Murray State University historian Dr. Brian Clardy doesn’t mince words about Donald Trump’s holy war on colleges and universities for promoting what the president calls a radical leftist ideology.
“Do I consider Trump to be a fascist? Yes,” said Clardy. “Are his policies fascistic? Yes.”
The Trump administration is in the forefront of a rightwing crusade against “Wokeism”, Critical Race Theory, and programs that seek to increase diversity, equality, and inclusion, especially on college and university campuses. The right also aims to whitewash American history and culture in classrooms and books by further marginalizing minorities, women, immigrants, and LGBTQ people, according to Clardy, a professor of history who earned a Ph.D. in history from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
“Fascists attack people with brains,” he said. “Fascists cannot stand societies that are literate and raise questions.”
Clardy’s words closely parallel those of Dr. Jason Stanley, who holds the Bissell-Heyd Chair in American Studies at the University of Toronto. Stanley is an author and authority on fascism.
“A fascist form of life … has certain requirements,” Stanley wrote in Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. “Perhaps most importantly, it requires an education system that can validate the dominant group’s elevated status as a justified consequence of history rather than the fabricated result of intentional choices. It does this … by selectively doctoring the historical record, erasing perspectives and events that are unflattering to the dominant group, and replacing them with a unitary, simplified account that supports its ideological ends.”
Stanley also wrote that of late, “the United States has seen a wave of right-wing political interference in education focused on banning certain concepts, authors, and books from schools’ libraries and curricula. The unstated goal of these bans is to erase the perspectives and histories of marginalized groups, including most prominently the history of Black Americans, whose ancestors were enslaved and brutally subjugated in this country.
“... When fascists attempt to rewrite history, they sometimes claim that they are erasing only theories and interpretations of history, which they claim to be biased, rather than [eliminating] underlying historical events. But they know well that their interventions result in the erasure of events themselves, as well as the patterns they form.”
Stanley also wrote that fascists target educators because “democratic education enhances human flourishing, supports human dignity, and shapes children into critical, thoughtful, generous, empathetic citizens. An education that valorizes a national, ethnic, or religious identity, on the other hand, is incapable of doing any of these things and is inconsistent with democracy and human flourishing.”
Trump said he withheld billions of federal dollars from Harvard and Columbia universities, both prestigious private schools, because officials at both institutions were fostering antisemitism on campus. “His attack has nothing to do with antisemitism and everything to do with going after those institutions that help to mold young minds to think critically,” Clardy said. “Fascists can’t stand that type of creativity, that type of innovation.”
Columbia and two other Ivy League schools also accused of antisemitism cut deals with the administration to keep the money at risk. Harvard sued, and last month a federal judge ruled that Trump’s action against the university was unlawful.
This month, the administration offered nine other leading universities and colleges “preferential access to federal funds in exchange for agreeing to a set of demands,” wrote NBC’s Kimmy Yam and Gabe Gutierrez. To get dibs on the money, the schools, “including several Ivy League institutions,” must “agree to parameters such as barring transgender people from using restrooms or playing in sports that align with their gender identities and capping international undergraduate student enrollment, among other conditions.” Trump has since extended the offer to all colleges and universities.
Warned Clardy: “Harvard and Columbia are two of the leading centers for teaching critical thought. If Trump can take them down, imagine what he can do to a public university that is dependent on public funding.”
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