Trump’s unconservative ‘American Academy’
Timothy P. Carney
Video Embed
All politicians have bad ideas. Former President Donald Trump‘s bad ideas take on a particular character — they lack a conservative disposition in key respects. His proposal for a federally funded, “anti-woke,” free university is rooted in all of these typical Trumpian errors: over-centralization, lack of prudence about the future, and a simplistic concept of both government finance and education.
In the name of a “massive higher-education overhaul,” Trump says he will create the “American Academy” by “taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments” and then creating an endowment from which to fund this new institution, which will make a “world-class education available to every American free of charge.”
BIDEN SUPPLEMENTAL WOULD HIRE MOST EVER BORDER PATROL AND IMMIGRATION JUDGES
He promises the academy will be “strictly nonpolitical, and there will be no ‘wokeness’ or jihadism allowed.”
There are plenty of good ideas here. For one thing, Trump is right that colleges have been overrun by intolerant left-wing ideologues whose radical politics damage the country and interfere with the proper functions of academia.
But it’s the height of folly to believe he can fix these problems by creating a government-run school. First of all, a values-free, politics-free education is not possible. You cannot provide much of an education without advancing or at least discussing one or more worldviews. Secondly, if you want less politics in something, the worst strategy possible is to put politicians in charge.
Imagine if Trump created the American Academy and successfully kept out “wokeness” and jihadism. How would he do that? Perhaps he would craft and implement regulations against certain viewpoints. What do you think would happen the moment Democrats took over the administration? Any religious instructors would be banned, the whole workforce would become unionized, and DEI and ESG indoctrination would become mandatory.
If Democrats have made abortion an integral part of the Department of Defense, imagine what they would do with the American Academy.
The main reason conservatives try to keep the government out of things is that they know the government ruins things.
Again, Trump is trying to address real problems with his new university, such as the difficulty some working-class people have in finishing their degrees. But there’s no reason to assume the solution would be a single nationwide institution, except that Trump always thinks in such nationalist, centralizing ways.
Federalism and localism are not part of his vocabulary.
Also, Trump shows a misunderstanding of what education is. “This institution will gather an entire universe of the highest quality educational content covering the full spectrum of human knowledge.”
You don’t educate someone by giving them “quality educational content.” That’s a reductive idea of learning.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Finally, funding a university by taking money from other universities is typical Trumpian crack-pottery, like funding a wall by “making Mexico pay for it.”
“The American Academy” is a bad idea in the same way Trump’s bad ideas tend to be bad: It betrays a lack of understanding of government and a lack of the prudence that lies at the heart of conservatism.