Right now people are arguing about whether cancel culture is back — this time, coming from the right. It certainly looks as if the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel and other controversies are examples of a kind of conservative revenge for the great woke cancellations of 2020 and 2021.

But I really think that you need to understand the conservative cultural strategy much more in terms of institutions than celebrity individuals.

Long before the Charlie Kirk assassination, the Trump White House saw a once-in-a-generation opportunity to try to push America’s cultural institutions, movie studios and TV networks meaningfully to the right. This week I want to talk about the most significant of these efforts, more important even than the late-night-TV wars.

That effort is the administration’s attempt to change elite academia — the way big universities admit students, hire faculty members, handle free-speech debates and much more. My guest, May Mailman, is the perfect person to discuss the Trump administration’s strategy because she’s been in charge of it.

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