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   Alex Wild (alexwild@mastodon.online)'s status on Monday, 22-May-2023 23:43:29 JST Alex Wild

   The fascist attempt to take over Higher Ed is partly ideological/theocratic, but don’t underestimate the part that’s sheer grift.

   Republicans are finding ways to divert public money into the pockets of their friends and donors. Pay close attention to who gets the new contracts coming out of the expanded New College budget.

   Whether New College meets any academic goals is immaterial, compared to Oligarchs building a new machine for bleeding us.

   #Florida #HigherEd
   https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/05/03/after-desantis-takeover-record-funding-new-college

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:30:53 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Fifi Lamoura
     • Gwladys Pendlebury
     • Donald Ball

     @fifilamoura @GwladysPendlebury @donaldball @alexwild
     I agree with most everything upthread! It’s hard to pinpoint a single moment when the right-wing attack on education began; not sure it was ever absent, even since antiquity. Still, even if the backlash to education as a leading edge of human rights is age-old, surely the current backlash against feminism and queer rights is contemporary — and whether & how women receive education is deeply tied to what I wrote here: https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/110390933010364517

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     Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:30:54 JST Fifi Lamoura

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell
     • Gwladys Pendlebury
     • Donald Ball

     @GwladysPendlebury While that backlash was going on Queer and Feminist study programs were being created in Universities as well. So it's been a tug of war (aka "the culture war") since then but the thing is, feminism has always been about money and work as part of bodily autonomy (the neoliberal coopting of feminism into capitalist White Lean In style "women can be successful if they're just like men" FeminismTM and Corporate Gay culture, and other forms of tokenism, was also capitalism protecting itself from real change that would lessen the power of the already comfortable/wealthy).
     @donaldball @alexwild @inthehands

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     Gwladys Pendlebury (gwladyspendlebury@home.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:30:55 JST Gwladys Pendlebury

     in reply to

     • Fifi Lamoura
     • Paul Cantrell
     • Donald Ball

     @fifilamoura @donaldball @alexwild @inthehands There’s no question that there was a huge conservative backlash against civil rights and feminism wherein education was a major target. I’m pointing a method which had major ripple effect in not only the decline in liberal arts, humanities and minority studies in higher ed and public schools but also the for profit motives which was the subject of the original post.

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
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     Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:30:56 JST Fifi Lamoura

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell
     • Gwladys Pendlebury
     • Donald Ball

     @GwladysPendlebury That didn't help but there really was a lot of culture war type bullshit and pushback around women getting more power. Remember, in the 70s women still couldn't get a credit card without a man's signature in many places, marital rape wasn't illegal and, well, many men were upset about women speaking up and getting equal rights and the legal ability to fight back against patriarchal institutions and oppression (and the ability to more easily divorce them).

     @donaldball @alexwild @inthehands

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     Gwladys Pendlebury (gwladyspendlebury@home.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:30:58 JST Gwladys Pendlebury

     in reply to

     • Fifi Lamoura
     • Paul Cantrell
     • Donald Ball

     @fifilamoura @donaldball @alexwild @inthehands True it started in the 80s, hugely due to the The U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Ranking. Competing to please employers ushered in an administrative business model, course standardization, took power away from academics in the pursuit of profit. Universities became trade schools and the pursuit of knowledge and higher ed went to pot.

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     Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:30:59 JST Fifi Lamoura

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell
     • Donald Ball

     @donaldball Actually this started back in the 80s but really picked up speed in the 90s. In the 80s it was a backlash against feminism and "political correctness" and using "chairperson' instead of "chairman." A lot of it has to do with icky old White men not getting to "have affairs" with their female students (aka losing their power to sexually abuse students with impunity and to be celebrated and adored for writing about it in their creepy novels about it all).
     @alexwild @inthehands

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
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     Donald Ball (donaldball@triangletoot.party)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:31:00 JST Donald Ball

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @alexwild @inthehands Right-wingers started looking at public universities as juicy targets in the 90’s. I believe that part of the reason for the bloating university administrations since then was to build an appartus into which to slot the friends and scions of the powerful, reducing their inclination towards attack.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:34:21 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Fifi Lamoura
     • Gwladys Pendlebury
     • Donald Ball

     @fifilamoura @GwladysPendlebury @donaldball @alexwild
     I do think it’s important to recognize that the commodification of education (US News rankings!) and the strip-mining wealth extraction the OP mentions are entangled but distinct phenomena. We’re under multi-pronged assault here.

     FWIW, from the inside of higher ed, I’m heartened by the strength of the resistance I see — from college employees and also from students! There is hope. Liberal arts education is very much alive and fighting.

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     Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:35:43 JST Fifi Lamoura

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell
     • Gwladys Pendlebury
     • Donald Ball

     @GwladysPendlebury Fair enough, I just find that a some younger women don't really understand how bad it can be for women and how recently we got free of basically being legally owned by men. The speed and ease of the snapping back of laws in the US to implement extreme oppression of women and queer people is terrifying. It's about money AND oppression because both are about exploitation, there's money to be made but there are also children and women to be used and abused, the greed and cruelty are deeply intertwined. @donaldball @alexwild @inthehands

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:55:59 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Fifi Lamoura
     • Gwladys Pendlebury
     • Donald Ball

     @fifilamoura @GwladysPendlebury @donaldball @alexwild
     I’ll also raise my hand here and accept blame from us cis het white men who support all these positive changes, but have treated them as a done deal. We failed for too long to see the threat; many still fail now. Our complacence was essential to letting the current threat progress as far as it has.

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     Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:56:00 JST Fifi Lamoura

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell
     • Gwladys Pendlebury
     • Donald Ball

     @GwladysPendlebury To be clear, I'm not pointing fingers at younger women (or younger queers) at all. It's also on us that we haven't managed to make these changes permanent enough that our rights can't disappear in the blink of an eye. I actually blame capitalism (not reigned in by wealth redistribution and social spending) and advertising (the advertising industry being the handmaiden of capitalism) because it hollowed out social movements and turned calls for social equality, equity and real change into tokenism, and marketed a shiny and aspirational tokenism to continue justifying inequality and exclusion.

     @donaldball @alexwild @inthehands

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     Gwladys Pendlebury (gwladyspendlebury@home.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 00:56:01 JST Gwladys Pendlebury

     in reply to

     • Fifi Lamoura
     • Paul Cantrell
     • Donald Ball

     @fifilamoura @donaldball @alexwild @inthehands I get that. There’s been a lot of unfair blame and finger pointing. I’m not a younger woman and I was in college administration. I resisted, but as you pointed out patriarchal powers prevailed. The decline of education in so many aspects is heartbreaking and they aren’t done yet.

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     Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 01:38:42 JST Fifi Lamoura

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell
     • Gwladys Pendlebury
     • Donald Ball

     @inthehands We were all brought up with the idea that history and progress are linear, a conception of time that is not culturally universal at all, though we take it as a given fact. It's also like how we think evolution is linear and intentional, when it's chaotic and random. So we all share in this misunderstanding and not really realizing quite how quickly the tables could be turned on us.

     @GwladysPendlebury @donaldball @alexwild

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 24-May-2023 01:39:10 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Fifi Lamoura
     • Gwladys Pendlebury
     • Donald Ball

     @fifilamoura @GwladysPendlebury @donaldball @alexwild
     Yes. So well said.