{C} onservatives have long been concerned about academia, but without much to show for it. Lately, however, that has begun to change.
Last year’s Supreme Court ruling that ended affirmative action sent many universities into a spiral as they sought to retain their now-illegal admissions processes. Then, after Hamas launched deadly terror attacks against Israel last October, student protests — often accompanied by faculty support — revealed antisemitic trends so disturbing that Congress summoned the heads of several leading universities to a hearing. Their poor performances at that hearing led to immense public pressure for the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania to resign. While Penn’s president was out in a matter of days, it was a separate plagiarism scandal that finally took down Harvard’s.
The public is now beginning to see how thoroughly the push for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has overtaken academic institutions. DEI programs at colleges and universities have grown in both size and power over the past few years. The average university now has more than 45 DEI-focused employees, with some schools having more than 200. However, now that universities are unable to consider race when making admissions decisions and DEI offices have been wholly ineffective in combating antisemitism, public opinion on the matter is shifting.
Conservatives now have a rare opportunity to confront one of our longtime foes, and with popular support. For guidance on how best to take advantage of this opportunity, we can look to a previous struggle that today’s challenge, though unique, still resembles: Ronald Reagan’s battle as governor to tame the University of California system.
Modern conservatism’s quarrel with academia began after World War II, as the G.I. Bill rapidly expanded the college population and thus also the public role of the university. As president of Columbia University during this time, Dwight Eisenhower had a tense relationship with the school’s intellectual climate. In the McCarthy era, conservatives saw universities as hotbeds of communist activism. By the time William F. Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale was published, there was a growing sense on the right that academia was no longer a place for intellectual exploration.
The University of California at Berkeley was a case in point. When students arrived on campus in fall 1964, the university announced that it was restricting political activity at an intersection that had traditionally been used for protests. Students resisted this change, and some launched the Free Speech Movement (FSM) in response. Demonstrations included thousands of students at a time and pushed the boundaries of the law. At one point, after an occupation of Administration Hall, more than 800 students were arrested.
The president of UC Berkeley, Clark Kerr, was ill equipped to face the crisis. While he had successfully turned the university into a world-class institution, his solution to student militancy ranged from weak resistance to appeasement.
After it became clear that Berkeley faculty overwhelmingly supported the FSM, the Board of Regents agreed to a compromise that returned to student organizations the right to politically organize. But it came with the condition that students not advocate for “unlawful off-campus action.” This compromise satisfied many students but further angered far-left groups.
The academic year that began with the FSM ended with the first of many anti-Vietnam rallies in May 1965. The Vietnam Day Committee, a left-wing political alliance that included students, Berkeley faculty, and other members of the San Francisco Bay Area community, formed. As anti-war demonstrations grew stronger, voters across the state, especially Republicans, grew increasingly frustrated with the lawlessness. A former Hollywood star named Ronald Reagan seized the opportunity in his run for governor, and led the charge against not just UC Berkeley, but the entire University of California system.
Reagan’s personal education had been modest. He graduated from the small Eureka College in rural Illinois. Before his formal political career even began, he expressed skepticism about academia, briefly mocking Harvard University in his famous “A Time for Choosing” speech. When he launched his 1966 gubernatorial campaign, a key pillar of his platform was a promise to “clean up the mess at Berkeley.”
Reagan was immensely critical of Clark Kerr and said that the “so-called Free Speech advocates” had “no appreciation for freedom.” He argued that, after the first assault of a police officer during the riots, “the ringleaders should have been taken by the scruff of their neck and thrown out of the university once and for all.” This message was a key part of Reagan’s victory over incumbent Democrat Pat Brown.
In January 1967, the recently inaugurated Governor Reagan attended his first meeting of the UC Board of Regents, which experienced a rightward shift under the new administration. In this meeting, the board voted to fire Kerr because “the people of this state had lost confidence in the university.”
Later, after the riots outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, it became clear that student protests across the country were pushing up against their own limitations. Despite three years of demonstrations against Vietnam, neither political party showed a willingness to change course. This perversely provoked the anti-war movement at Berkeley to grow even more violent, even more radical, and even more disjointed.
The 1968–69 school year was particularly hectic for Berkeley. Riots led by the Third World Liberation Front protested Eurocentric education and demanded the creation of a “Third World college,” with a curriculum designed by people of color. Governor Reagan sent in the National Guard to quash this uproar, but the school agreed to launch an ethnic-studies program.
A few months later, students took over an empty lot on the Berkeley campus to build a “people’s park.” After the administration announced its intention to begin construction of a soccer field there, chaos ensued. Rioters chanted “we want the park” as they marched into combat with police. Governor Reagan again sent in the National Guard.
In a meeting with the UC Berkeley administration after the riot, Reagan scolded administrators for negotiating with the rioters. “All of it began the first time some of you who know better, and are old enough to know better, let young people think that they had the right to choose the laws they would obey as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest,” he said.
In 1970, Reagan took the most drastic step of his governorship. As violence again erupted on the UC Berkeley campus in response to the National Guard in Ohio killing four student protesters, he shut down all 28 public colleges and universities in the state for four days and asked that private schools do the same.
Reagan made other reforms to the UC system while governor. He proposed budget cuts and argued that the UC Board of Regents should implement an annual tuition (public universities were free for California residents at the time). He got his budget cuts, but tuition would not come until 1980. Despite this, he did reach a compromise that included raising student registration fees.
Governor Reagan made it clear that he was “in favor of education” and that his actions did not represent “any anti-intellectual approach” on his part. To him, the exploits of the students and faculty at Berkeley undermined the legitimacy of the UC system, which he called “one of California’s greatest resources.” He sought to “maintain and protect that resource for those currently attending one of the many campuses, for those who will attend in the future, and for those who foot the bill — you and I.” He was fighting for the future of the education system.
This is the same fight that conservatives face today. While it may take a slightly different form, the fundamental struggle against left-wing illiberalism has not changed. The leftist ideological hegemony in universities is clearly present with DEI initiatives that enforce conformity of thought. But with the sudden rise of antisemitism, the public is starting to see that the emperor has no clothes — that “diversity” programs have no interest in intellectual diversity at all.
Conservatives have been saying this for years. But now that people are listening, we need to act. The Right cannot take neutral positions on issues like DEI, especially when these programs are operating in public universities funded by taxpayer dollars. Governor Reagan was not afraid to directly confront the upheaval at UC Berkeley. Republicans are starting to follow his lead.
In Iowa and Oklahoma, DEI programs in public universities have either been drastically reduced or dissolved altogether. In Wisconsin, the Republican legislature made a deal with the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to abolish roughly one-third of DEI positions at UW-Madison. In Florida, Ron DeSantis has taken the most drastic steps to reform his state’s public-university system, from defunding DEI to completely overhauling the New College of Florida.
Ronald Reagan understood that the fight for academia demands more than rhetoric. It demands action. More than five decades later, Republicans owe a debt of gratitude to Reagan’s blueprint for the conservative movement.