Culture Wars Now Waged with Federal Education Funding

In June 1963, two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, made their way to the University of Alabama’s Foster Auditorium to enroll in classes. Alabama’s governor at the time, George Wallace, along with three state troopers, had positioned themselves in the building’s doorway. His arms behind his back and his chin lifted in defiance, Wallace would physically block the students from enrolling if it came to that. The tense situation was at an impasse. But finally, with orders directly from President Kennedy, National Guard General Henry Graham commanded Wallace to move from the entry, and he complied.

Over fifty years later, students at the University of California Berkeley arranged a protest on Wednesday to denounce alt-right leader Milo Yiannopoulos, who was scheduled to appear on campus. After the situation violently escalated, the university decided to cancel Yiannopoulos’ speech citing safety concerns. Berkeley students have now also attracted the direct attention of the President of the United States, but not in the way they might have hoped. In a twitter response about Wednesday’s incident, President Trump said that UC had actively censored Yiannopoulos’ free speech, and he threatened punishment.

The gradual withdrawal of state support for higher education  has left public universities increasingly vulnerable to federal demands. Trump probably won’t order federal marshals to escort Yiannopoulos to a podium on the UC campus anytime soon. Instead, he may try to wield billions in higher education funding as a weapon in the “culture wars” that have been waged by proxy in American classrooms and on college campuses for decades.

The threat of withholding federal funding is not new, but it is increasingly weighty. Last year, faculty and students across North Carolina’s colleges braced themselves for a similar showdown with the federal government. In the weeks prior, administrators at North Carolina colleges found themselves in a difficult position. The state legislature passed a new law compelling all state institutions, including public colleges, to ensure that transgender students use the bathroom that corresponded to the gender they were assigned at birth. If colleges obliged, the U.S. Department of Justice under the Obama Administration threatened to eliminate all federal funding from the state including the over 4 billion in education support that goes in part to North Carolina’s 75 public colleges and universities. This would have cost institutions critical access to federal student loans and Pell Grants, putting in jeopardy their ability to stay open. But if they ignored the legislature’s directive, the state might have yanked a similar level of state funding for noncompliance.

The federal government has some states overpowered financially, and this puts institutions like UC Berkeley in a particularly tough position. The Obama Administration’s response to North Carolina’s violation of Title IX of the Higher Education Act and Trump’s threats yesterday to punish what he considers an assault on free speech signal a consequential shift in the way federal higher education funds will be used to shape civil rights discourse.

In the end, state legislators can only blame themselves for ceding this control. From 1996 to 2012, the share that the federal government contributes toward the cost of a dependent student’s four-year degree has more than doubled, while the share of costs covered by state and local funding has decreased by a third. To varying degrees, North Carolina, California and other states have begun to retreat from supporting their systems of public higher education. 

Schools will probably continue to be an important battlefield for civil rights, but the changing way higher education has been funded comes with unmistakable tradeoffs.