Violence, Safety, and the Limits of Campus Security: From MIT to Brown and Beyond

The Monday killing of MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts has shaken the academic community and reinforced a troubling reality already examined in Higher Education Inquirer’s recent reporting on campus safety and mental health: violence affecting higher education in the United States is neither isolated nor confined to campus boundaries.

Loureiro, a Portuguese-born physicist and internationally respected scholar in plasma science and fusion research, was a senior leader at MIT and director of its Plasma Science and Fusion Center. His death occurred off campus, yet it reverberated powerfully within higher education because it underscores how scholars, students, and staff exist within a broader national environment shaped by widespread gun violence, strained mental-health systems, and limited preventive safeguards.

Authorities have confirmed the incident as a homicide. At the time of writing, no suspect has been publicly identified, and investigators have released few details about motive. The uncertainty has compounded the shock felt by colleagues, students, and international collaborators who viewed Loureiro as both a scientific leader and a deeply committed mentor.

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A Pattern, Not an Anomaly

Loureiro’s killing followed a series of violent incidents tied to U.S. college campuses throughout 2025, reinforcing that these events are not aberrations but part of a broader pattern.

Just days earlier, a deadly shooting at Brown University left two students dead and several others wounded when a gunman opened fire in an academic building during final exams. The attack disrupted campus life, forced lockdowns, and exposed vulnerabilities in building access and emergency response procedures.

Earlier in the year, Florida State University experienced a mass shooting in a heavily trafficked campus area, resulting in multiple fatalities and injuries. The suspect, a student, was taken into custody, but the psychological impact on students and faculty persisted long after classes resumed.

At Kentucky State University, a shooting inside a residence hall claimed the life of a student and critically injured another. The alleged shooter was not a student but a parent, underscoring how campus violence increasingly involves individuals with indirect or external connections to institutions.

In September 2025, violence took an explicitly political turn when Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was assassinated during a public speaking event at Utah Valley University. Kirk was shot during a large outdoor gathering attended by thousands. The killing, widely described as a political assassination, was unprecedented in recent U.S. campus history and raised urgent questions about security at high-profile events, free expression, and political polarization within academic spaces.

Together, these incidents — spanning elite private universities, public flagship institutions, regional campuses, and HBCUs — illustrate how violence in higher education now crosses institutional type, geography, and purpose, from classrooms and residence halls to public forums and nearby neighborhoods.

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The Limits of Traditional Campus Safety Models

HEI’s recent analysis of U.S. campus safety emphasized a central tension: colleges and universities rely heavily on reactive security measures — armed campus police, surveillance infrastructure, emergency alerts — while underinvesting in prevention, mental-health care, and community-based risk reduction.

The events of 2025 highlight the limitations of these approaches. Even well-resourced institutions cannot fully secure campus perimeters or prevent violence originating beyond institutional control. Nor can security infrastructure alone address the social isolation, untreated mental illness, ideological extremism, and easy access to firearms that underlie many of these incidents.

Federal compliance frameworks such as the Clery Act prioritize disclosure and reporting rather than prevention. Meanwhile, the expansion of campus policing has often mirrored broader trends in U.S. law enforcement, raising concerns about militarization without clear evidence of improved safety outcomes.

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Violence Beyond Active Shooters

While mass shootings and assassinations draw national attention, they represent only one part of a wider landscape of harm in higher education. HEI has documented other persistent threats, including hazing deaths, sexual violence, domestic abuse, stalking, false threats that provoke armed responses, and institutional failures to protect vulnerable populations.

Mental health remains a critical and often neglected dimension. Many acts of campus-related violence intersect with untreated mental illness, financial stress, academic pressure, and inadequate access to care — conditions exacerbated by rising tuition, housing insecurity, and uneven campus support systems.

For international students in particular, exposure to U.S. gun violence and emergency lockdowns can be deeply destabilizing, challenging assumptions about safety that differ sharply from conditions in other countries.

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An Urgent Moment for Higher Education

The deaths of individuals such as Professor Loureiro and Charlie Kirk, alongside students at Brown, Florida State, and Kentucky State, underscore a central truth: American campuses do not exist apart from the society around them. No amount of prestige, branding, or technology can fully insulate higher education from national patterns of violence.

For administrators and policymakers, the lesson is not simply to harden security, but to rethink safety holistically — integrating physical protection with mental-health infrastructure, transparent accountability, community engagement, and policies that address deeper cultural and structural drivers of violence.

As Higher Education Inquirer has argued, campus safety is inseparable from broader questions of public health, social policy, and institutional responsibility. Without sustained attention to these connections, tragedies across U.S. campuses will continue to be framed as shocking exceptions rather than symptoms of a deeper and ongoing crisis.

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Sources

Associated Press reporting on the MIT professor killing
Reuters coverage of campus shootings in 2025
Reporting on the Brown University shooting
Coverage of the Florida State University shooting
Reporting on the Kentucky State University residence hall shooting
PBS NewsHour and national reporting on the Charlie Kirk assassination at Utah Valley University
Higher Education Inquirer – Understanding U.S. Campus Safety and Mental Health: Guidance for International Students

Doing Good? How Nonprofits Exploit the Tax System, Pay Low Wages, and Undermine Labor Rights

The American nonprofit sector, comprising everything from social justice nonprofits to right-wing think tanks, is widely seen as a moral compass in public life. These organizations claim to serve the common good, benefiting from tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code. But beneath the image of benevolence lies a complex ecosystem where low wages, union resistance, and the concentration of wealth and power are all too common. Whether left-leaning or conservative, many nonprofits operate like corporations in all but name—exploiting public subsidies while avoiding the labor and tax obligations of the private sector.

While liberal nonprofits often claim moral high ground, conservative nonprofits such as the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, and Turning Point USA are even more explicit in using their nonprofit status for ideological gain. These organizations are generously funded by a network of wealthy donors and dark money, benefiting from laws that shield donor identities while still providing tax breaks. The New York Times and ProPublica have both documented how right-wing nonprofit networks use complex legal structures to move billions in untraceable funds through donor-advised funds and shell charities to influence elections, judiciary appointments, and public policy—while maintaining nonprofit status.

The 2018 creation of the Marble Freedom Trust, which received $1.6 billion in a single donation from electronics magnate Barre Seid, is one of the most striking examples of how conservative nonprofits benefit from the tax system. The money went to Leonard Leo, architect of the conservative judicial movement, and is being used to reshape American courts and governance—all tax-exempt. These conservative nonprofits rarely face scrutiny from the IRS, while progressive nonprofits, especially those tied to activism or labor organizing, often face intense bureaucratic hurdles or audits.

Despite their wealth, conservative nonprofits are not known for paying living wages to their rank-and-file employees. Just as with liberal nonprofits, a culture of ideological commitment is often used to justify stagnant salaries, limited benefits, and the absence of unions. At places like the Leadership Institute or the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, workers may be expected to accept lower compensation for the “privilege” of advancing a conservative mission. Few, if any, of these organizations are unionized. Interns and entry-level employees are often underpaid, even as their organizations maintain multi-million-dollar budgets and highly paid executive teams.

Meanwhile, liberal and progressive nonprofits often mirror this dynamic. The Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, and the Sierra Club have all faced internal revolts from underpaid and overworked staff seeking union protections and better pay. Despite progressive missions, many of these organizations have resisted unionization, hired union-busting consultants, and continued to pay senior leadership six- or seven-figure salaries. The exploitation is bipartisan, rooted not in ideology but in structure: the tax system enables and incentivizes this behavior.

Across the political spectrum, nonprofits depend heavily on unpaid or underpaid labor. Interns, volunteers, and junior staff are routinely told that their sacrifices serve a greater cause, whether that cause is climate justice or dismantling “woke” education. The result is the same: a hollowing out of labor rights under the banner of purpose. The nonprofit sector has become a vehicle for elite influence—liberal and conservative alike—rather than a true instrument of public good.

Unionization in the nonprofit world remains low. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonprofit union membership has barely increased over the past three decades. And while there has been an uptick in union drives at liberal nonprofits, conservative organizations have largely avoided these movements altogether. In fact, many conservative nonprofits are actively hostile to organized labor as a matter of principle. The Heritage Foundation, for example, has long opposed the expansion of labor rights and has advised Republican administrations on how to weaken collective bargaining in the public sector.

As nonprofit wealth grows—particularly through endowments, real estate holdings, and tax-exempt investments—workers at the bottom continue to struggle. In higher education, many private nonprofit colleges and universities pay adjunct professors poverty wages while top administrators earn corporate-level compensation. Religious nonprofits, too, have been found to exploit workers under the guise of spiritual service. Megachurches and faith-based charities sometimes use volunteer labor as a substitute for paid employment, all while claiming tax benefits and avoiding federal labor laws.

Reform is urgently needed. Tax exemption should come with clear standards for labor rights, wage equity, and financial transparency. The IRS must enforce restrictions on political spending by nonprofits, particularly those masquerading as educational institutions while operating as partisan arms. Donor disclosure laws should apply across the board, and tax deductions for mega-donations should be limited unless tied to measurable public benefit. If nonprofits are to retain their privileged legal status, they must meet basic ethical and democratic standards.

Until these changes occur, the nonprofit sector will remain a shadow version of the for-profit world—reaping public subsidies while delivering low wages, avoiding unions, and deepening political inequality. Whether the name on the letterhead reads “Heritage Foundation” or “ACLU,” the structure of exploitation is the same. It's not just a crisis of values. It's a crisis of accountability.

Sources

ProPublica. “How a Billionaire’s Donation Exploded the Conservative Nonprofit World.” August 2022. https://www.propublica.org/article/dark-money-leonard-leo-barre-seid

New York Times. “They Legally Moved Billions to Fund Conservatives.” October 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/us/politics/dark-money-nonprofits.html

Associated Press. “Why Workers at a Growing Number of Nonprofits Are Unionizing.” June 2023. https://apnews.com/article/7fd961c88c614db47db63ffcd80e084e

PayScale. “Nonprofit Pay Cut: How Much Are You Losing to Do Good?” https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/nonprofit-pay-cut

Teen Vogue. “The Nonprofit Industrial Complex: What Is It and How Does It Work?” https://www.teenvogue.com/story/non-profit-industrial-complex-what-is

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Nonprofit Earnings and Sectoral Employment in the United States Since 1994.” https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2024/article/nonprofit-earnings-and-sectoral-employment-in-the-united-states-since-1994.htm

San Francisco Chronicle. “One of the Bay Area’s Most Progressive Nonprofits Is Warring with Itself.” https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/soleilho/article/nonprofit-unions-workers-20038770.php

Reddit. “Antiwork Nonprofit Volunteer Testimonies.” https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/uhnrfd 

Tech Titans, Ideologues, and the Future of American Higher Education

American higher education is under pressure from within and without—squeezed by financial strain, declining enrollment, political hostility, and technological disruption. But the greatest challenge may be coming from a group of powerful outsiders—figures with deep influence in politics, technology, and media—who are actively reshaping how education is perceived, delivered, and valued. Among them: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Alex Karp, and Charlie Kirk. Each brings a different ideology and strategy, but their combined influence represents an existential threat to traditional colleges and universities.

Donald Trump’s second rise to power has included a full-spectrum attack on elite and public institutions of higher learning. From threats to strip funding from schools that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, to freezing billions in research grants at elite institutions like Harvard, Trump has positioned universities as enemies in a broader cultural and political war. His proposed education policy emphasizes trade schools and short-term credentials over liberal arts and research, while his administration has floated revoking accreditation from institutions that resist his agenda. Rather than investing in public education, the Trump agenda calls for punishment, privatization, and obedience. And for institutions that don’t comply, there are growing threats of taxation, defunding, and public humiliation.

Elon Musk is undermining higher education in a different way. Musk has openly mocked the need for college degrees, suggesting that “you can learn anything online for free.” While that’s partly rhetoric, it’s also a blueprint for disruption. His experimental school Astra Nova already offers a glimpse into a post-institutional future—one that favors creative, independent thinking over traditional credentialing. Now, with plans to launch the Texas Institute of Technology & Science, Musk is betting that elite training can happen outside the bounds of accreditation and federal oversight. Musk’s future is technocratic and libertarian, with universities seen as bloated, slow-moving, and culturally out of touch.

Peter Thiel’s vision is even more radical. Thiel has compared American higher education to the Catholic Church before the Reformation—rich, corrupt, and intellectually bankrupt. His Thiel Fellowship pays young people to skip college entirely, offering $100,000 to start companies instead of accumulating debt. He argues that universities reward conformity and delay adulthood. For Thiel, colleges don’t just fail to prepare students—they actively mislead them. His endgame is a decentralized, market-driven system in which talent rises through initiative and capital, not credentials.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, presents yet another threat—this time from artificial intelligence. Altman doesn’t reject learning, but he does question the institutions that monopolize it. With tools like ChatGPT and future AI tutors, Altman envisions personalized, real-time learning for everyone, everywhere. In this model, universities risk becoming obsolete—not because they are wrong, but because they are too slow and too expensive. Altman has also pushed universities to take a more active role in shaping AI policy; if they don’t, the tech industry will do it for them. The message is clear: adapt or be replaced.

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, is building a new kind of corporate university. Through programs like the Palantir Meritocracy Fellowship and “Semester at Palantir,” Karp is recruiting students directly out of elite schools—particularly those disillusioned by what he sees as anti-Israel sentiment or campus censorship. These programs offer practical, high-paid experience that bypasses traditional academic pathways. Karp’s vision doesn’t require the elimination of universities—it just renders them unnecessary for the most competitive jobs in tech and intelligence. His model suggests a future in which corporations, not universities, decide who is qualified.

Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, has weaponized the culture war to delegitimize higher education entirely. Kirk’s brand of activism portrays universities as corrupt, anti-American indoctrination centers. Through social media campaigns, donor networks, and student chapters, he has built an infrastructure of resistance against academic institutions. His goal isn’t reform—it’s replacement. Through efforts like the Freedom College Alliance, Kirk is helping to build a parallel educational system rooted in conservative Christian values, classical curricula, and ideological purity. In Kirk’s world, higher education isn’t broken—it’s the enemy.

Together, these six men are shaping a new, fragmented future for American education. Some want to burn it down. Some want to replace it. Some want to privatize it or profit from its collapse. What they share is a conviction that traditional universities no longer serve their intended purpose—and that a new model, rooted in tech, politics, or religion, must take its place.

This isn’t a theoretical debate. Universities are already responding—cutting liberal arts programs, racing to implement AI tools, rebranding themselves as career accelerators, and seeking favor with donors who increasingly resemble these disruptive outsiders. For those who resist, the future may include not just funding cuts, but political investigations, lawsuits, and public smear campaigns.

Higher education faces a stark choice. It can double down on its public mission—defending critical thinking, civic engagement, and social mobility—or it can retreat into elite credentialing and survival mode. What it cannot do is ignore the forces gathering at its gates. These forces are rich, powerful, ideologically driven—and they are not waiting for permission to remake the system.

Right-Wing Hillsdale College Targeting MSN Readers for Donations

Hillsdale College—a small, private Christian liberal arts institution in Michigan—has increasingly turned to digital advertising, including Microsoft’s MSN platform, to extend its reach and solicit donations. Known for its conservative ideology and its refusal to accept any federal or state funding, Hillsdale is relying more than ever on mass digital engagement to sustain its growing national influence.

Hillsdale sponsors content across digital news aggregators like MSN using native advertising platforms such as Taboola. These sponsored links promote Hillsdale’s free online courses in subjects like the U.S. Constitution and Western political philosophy. Readers who click are typically prompted to provide an email address, after which they are placed into a recurring stream of newsletters and donation appeals. Hillsdale’s marketing strategy combines educational branding with ideological and political themes designed to deepen audience loyalty and increase donor conversion.

The school’s strategy is informed by its unique financial model. Unlike most colleges, Hillsdale accepts no Title IV federal funds and avoids other forms of government support. While this independence allows Hillsdale to circumvent Department of Education oversight, it also necessitates a highly developed fundraising operation. Hillsdale reportedly raises between $100 million and $200 million annually through private donations, which support its growing campus, online educational infrastructure, Imprimis publication, and a national network of affiliated classical charter schools.

Hillsdale’s digital fundraising and brand-building efforts align closely with its broader ideological mission. On February 19, 2025, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk delivered a keynote lecture at Hillsdale’s National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix. Titled “Hitting the Ground Running: The Trump Transition and Early Priorities,” the event illustrated how Hillsdale fuses academic outreach with conservative political messaging. The speech was promoted on Hillsdale’s social media platforms and streamed via its Freedom Library website.

[Charlie Kirk speaks at Hillsdale College in February 2025.] 

Hillsdale’s collaboration with platforms like MSN reflects a wider shift in how politically-aligned institutions use digital media ecosystems to bypass traditional gatekeepers. Because MSN blends sponsored content into its main news feed using algorithmic curation, promotional material from ideological institutions can appear alongside conventional journalism—without the benefit of editorial transparency or disclaimers. For Hillsdale, this means access to millions of readers, many of whom may not realize they’re engaging with sponsored political content masked as civic education.

This convergence of ideology, education, and marketing raises critical questions about the future of higher education outreach and the role of big tech platforms in shaping political narratives. Hillsdale’s success in these spaces underscores how easily lines between education, influence, and revenue can blur in the digital age.

Sources
https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses/promo/constitution-101
https://freedomlibrary.hillsdale.edu/programs/national-leadership-seminar-phoenix-arizona/hitting-the-ground-running-the-trump-transition-and-early-priorities
https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/solutions/ad-products-formats/display
https://www.hillsdale.edu/about/frequently-asked-questions/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsdale_College
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu
https://www.facebook.com/hillsdalecollegemichigan/posts/livestream-today-1000-pm-et-watch-charlie-kirks-speech-hitting-the-ground-runnin/905074171834140

Security Threats: Groypers on Campus

Across the United States, far-right networks have quietly built their presence on college campuses—not through mass rallies or overt displays, but through a loose coalition of digital activists and in-person operatives known as Groypers.

The Groypers, inspired by the alt-right, white-nationalist, and “America First” ecosystems of the late 2010s and early 2020s, represent a new iteration of extremist youth organizing: savvy, antagonistic, and optimized for a social-media landscape where attention is currency and disruption is strategy.

Their influence is not as visible as Turning Point USA tabling events or Young America’s Foundation speaker tours. Instead, the Groyper presence grows through infiltration, targeted disruption, and online radicalization that spills into student life. As economic anxiety and political distrust intensify, campuses have become fertile ground for this phenomenon.

What Are Groypers?
Groypers are part of a decentralized far-right subculture aligned with white-nationalist figures and Christian nationalist ideologues. They are not a formal organization; rather, they are a network of memetic identities, recognizable by:
the cartoon Groyper frog mascot (an offshoot of the Pepe image ecosystem),
online anonymity/alter-egos,
ideological tropes centered on nativism, Christian nationalism, and “white identity,”
disruptive tactics aimed at embarrassing mainstream conservatives and intimidating progressive students.

Their overall goal is to pull young conservatives—and disaffected apolitical students—toward a more extreme worldview.

Why Campuses Are Targets
1. Transitional Vulnerability
First-year students often experience isolation, uncertainty, and identity formation. Groypers prey on this transitional moment by offering belonging, brotherhood, and contrarian confidence.

2. Political Vacuum
As universities retreat from serious civic education and as student affairs offices shrink under austerity, space opens for fringe networks to fill the ideological void.

3. Online Radicalization Pipelines
Groypers thrive in places like:

Discord
Telegram
X/Twitter
anonymous forums
niche livestream communities

Campus life becomes an extension of these networks, where online provocations evolve into real-world harassment or orchestrated spectacle.

4. Conservative Student Groups as Entry Points
Mainstream Republican or “free speech” groups are often targeted for infiltration. Groypers show up:
to push Q&A sessions into racist or antisemitic talking points,
to pressure student Republicans to shift further right,
to create rifts between libertarian, traditional conservative, and MAGA factions.

The strategy is division, not dialogue.

Common Groyper Tactics on Campus
1. Ambush Questioning
At public lectures or campus Republican events, Groypers coordinate to dominate Q&A sessions, posing racially charged or conspiratorial questions designed to go viral.

2. Online Harassment and Dogpiling
Students—often women, LGBTQ+ students, or activists—find themselves targeted with:

brigade attacks,
doxxing attempts,
edited clips taken out of context,
swarm-like intimidation.

3. Misery Farming
Groypers intentionally provoke negative reactions to harvest “proof” that campuses are hostile to conservatives. This content is then fed into national media pipelines.

4. Grooming and Recruitment
They seek out students who feel:
lonely
unsupported
resentful
ideologically adrift
economically anxious

A mix of dark humor, contrarian bravado, and “insider knowledge” becomes the grooming pathway.

The Institutional Problem: Campuses Are Not Prepared
Universities often misread these actors as:
“just trolls,”
“rowdy conservatives,”
“free speech activists.”

They’re not.

Groypers are engaged in ideological recruitment and targeted harassment that can escalate into threats, coordinated disruption, and offline violence. Yet institutions remain slow to respond because:
they lack digital literacy,
they fear backlash from right-wing media,
they outsource security and student affairs to PR firms,
administrators underestimate decentralized extremist networks.

Faculty—especially contingent or early-career academics—often feel unsupported or intimidated.

How Groypers Fit into the Larger Campus Crisis
The Groypers’ rise exposes deeper fractures:
neoliberal hollowing of the university
growing distrust in democratic institutions
political polarization fueled by billionaire-backed media
the decline of genuine civic education
surveillance capitalism and algorithmic radicalization

Campuses have become battlegrounds—not by accident, but because they sit at the intersection of youth, identity, technology, and national politics.

What Higher Education Must Do Now
Universities need to respond with clarity, not panic, and with structural solutions, not symbolic statements.

1. Treat Digital Extremism as Part of Student Safety
This means training staff, hiring specialists, and supporting targets of online harassment.

2. Reinvest in Human Infrastructure
Student Affairs, counseling centers, and campus journalism must be strengthened—not cut or replaced with outsourcing contracts.

3. Support Independent Investigative Student Journalism
Student reporters are often the first to detect radicalization trends—but only if their newsrooms are funded and protected.

4. Protect Academic Freedom Without Ceding Ground to Harassment
“Free speech” cannot be a shield for sustained intimidation campaigns.

5. Strengthen Civic Education Rooted in Truth and Inclusion
The real antidote to extremism is not censorship—it’s meaningful democratic literacy.

Seeing the Threat Clearly
Groypers are not the dominant force on campus. Most students reject their worldview. But they are a growing presence within a broader crisis where U.S. higher education lacks the stability, funding, and courage to defend its mission.

The real danger is not the meme or the mascot—it’s the vacuum that allows extremist networks to flourish.

The Higher Education Inquirer will continue monitoring this issue as the 2026 and 2028 election cycles approach, when radical groups often intensify campus recruitment and provocation.

Faith vs. Geology: Pangaea and the Great Deluge Theory at Liberty University

In the early 20th century, German scientist Alfred Wegener introduced the idea of continental drift, proposing that Earth's continents were once joined in a massive supercontinent called Pangaea. Though initially dismissed, his theory gained traction in the 1960s with the emergence of plate tectonics—a unifying model that explains how Earth's outer shell is divided into moving plates. This theory, now a cornerstone of modern geology, posits that Pangaea began to break apart roughly 230 million years ago, eventually forming the continents we recognize today. The overwhelming evidence for this process includes matching fossils on different continents, corresponding rock formations, and patterns in ancient species distribution. Radiometric dating techniques support the conclusion that Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, a timescale that allows for the slow, natural processes responsible for shaping the planet.

In stark contrast, Liberty University's Center for Creation Studies offers an alternative interpretation of Earth’s history rooted in a literal reading of the Bible. Situated in the Rawlings School of Divinity’s Freedom Tower—the tallest building in Lynchburg, Virginia—the Center teaches students to understand science through the lens of Genesis. Its Great Deluge Theory, based on the biblical account of Noah's Flood, rejects the mainstream scientific consensus. Instead of accepting that Earth’s continents drifted apart over hundreds of millions of years, the Center asserts that many geological features, including fossil layers and sedimentary rock strata, were formed rapidly during a single global flood event just a few thousand years ago. Young Earth creationism, which underpins the curriculum, maintains that the planet is no older than 10,000 years, and that natural history can be fully explained through divine intervention.

The divergence between these views is more than a matter of interpretation—it reflects fundamentally different epistemologies. Plate tectonics is grounded in empirical research, the scientific method, and peer review. It invites scrutiny, thrives on testable hypotheses, and evolves in response to new evidence. In contrast, Liberty’s model begins with a predetermined conclusion: the Bible is historically and scientifically accurate in every detail. Evidence is selectively interpreted to fit this framework, and contradictory data—no matter how extensive—is either reinterpreted or dismissed. This approach aligns more closely with apologetics than with science.

While Liberty University positions its creationist program as a means to equip students to "contend for their faith," critics argue that it misrepresents scientific knowledge and undermines science education. By framing the Great Deluge as a viable scientific alternative to plate tectonics, the institution promotes a parallel academic universe in which faith-based doctrines masquerade as empirical conclusions. The implications go beyond the classroom. As Liberty-trained educators and policymakers enter the workforce, the divide between evidence-based science and theological worldviews has the potential to further erode public understanding of geology, biology, and climate science.

The tension between these two narratives—one driven by data and theory, the other by scripture and conviction—mirrors broader cultural and political divides in the United States. In this climate, Liberty University’s Great Deluge Theory stands not merely as a fringe belief but as part of an organized ideological project. It seeks to challenge the authority of secular science and replace it with a creationist worldview, reinforced by institutional power, strategic philanthropy, and media amplification through outlets like Fox News and Turning Point USA.

Pangaea remains a foundational concept in understanding Earth's deep past—a testament to scientific inquiry and intellectual perseverance. The Great Deluge Theory, by contrast, functions more as a religious counter-narrative, one that reveals the growing influence of Christian nationalism within certain sectors of U.S. higher education. At Liberty University, students are taught not only to question modern geology but to replace it with a model of the Earth shaped by divine catastrophe. In doing so, the institution asserts a theological vision of reality that stands in direct opposition to the scientific consensus.

This conflict raises urgent questions about the role of ideology in higher education and the future of scientific literacy in a society increasingly divided along epistemological lines.

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Sources:

National Center for Science Education. “The Creationist Assault on Geology.” NCSE Reports.
https://ncse.ngo/creationist-assault-geology

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). “Geologic Time.”
https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/geologic-time

Wegener, Alfred. The Origin of Continents and Oceans. Translated edition, Dover Publications, 1966.

Liberty University. “Center for Creation Studies.”
https://www.liberty.edu/academics/creationstudies/

Liberty University Rawlings School of Divinity. “Freedom Tower Overview.”
https://www.liberty.edu/divinity/freedom-tower/

Numbers, Ronald L. The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design. Harvard University Press, 2006.

Scott, Eugenie C. Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction. University of California Press, 2009.

Radiometric Dating and the Age of the Earth. TalkOrigins Archive.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.html

Lisle, Jason. The Ultimate Proof of Creation. Master Books, 2009. (Representative of Liberty-style apologetics)

How U.S. Higher Education Helped Create Nick Fuentes

In the aftermath of each new outrage involving Nick Fuentes, pundits scramble to explain how a 20-something suburban Catholic kid became one of the most influential white supremacists in America. Many insist Fuentes is an anomaly, a glitch, a fringe figure who somehow slipped through the cracks of democracy and decency. But this narrative is both comforting and false.

Fuentes is not an anomaly. He is the logical product of the systems that shaped him—especially American higher education.

While institutions obsess over rankings, fundraising, and branding campaigns, they have quietly abandoned entire generations of young people to debt, alienation, status anxiety, and a digital culture that preys on male insecurity. In this vacuum, extremist networks thrive, incubating figures like Fuentes long before the public notices.

HEI warned about this trend years ago. Since 2016, the publication tracked the rise of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA, noting how TPUSA used campus culture wars to radicalize disaffected young men. HEI saw that for-profit-style marketing, donor-driven politics, and relentless culture-war agitation were creating an ecosystem where reactionaries could build both influence and profit. Fuentes did not arise outside that ecosystem—he evolved from it, even as he later turned on Kirk as insufficiently extreme.

What fuels this pipeline? A generation of young men raised on the promise of meritocracy but delivered a reality of spiraling costs, precarious futures, and institutional betrayal. Many arrive at college campuses burdened by debt, anxious about their place in an unforgiving economy, and deeply online. They bear the psychological bruises of a culture that has replaced community with competition and replaced meaning with metrics.

This is also the demographic most vulnerable to incel ideology, a misogynistic worldview built around grievance, rejection, humiliation, and resentment. Incel communities overlap heavily with the digital spaces where Fuentes built his early audience. The mix is combustible: sexually frustrated young men who feel mocked by mainstream culture, priced out of adulthood, and invisible to institutions that once guided them. The result is a fusion of white nationalism, male resentment, Christian nationalism, ironic fascism, and livestream entertainment—perfectly tailored to a generation raised on Twitch and YouTube.

And yet the higher-education establishment insisted for years that white supremacists were primarily rural “rednecks”—poor, uneducated, easily dismissed. This stereotype blinded journalists, academics, and administrators to the reality developing right in front of them. Higher Education Inquirer knew better because we corresponded for years with Peter Simi, one of the country’s leading scholars of extremism. Simi’s research demonstrated clearly that white supremacists were not confined to rural backwaters. They were suburban, middle-class, sometimes college-educated, often tech-savvy, and deeply embedded in mainstream institutions.

Simi’s work showed that white supremacist movements have always thrived among people with something to lose, people who feel their status slipping. They recruit in fraternities, gaming communities, campus political groups, military circles, and online spaces where young men spend their most lonely hours. They build identities around grievance and belonging—needs that universities once helped students navigate but now too often ignore.

This is the world that produced Nick Fuentes.

Fuentes entered higher education during a moment of fragmentation and distrust. Tuition was skyrocketing. Campuses were polarizing. Students were increasingly treated as revenue streams rather than whole human beings. Administrators were more focused on donor relations and culture-war optics than on the psychological welfare of their students. And universities outsourced so many vital functions—to police, to lobbyists, to tech platforms—that they ceded responsibility for the very students they claimed to educate.

Into that void stepped extremist influencers who offered simple answers to complex problems, validation for resentment, and a community that cared—if only in the performative, transactional sense of internet politics.

The tragedy is not simply that Fuentes emerged. The tragedy is that the conditions to generate many more like him remain firmly in place.

American higher education created the environment: hyper-competition, abandonment of the humanities, the collapse of community, the normalization of precarity, and a relentless emphasis on personal failure over systemic dysfunction. It created the audience: anxious, isolated, indebted young men looking for meaning. And it created the blind spot: a refusal to take extremism seriously until it reaches mainstream visibility.

Fuentes is not a glitch in the system. He is the system’s mirror held up to itself.

Unless universities confront their complicity in this radicalization pipeline—economically, culturally, and psychologically—the next Nick Fuentes is already in a dorm room somewhere, streaming at 2 a.m., finding thousands of followers who feel just as betrayed as he does.

---

Sources

Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (2017).
Peter Simi & Robert Futrell, American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate (2010, updated 2015).
Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (2018).
Joan Donovan & danah boyd, “Stop the Presses? The Crisis of Misinformation” (Harvard Kennedy School).
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right (2020).
Michael Kimmel, Healing from Hate: How Young Men Get Into—and Out of—Violent Extremism (2018).
Whitney Phillips, “The Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists.”
Brian Hughes & Cynthia Miller-Idriss, “Youth Radicalization in Digital Spaces.”
David Futrelle, We Hunted the Mammoth archive on incel ideology.
Higher Education Inquirer (2016–2025 coverage of TPUSA, Charlie Kirk, and campus extremism).

Heritage Foundation's 2025 "Mandate for Leadership" Presents Trump Playbook for Privatizing US Education and Reducing Oversight

The Heritage Foundation's 2025 Mandate for Leadership details what the next Trump Administration has in store for US higher education. The Education section starts on page 319. 

The Mandate was created by an army of writers and policy people, and it is approved by at least 100 conservative groups, including Liberty University and Turning Point USA.   

The authors include former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as senior partner; the Center for Renewing America led by former Trump-appointee Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought; and America First Legal, led by former Trump Senior Advisor Stephen Miller.

While one major goal is to eliminate the US Department of Education, there are many other privatization schemes in the works--shifting powers to the corporate world (and corporate greed) and providing minimal federal oversight. 

These schemes would also reduce oversight of K-12 education, colleges, and student loans. Since the federal government funds a great deal of state-level bureaucracy, these measures would also reduce oversight at the state level. 

It is possible many of these disruptive policies could be employed without Congressional approval. 

This document is more than rhetoric. Republicans have been diligently planning on hiring 20,000 people to help carry these ideas out.  

Even if only partially realized, the Mandate has consequences that could last for generations, further dividing the nation by race and class--and making the nation vulnerable to foreign adversaries.