lies,
corruption, denial and the weaponization of memory itself. A culture of
questioning, critique and vision is not simply disappearing in the
United States — it is actively maligned, disparaged and replaced by a
darkness that, as Ezra Klein
observes, is “stupefyingly vast, stretching from self-destructive
incompetence to muddling incoherence to authoritarian consolidation.”
This erosion affects institutions of law, civil society and education
— pillars that rely on memory, informed judgment and evidence to foster
historical understanding and civic responsibility. The attack on the
common good goes beyond the distractions of an “attention economy”designed
to distort reality; it reflects a deliberate effort to sever the ties
between history and meaning. Time is reduced to fragmented episodes,
stripped of the shared narratives that connect the past, present and
future.
This crisis embodies a profound collapse of memory, history,
education and democracy itself. A culture of manufactured ignorance —
rooted in the rejection of history, facts and critical thought — erases
accountability for electing a leader who incited insurrection and
branded his opponents as “enemies from within.” Such authoritarian
politics thrive on historical amnesia, lulling society into passivity,
eroding collective memory and subverting civic agency. This is
epitomized by Trump’s declaration
on “Fox & Friends” that he would punish schools that teach students
accurate U.S. history, including about slavery and racism in the
country. The call to silence dangerous memories is inseparable from the
violence of state terrorism — a force that censors and dehumanizes
dissent, escalating to the punishment, torture and imprisonment of
truth-tellers and critics who dare to hold oppressive power accountable.
At its core, the violence of forgetting operates through the denial
and distortion of historical events, particularly those that challenge
the dominant narratives of power. From the colonial atrocities and the
struggles for civil rights to the history of Palestine-Israel relations,
many of the most significant chapters of history are either glossed
over or erased altogether. This strategic omission serves the interests
of those in power, enabling them to maintain control by silencing
inconvenient truths. As the historian Timothy Snyder
reminds us, by refusing to acknowledge the violence of the past,
society makes it far easier to perpetuate injustices in the present. The
politics of organized forgetting, the censoring of history and the
attack on historical consciousness are fundamental to the rise of far
right voices in the U.S. and across the world.
With the rise of regressive memory laws, designed to repress what
authoritarian governments consider dangerous and radical interpretations
of a country’s past, historical consciousness is transformed into a
form of historical amnesia. One vivid example of a regressive memory law
was enacted by Trump during his first term. The 1776 Report,
which right-wingers defended as a “restoration of American education,”
was in fact an attempt to eliminate from the teaching of history any
reference to a legacy of colonialism, slavery and movements which
highlighted elements of American history that were unconscionable,
anti-democratic and morally repugnant. Snyder highlights the emergence
of memory laws in a number of states. He writes in a 2021 New York Times article:
As of this writing, five states (Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee, Texas and
Oklahoma) have passed laws that direct and restrict discussions of
history in classrooms. The Department of Education of a sixth (Florida)
has passed guidelines with the same effect. Another 12 state
legislatures are still considering memory laws. The particulars of these
laws vary. The Idaho law is the most Kafkaesque in its censorship: It
affirms freedom of speech and then bans divisive speech. The Iowa law
executes the same totalitarian pirouette. The Tennessee and Texas laws
go furthest in specifying what teachers may and may not say. In
Tennessee teachers must not teach that the rule of law is “a series of
power relationships and struggles among racial or other groups.”… The
Idaho law mentions Critical Race Theory; the directive from the Florida
school board bans it in classrooms. The Texas law forbids teachers from
requiring students to understand the 1619 Project. It is a perverse
goal: Teachers succeed if students do not understand something.
A major aspect of this forgetting and erasure of historical memory is the role of ignorance,
which has become not just widespread but weaponized in modern times.
Ignorance, particularly in U.S. society, has shifted from being a
passive lack of knowledge to an active refusal to engage with critical
issues. This is amplified by the spectacle-driven nature of contemporary
media and the increasing normalization of a culture of lies and the
embrace of a language of violence, which not only thrives on distraction
rather than reflection, but has become a powerful force for spreading
bigotry, racial hatred and right-wing lies. In addition, the mainstream
media’s obsession with spectacle — be it political drama, celebrity
culture or sensationalist stories — often overshadows the more
important, yet less glamorous, discussions about historical violence and
systemic injustice.
This intellectual neglect allows for a dangerous cycle to persist,
where the erasure of history enables the continuation of violence and
oppression. Systems of power benefit from this amnesia, as it allows
them to maintain the status quo without having to answer for past
wrongs. When society refuses to remember or address past injustices —
whether it’s slavery, imperialism or economic exploitation — those in
power can continue to exploit the present without fear of historical
accountability.
To strip education of its critical power is to rob democracy of its transformative potential.
The cultural impact of this organized forgetting is profound. Not
only does it create a void in public memory, but it also stunts
collective growth. Without the lessons of the past, it becomes nearly
impossible to learn from mistakes and address the root causes of social
inequalities. The failure to remember makes it harder to demand
meaningful change, while reproducing and legitimating ongoing far right
assaults on democracy.
The violence of organized forgetting is not a mere act of neglect; it
is a deliberate cultural and intellectual assault that undercuts the
foundations of any meaningful democracy. By erasing the past, society
implicitly condones the ongoing oppression of marginalized groups and
perpetuates harmful ideologies that thrive in ignorance. This erasure
silences the voices of those who have suffered — denying them the space
to speak their truth and demand justice. It is not limited to historical
injustices alone; it extends to the present, silencing those who
courageously criticize contemporary violence, such as Israel’s
U.S.-backed genocidal war on Gaza, and those brave enough to hold power
accountable.
The act of forgetting is not passive; it actively supports systems of
oppression and censorship, muffling dissent and debate, both of which
are essential for a healthy democracy.
Equally dangerous is the form of historical amnesia that has come to
dominate our contemporary political and cultural landscape. This
organized forgetting feeds into a pedagogy of manufactured ignorance
that prioritizes emotion over reason and spectacle over truth. In this
process, history is fragmented and distorted, making it nearly
impossible to construct a coherent understanding of the past. As a
result, public institutions — particularly education — are undermined,
as critical thinking and social responsibility give way to shallow,
sensationalized narratives. Higher education, once a bastion for the
development of civic literacy and the moral imperative of understanding
our role as both individuals and social agents, is now attacked by
forces seeking to cleanse public memory of past social and political
progress. Figures like Trump embody this threat, working to erase the
memory of strides made in the name of equality, justice and human
decency. This organized assault on historical memory and intellectual
rigor strikes at the heart of democracy itself. When we allow the
erasure of history and the undermining of critical thought, we risk
suffocating the ideals that democracy promises: justice, equality and
accountability.
A democracy cannot thrive in the absence of informed and engaged
agents that are capable of questioning, challenging and reimagining a
future different from the present. Without such citizens, the very
notion of democracy becomes a hollow, disembodied ideal — an illusion of
freedom without the substance of truth or responsibility. Education, in
this context, is not merely a tool for transmitting knowledge; it is
the foundation and bedrock of political consciousness. To be educated,
to be a citizen, is not a neutral or passive state — it is a vital,
active political and moral engagement with the world, grounded in
critical thinking and democratic possibility. It is a recognition that
the act of learning and the act of being a citizen are inextricable from
each other. To strip education of its critical power is to rob
democracy of its transformative potential.
Confronting the violence of forgetting requires a shift in how we
engage with history. Intellectuals, educators and activists must take up
the responsibility of reintroducing the painful truths of the past into
public discourse. This is not about dwelling in the past for its own
sake, but about understanding its relevance to the present and future.
To break the cycles of violence, society must commit to remembering, not
just for the sake of memory, but as a critical tool for progress.
Moreover, engaging with history honestly requires recognizing that
the violence of forgetting is not a one-time event but a continual
process. Systems of power don’t simply forget; they actively work to
erase, rewrite and sanitize historical narratives. This means that the
fight to remember is ongoing and requires constant vigilance. It’s not
enough to simply uncover historical truths; society must work to ensure
that these truths are not forgotten again, buried under the weight of
media spectacles, ideological repression and political theater.
Ultimately, the violence of forgetting is an obstacle to genuine
social change. Without confronting the past — acknowledging the violence
and injustices that have shaped our world — we cannot hope to build a
more just and informed future. To move forward, any viable democratic
social order must reckon with its past, break free from the bonds of
ignorance, and commit to creating a future based on knowledge, justice
and accountability.
The task of confronting and dismantling the violent structures shaped
by the power of forgetting is immense, yet the urgency has never been
more pronounced. In an era where the scope and power of new pedagogical
apparatuses such as social media and AI dominate our cultural and
intellectual landscapes, the challenge becomes even more complex. While
they hold potential for education and connection, these technologies are
controlled by a reactionary ruling class of financial elite and
billionaires, and they are increasingly wielded to perpetuate
disinformation, fragment history and manipulate public discourse. The
authoritarian algorithms that drive these platforms increasingly
prioritize sensationalism over substance, lies over truth, the
appropriation of power over social responsibility, and in doing so,
reinforce modes of civic illiteracy, while attacking those fundamental
institutions which enable critical perspectives and a culture of
questioning.
The vital need for collective action and intellectual engagement to
reclaim and restore historical truth, critical thinking and social
responsibility is urgent. The present historical moment, both
unprecedented and alarming, resonates with Antonio Gramsci’s reflection
on an earlier era marked by the rise of fascism: “The old world is
dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of
monsters.”
In the face of a deepening crisis of history, memory and agency, any
meaningful resistance must be collective, disruptive and
unapologetically unsettling — challenging entrenched orthodoxies and
dismantling the forces that perpetuate ignorance and injustice. This
struggle needs to be both radical in its essence and uncompromising in
its demands for social change, recognizing education as inseparable from
politics and the tangible challenges people face in their everyday
lives. In this collective effort lies the power to dismantle the
barriers to truth, rebuild the foundations of critical thought, and
shape a future rooted in knowledge, justice and a profound commitment to
make power accountable. Central to this vision is the capacity to learn
from history, to nurture a historical consciousness that informs our
present and to reimagine agency as an essential force in the enduring
struggle for democracy. This call for a radical imagination cannot be
confined to classrooms but must emerge as a transformative force
embedded in a united, multiracial, working-class movement. Only then can
we confront the urgent crises of our time.
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While some Democratic officials in Congress have protested this action by DOGE, there has been little resistance otherwise.
DOGE consists of Elon Musk and several young men who have been tasked to reduce the federal budget by at least $1 Trillion. The US Senate has oversight of the Department of Education through the HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee, but Republicans, who are led by President Trump, control the Senate, and appear to be supporting these aggressive measures.
While Mr. Musk has claimed that the Department of Education no longer exists, its website is still operating.
Why did so many working-class voters support Republicans over Democrats in the 2024 elections? Was the problem simply 'messaging', or have Democrats entrenched themselves as the party of corporate elites and Wall Street? What can Democrats do to win back this crucial demographic and how do we define (or re-define) the working-class? Will Democrats make a strong commitment to economic populism to reverse this class dealignment?
Moderated by Samir Sonti - Assistant Professor, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.
What are the real costs to bear on workers–especially civil service and public sector workers – with Project 2025 and the establishment of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency? What strategies can labor employ to counter this attack on working people and unions? How can looking back at previous far right policy projects help prepare us in our fight to protect workers? Join us to hear from law & policy experts and journalists as they discuss these urgent questions.
Table of Contents Introduction Chapter One: Macro and Micro Analyses of Higher Education Chapter Two: Discourses On Ideology Chapter Three: Branding Chapter Four: What Do Universities Do? Chapter Five: Universities and War: Conclusion Appendix
Introduction
In the following pages, you are going to find a lot of specific information about what is happening at one major public research university, but we believe what is happening at Purdue is analogous to a canary in a coal mine. We believe that Purdue under Mitch Daniels, a former George Walker Bush administrator and Governor of Indiana, is becoming a high profile and influential spokesperson for the transformation of public higher education in the 21st century in directions that we find dangerous and that go against how we value higher education. We realize that, while we address extensively institutional changes and policies at Purdue, Indiana’s Land Grant University, our interest is in using this case study to illustrate larger patterns and issues that should be of concern to readers who care about the future of higher education in a broader sense.
Harry Targ's pieces do tend towards a wider-angle perspective than do those by Dan Morris, although both of us rely on our "boots on the ground" level understanding of Purdue to counteract and contest official media versions of what is happening at Purdue. We write at a moment when there is something of a "media desert" in terms of local news coverage of higher education in small markets such as Lafayette, Indiana. We have both tried to work to rectify the "media desert" landscape in our community by contributing to the Lafayette Independent, an electronic newsletter. We appreciate efforts by local journalists such as Dave Bangert and the student staff of the Purdue Exponent to offer coverage of the university in ways that are more substantial, and, often, more critical, than what one finds in the area's only mainstream newspaper, the Journal and Courier, and main local TV news source, and the Purdue NPR radio station, whose ownership in the last year has been mysteriously transferred to an Indianapolis corporation. Paradoxically the richest data for many of the essays below come from the official daily public relations newsletter from Purdue called Purdue Today. This public relations source celebrates Purdue’s latest connections with multinational corporations, the military, and state politics, and provides links to editorials published by Purdue’s President and other officials in the national press. Ironically, oftentimes what Purdue celebrates becomes the data for our more analytical and discursive writings.
Like alternative media sources, we see this book as another intervention in offering an alternative view of what is happening at our campus, but we also write with the hope that readers can apply the readings we bring to Purdue to begin conversations about the promise and problems of contemporary higher education on campuses. The authors wish to praise and encourage further research and activism around the transformations of higher education in general. We identify with what some scholars have referred to as Critical University Studies (CUS). The essays below, we believe, are part of this emerging tradition of critical and self-reflective scholarship.
The authors also wish to identify at least three major elements of the transformation of higher education. First, Purdue, like many other universities, is once again pursuing research contracts with huge corporations, and perhaps most importantly, the Department of Defense. As essays below suggest, Purdue research is increasingly justified as serving the interests of United States “national security.” Often this is conceptualized as helping the United States respond to “the Chinese threat,” rarely identifying what exactly is the threat, or considering the possibility that contributing to a new arms race with a perceived adversary may increase, rather than reduce, the possibility for conflict between nations.
Second, the work below and other writings in CUS, highlight the purposive transformation of the content of higher education. Universities are moving resources away from the liberal arts, creating new programs in “artificial intelligence” and “data science,” and in response to political pressures are diminishing programs that emphasize interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, and the structural problems of race, class, gender, and sexual preference in history and contemporary society. Essays below on “civics literacy” suggest that leading administrators at Purdue, while refusing to defend its universally praised Writing Lab after it was ridiculed on Fox News for its recommendation that student writers select gender-neutral terms such as postal worker when writing about occupations, seek to avoid the controversaries around Critical Race Theory by requiring all students to study in some fashion “civics literacy.” President Daniels has made it clear that the study of civics literacy will illustrate the “vitality” of US political institutions (as opposed to over-emphasizing the slaughter of the original inhabitants of the North American continent or the history of slavery and white supremacy).
Third, the essays below do not dwell enough on the transformation of the university as a workplace. While there have been attacks for years on the tenure system, a system of job security which was initially designed to protect faculty from external political pressures, recent additions to the transformations of the university as a work site should be noted.
Adjunctification is a term that refers to the qualitative increase in the hiring of various forms of part time instructors: full-time instructors for a set time period, instructors to teach less than a full complement of courses, and instructors with various arrangements that limit their work life, their ability to do research and prepare for their class time, and their time to serve the many needs of students. The fundamental trend in higher education is to “cheapen” and make insecure instructors, ultimately to destroy the job security that comes with academic tenure. In many cases this impacts negatively on the quality of the educational experience. (In colleges and universities in general about 70 percent of classes now are taught by instructors who are not tenure-line faculty).
And finally, every effort is made by universities to limit and derail the workplace concerns of non-teaching staff, particularly opposing their right to form unions.
One positive development from all of this-destroying the tenure system and job security, adjunctification, increased exploitation of graduate students, and finally restricting the rights and the wages and benefits of staff has been the rise of labor militancy. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and various unions such as the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the United Electrical Workers (UE) with a history of militancy have been organizing graduate students and staff.
Finally, the authors acknowledge that in the months after we completed our manuscript, Purdue administrators and trustees have announced a series of initiatives without an appropriate level of input from university stakeholders and the wider Lafayette area community:
1. Purdue is building a housing complex near the Discovery Park part of campus to attract higher income earning technologists to relocate in West Lafayette. To encourage new high-income residents, the West Lafayette city government has authorized $5,000 cash incentives for any purchasers of these new housing units adjacent to Purdue. Such offers are not available to lower income earners or students.
2. To deal with record enrollments, Purdue has purchased a privately constructed apartment complex across from campus at a price well more than the cost of its construction.
3. Purdue officials have expanded partnerships with Saab, Rolls Royce, the Raytheon Corporation, one of the world’s five largest military contractors, and undertaken a controversial business mission with the Indiana governor to Taiwan to pursue research and production of semi-conductors, in part to respond to what Purdue officials have described as a ”Chinese threat” to national security in the United States.
4.The College of Liberal Arts has announced it will be partnering with the College of Science to develop a new interdisciplinary degree program in artificial intelligence. CLA calls its “new field” of interest, “sociogenomics.”
5. Purdue received an award recognizing its “excellence in counterintelligence,” one of only four such award recipients in 2022. Purdue joins those few universities which protect “sensitive national information from foreign adversaries.” The award announced in Purdue Today, August 24, 2022, noted that the university continues to work with the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) and the FBI.
In short, the transformation of Indiana’s Land Grant university continues at a rapid pace. And while the essays below concentrate on the developments and forces leading to these changes, the broader point of this collection of essays is to suggest that higher education in the twenty-first century is changing in a rapid and largely deleterious way. The appended essay by Carl Davidson reflects a similar critique of the university during the height of the Cold War. What we are witnessing today is a revitalization of that trend.
For those who value the university as a site for informing students about the world and debating the value of changes occurring in it, the developments highlighted in these essays are a warning. And for faculty and students alike the antidote to the militarization of the university, the transformation of the curricula, and the disempowering of those who work in universities is organizing against those elements of change that are antithetical to the educational process.
And More:
“The Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue has created a category of its own. As part of the nation’s leading national security university, it is rapidly becoming the world’s premier institution focused on Tech Statecraft, a new model of diplomacy bridging the gap between technology experts, government officials and policymakers, and business leaders to ensure tomorrow’s tech secures our freedoms,” said (Daniel) Kurtenbach. ‘I’m excited to contribute to the Krach Institute’s already-impressive momentum by enhancing and building its innovative partnerships and relationships to achieve our shared vision of a future that prizes individual freedom through trusted technology.’ ”
The Coalition for Mutual Liberation (CML) is a broad-based coalition of over 40 organizations on Cornell University's Ithaca Campus and in the surrounding community. Many of these orgnizations are publicly members of CML; the others wish to remain anonymous.
COALITION MEMBERS
The Arab Graduate Student Association Asian Pacific Americans for Action The Basic Needs Coalition Black Students United The Buddhist Sangha The Cadre Journal Climate Justice Cornell Cornell Progressives Ithaca Ceasefire Now Jewish Voice for Peace at Cornell The Mass Education Campaign The Muslim Educational and Cultural Association El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx at de Aztlán Native American and Indigenous Students at Cornell The People’s Organizing Collective Cornell, United Students Against Sweatshops Local 3 The South Asian Council Students for Justice in Palestine Young Democratic Socialists of America
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to educate, empower, and organize our community to take action against imperialism, settler colonialism, and all other forms of oppression. Our struggles are deeply interconnected, and it is only through our collective resistance that we will achieve mutual liberation.
OUR FOCUS
Today, we join international humanitarian organizations, political leaders, scholars, activists, and most recently the state of South Africa incondemning Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people. We come together in solidarity with the people of Palestine in particular because Palestine is among the clearest manifestations of American economic and military hegemony—the force that perpetuates imperialism, racism, white supremacy, transphobia, homophobia, as well as religious- and gender-based violence across the world's historically exploited nations and populations.
DIVESTMENT DEMANDS
We find Cornell University complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people through its endowment investments in weapons manufacturers and military technology developers, its corporate and institutional partnerships with the producers of these technologies, and its lack of screening procedures and transparency around these ties. Cornell must take immediate action to sever its ties with the US-backed Israeli siege on Palestine which has already left more than 30,000 Palestinians dead. We demand:
1. Divestment from any company complicit in genocide, apartheid, or systematic cruelty against children perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, in accordance with Cornell's 2016 Standard to Guide Divestment Consideration. As outlined in Cornell's 2016 Standard to Guide Divestment Consideration, the Board of Trustees must consider divestment from companies whose actions constitute "genocide, apartheid, or systemic cruelty to children." By doing business with Israel as it conducts its genocide, responsibility for these three morally reprehensible actions fall on the shoulders of the following weapons companies: BAE Systems, Boeing, Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, and ThyssenKrupp. In order for Cornell to abide by its own divestment standards and precedents for divestment (in the cases of the Sudanese genocide and the fossil fuels industry), the university must immediately liquidate all of its holdings in the companies listed above and enact a moratorium on all investments in arms manufacturers that supply weapons, munitions, and other military supplies to Israel.
2. The termination of all corporate partnerships with companies complicit in the genocide, apartheid, or systematic cruelty towards children perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Cornell currently maintains corporate partnerships with a number of weapons companies whose products have been used against civilians in Gaza. These companies include BAE Systems, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. Cornell Systems Engineering also partners with RTX (Raytheon), which is described as being “an extended part of the Cornell Systems Engineering community.” Cornell’s partnerships with these weapons companies amounts to complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people. We are therefore calling on Cornell University to sever their corporate partnerships with these companies as soon as possible. We call on Cornell University to begin this process immediately and to have fully dissolved these partnerships by the end of the 2024 calendar year.
3. A comprehensive ban on the research and development of any technologies used by the Israeli Offensive Forces at the Jacobs Cornell-Technion Institute in New York City. The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, a partnership between Cornell University and the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), is part of Cornell Tech, a campus for graduate research in New York City. Independently of Cornell Tech, Technion researches and develops geospatial, intelligence, and weapons technologies used by the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Cornell Tech’s publicly stated founding purpose is “to advance technology as a means to a better quality of life for all communities [...] around the world.” Its “Diversity and Inclusion” mission includes “[engaging] in research that promotes justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion” and “[educating and training] ethical technology leaders of the future.” In light of Technion’s numerous connections to Israel’s occupation and genocide in Palestine, Cornell Tech’s supposed commitment to ethical and just technological development rings hollow. We demand a comprehensive ban on the research and development of any technologies used by the Israel Offensive Forces at the Cornell Tech/Technion Campus in New York City.
As Israel continues its relentless genocide in Gaza and further militarizes its occupation of the West Bank, the world watches as Palestinians are displaced, starved, and killed every day. The horrors of Israel’s siege on Gaza are broadcast in full display across multiple news outlets and social media platforms, and yet, the American institutions that fuel this violence refuse to act.
Thirty years ago, when over fifty other universities across the country divested from South African apartheid, Cornell faltered in its commitment to humanity and never severed its ties with a state dependent on the perpetuation of horrific racial violence. Today, the global community once again stands at a crossroad—Cornell University has the opportunity to do what it couldn’t three decades ago.
Cornell University must make a choice: to toe the line drawn by a foreign nation and remain complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people, or to establish itself as a leader among elite educational institutions by being the first to materially recognize the Palestinian right to life and dignity.
We envision a future for Cornell University that does not fund and partner with the corporate entities responsible for the decimation of an entire people, their cultural artifacts, and the land they inhabit. The Board of Trustees must have the courage and moral fortitude to cut ties with Israel’s unrelenting campaign of violence against Palestine so that Cornell may truly do the greatest good.
For more information about our divestment demands, the companies listed as divestment targets, Cornell's complicity in Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people, and Cornell's violation of its own standards, procedures, and values, see CML's full Divestment Report.
DEMANDS FROM LIBERATED ZONE
Cornell students, staff, faculty, and community members join the cross-campus wave of organizers establishing liberated zones in solidarity with Gaza. The campers' ongoing act of nonviolent resistance will include teach-ins, art builds, and other activities to highlight the urgency with which Cornell must act in response to the Israeli government's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Students from across the globe have joined together to protest the genocide in Gaza during which the Israeli Offensive Forces have murdered over 34,000 Indigenous Palestinians in under seven months. Students are organizing in outrage that Palestinian universities have been obliterated with weapons funded and developed through Cornell University's partnerships and investments. Distinctly, the Cornell University Board of Trustees adopted a commitment in 2016 to divest from companies engaged in "genocide, apartheid, and systematic cruelty against children.” Cornell's failure to divest is not only a violation of the university's stated policies, but also an act of genocide denialism.
Cornell’s refusal to cut ties to Palestinian genocide reflects its history of profiteering from the violent dispossession of Indigenous Peoples across North America. Cornell is the largest beneficiary of the Morrill Act of 1862, which redistributed Indigenous land as public domain to states to establish and endow land-grant institutions. Through the dispossession, Cornell accrued nearly 1 million acres of land, some of which it sold for profit, and some to which it currently retains the rights. Today, Cornell showcases its land-grant status—its status as an institution supposedly dedicated to the promotion of practical disciplines such as agriculture, mining, and engineering—to signal its commitment to accessible higher education and mask its refusal to provide reparations or restitution to the 251 tribal nations affected by land-grant dispossession. Cornell's settler colonial project in the United States is the foundation for its settler colonial interests in Palestine. Through this encampment, students highlight Cornell's role in dispossession and genocide across the globe.
The encampment on the oldest commons on Cornell's campus invites all members of the community to support the students' demands that Cornell University:
1. Acknowledge its role in the national genocide of Indigenous Peoples through the Morrill Act and its sale of 977,909 acres of Indigenous land; return all mineral interests to Tribal Nations dispossessed by the Morrill Act; provide restitution for the dispossessed nations; provide restitution for the Cayuga Nation; establish an Indigenous Studies department; and return surplus land in New York state to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Lenni Lenape, and their descendants who have been forced out of New York.
2. Annually disclose a comprehensive account of its endowment and land holdings, and divest from entities involved in “morally reprehensible activities,” in accordance with Cornell’s 2016 Standard to Guide Divestment Consideration.
3. End profit-generating partnerships, volunteer arrangements, and other significant corporate and academic affiliations with institutions involved in “morally reprehensible activities,” including but not limited to the dissolution of the Jacobs-Technion Cornell Institute and all other partnerships with the Technion Israel Institute of Technology.
4. Call for an unconditional, permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
5. Establish a Palestinian Studies program housed in the College of Arts and Sciences, along with an accredited minor that is available to all undergraduate and graduate students. Representatives from Cornell’s chapter of “Students for Justice in Palestine” and “Cornell Collective for Justice in Palestine” must serve on the committees that oversee the hiring of the program’s faculty.
6. Publicly acknowledge and protect anti-Zionist speech, viewpoints, and histories in both religious and academic contexts. Recognize the legitimate and historical claim that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.
7. Remove all police from campus, beginning with the elimination of police presence at demonstrations. Replace police with an emergency response team composed of healthcare workers and first responders trained in de-escalation. A majority of team members must be providers who share lived experiences and identities with Cornell’s diverse student body.
8. Ensure total legal and academic amnesty for all individuals involved with the Liberated Zone and related demonstrations.
POINTS OF UNITY
1. The principal contradiction of our world is that between the exploited nations and the exploiters in the imperial core: imperialism.
2. The underdevelopment of the exploited nations was and is the dialectical necessity for the development of the exploiters.
3. Capitalism has always been a global, racialized system—primitive accumulation could not have occurred without genocide, enslavement, and ecocide.
4.Imperialism creates a stratification that rewards some proletarians as settlers and/or citizens, thus forming a labor aristocracy.
5. The labor aristocracy’s wages and incorporation into the nation-state allow them to benefit from the exploitation of the low-waged labor of the exploited nations, intensifying imperialism in the form of unequal exchange.
6. Unequal exchange precludes the universality and internationalism of the proletariat, and hinders the solidarity of the “workers of the world”.
7. Imperialism manifests itself in a variety of other ways today, in sanctions regimes, indebtedness, military intervention, nuclear aggression, extractivism, and other forms.
8. Capitalism cannot be defeated globally while imperialism persists—without anti-imperialism, efforts at socialism in the exploiting nations can only produce social imperialism.
9. The obligation of revolutionaries today is to challenge imperialism by any means necessary. In the exploiting nations, that primarily means acting in solidarity with anti-imperialist movements in the exploited nations.
10. Solidarity cannot be simply symbolic—it must be material; it must be something we can hold in our hands.
Born in Boston, Mass. (1880) and graduated high school in Worcester. Earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and physics from Mount Holyoke College where she became involved in progressive politics and the suffrage movement.
Held a variety of teaching positions and volunteered at settlement houses, including Hull House in Chicago, where she worked with Jane Addams. She moved to Philadelphia where she worked as a social worker and enrolled in the Wharton School where she studied economics.
Moved to Greenwich Village, where she attended Columbia University, earning a master's degree in 1910. She became active in the suffrage movement, speaking on street corners and attending protests.
Achieved statewide prominence as head of the New York office of the National Consumers League where she lobbied for better working hours and conditions. As a professor of sociology she taught classes at Adelphi College.
She witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, a pivotal event in her life. As the appointed head of the Committee on Safety of the City of New York she promoted fire safety; in 1912 she was instrumental in getting the New York legislature to pass a "54-hour bill" capping the number of hours women and children could work.
She married Paul Caldwell Wilson, an economist and was insistent on keeping her birth name. Gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, in 1916. Throughout the remainder of her marriage her husband would be institutionalized frequently for mental illness. She supported herself and raised their young daughter alone.
In 1929 New York governor Franklin Roosevelt appointed her as the state's Industrial Commissioner where she championed the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, workplace health and safety and an end to child labor.
In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed her the Secretary of Labor becoming the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the United States. She helped shape the New Deal, working to design and implement the Social Security Act of 1935.
She helped millions of people get back to work during the Great Depression and she fought for the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively.
Was the longest-serving Secretary of Labor (12 years) whose successful programs were supported consistently by President Roosevelt.
Following her career in government service she remained active as a teacher and lecturer until her death in 1965, at age 85.
In 1980 President Jimmy Carter named the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor as "The Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building." On Dec. 16, 2024 President Joe Biden designated the Frances Perkins Homestead National Historic Landmark in Newcastle, Maine. President Biden's designation was issued as he directed in Executive Order 14121, Recognizing and Honoring Women's History (March 27, 2024).
In 1933, Roosevelt summoned Perkins to ask her to join his cabinet. Perkins presented Roosevelt with a long list of labor programs for which she would fight, from Social Security to minimum wage. "Nothing like this has ever been done in the United States before," she told Roosevelt. "You know that, don’t you?" (Wikipedia)
Sources from which I summarized, paraphrased or quoted directly:
Wikipedia, "President Biden designates Frances Perkins homestead as new national monument," press release, 12/16/2022; Executive Order 14121, Section 3a report, Dec. 2024; Hall of Secretaries, U. S. Dept. of Labor.
