Why colleges became the center of the culture wars: ANALYSIS

Culture war issues have taken over college and university campuses. Schools continue to shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion laws to comply with new state laws, while others try to address ongoing tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.

Diversity, free speech, curriculum, student loans — debate over these issues have wreaked havoc in higher education institutions as schools fight to quell both internal and external pressures.

Higher education researchers and educators told ABC News that the recent scrutiny has felt more like an effort to “delegitimize” higher education institutions.

“What we’re calling the cultural wars represents the fact that we’ve got a polarized and divided government that regulates the policies and practices of educational institutions,” Aaron Pallas, a professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, said in an interview.

“So laws and regulations, whether they are old or new, become tools for advancing political agendas.”

Nick Perrino, the executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, describes campuses as a “microcosm” of the broader society and a place that represents the fight for the future.

“If they want to be a true-seeking institution, then the administrators at the institution can’t put their thumb on the scale of the debate,” said Perrino. “They are not themselves the critics. So they’re the host and sponsor of the students and faculty who have the debates on these contentious current events. But the university itself is not a critic. They are the forum.”

America’s institutions have made the country a leading global force in higher education. Higher education has long been viewed as a pillar of academic freedom, Pallas told ABC News in an interview. He said it has been a place where students are meant to engage in debate and dialogue to create the next generation of critical thinkers.

However, he added, “thinking critically is not necessarily in the interest of some political sectors.”

As tensions and legislative forces continue to compound on college campuses, U.S. adults say they’re losing faith in those very institutions.

A recent Gallup poll shows that U.S. adults are nearly equally divided among those who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence (36%), some confidence (32%), or little or no confidence (32%) in higher education. In 2015, Gallup found that 57% had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence and 10% had little or none.

Heidi Tseu, assistant vice president for the National Engagement for the American Council on Education, told ABC News, “The idea of higher education is to invite ideas and to invite discourse and consider things, and the spirit of that is to be able to train our next generation of leaders. That makes us a pretty soft target.”

College campuses and politics

Most recently, some institutions were racked with student protests calling for a cease-fire and the divestment of college and university funds from Israeli military operations as the Gaza death toll climbed.

Institutions were faced with accusations of allowing anti-Palestinian and antisemitic rhetoric on campus; a Columbia University’s Task Force on Antisemititsm found that some Jews and Israelis at Columbia University felt ostracized from student groups and were subjected to verbal abuse and their complaints were often downplayed or ignored by school officials amid ongoing tensions.

Congressional hearings over college protests concerning the Israel-Hamas conflict led to accusations of discrimination sentiment on campuses — including Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

After months of scrutiny from politicians threatening to pull federal or state funding or support legal action against the schools, three presidents of top universities resigned from the aforementioned institutions.

At the same time, legislation across the country has targeted diversity programs in higher education following the Supreme Court decision to limit the use of affirmative action in college admissions, with Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and other states slashing their diversity, equity, and inclusion offices.

Diversity programs in higher education, aimed at addressing inequity and providing resources for marginalized groups, have been accused by some politicians of favoring students based on their identity.

Additionally, some states have introduced policies to restrict certain curricula that discuss race, gender, sexual orientation and oppression in higher institutions. Schools that don’t comply could lose government funding — and some have criticized these laws for restricting free speech.

Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, states that these laws could have decades-long impacts, particularly if they head to the Supreme Court — much like affirmative action or the Biden administration’s efforts to forgive student debt en masse. The effort to forgive student loan debt was struck down by the court due to a lawsuit filed by Republican-led states and conservative advocates.

“The public has less faith in [higher education], in part because they aren’t able to deliver one of the things that was already seen as a reason for going to college,” said Pallas.

He continued, “The educated life is an intrinsic good, but many students went to college to try to secure an economic future, and the price of higher education has increased for public institutions, in particular — often dependent on state legislatures, but the funding has cut. Funding for those institutions has been declining, and the price of higher education has been rising. So the idea of going into debt for a fragile economic future may not be enough.”

All of this, educators and researchers say, captures how intertwined higher education is with the ever-changing political winds.