Are Republicans Targeting Higher Education For Takeover?

Freddie DeBoer:

Purdue University’s Board of Trustees has just voted unanimously to install Governor Mitch Daniels as the new president. As a doctoral student at the university, there’s a lot to say about this, and I intend to, but for now it’s enough to point out that while in office Governor Daniels pushed to cut funding to Indiana’s public universities again and again. I simply cannot fathom extending an invitation to lead an organization to a man who had worked tirelessly to defund that organization; it simply would not be countenanced in other contexts. In addition, Governor Daniels’s administration has repeatedly attacked public education and public teachers,  pushing for privatization schemes like private school vouchers and ascribing broad educational failures to Indiana’s schoolteachers, without providing responsible evidence. The man is an enemy of public education in Indiana who has now been selected to run one of our public universities. Internal opposition to that selection is the purest, more rational self-interest regardless of the political views of the individuals so opposed. Our media, of course, will regard any protest as a sign of liberal bias, no matter what kinds of complaints are voiced against Daniels.
This is to say nothing of the extreme regression Daniels represents in terms of credentials. The woman he is replacing, Dr. France A. Cordova, holds a PhD in physics from CalTech, was an administrator at Los Alamos National Laboratory, chaired the department of physics at a major research university, was the youngest person ever to hold the office of Chief Scientist at NASA, sits on the National Science Board, was given the Distinguished Service Medal by NASA, and chairs the Smithsonian Board of Regents. Mitch Daniels is a career politician with essentially no educational administrative experience to speak of. Clearly, the Board of Trustees has failed to select a candidate with the kind of qualifications our previous president holds.

Combine this with the University of Virginia fiasco and billionaires funding craptastic research institutes at universities, and you have to wonder if there is an explicit strategy to convert research universities into Fox News-style ideological experiments.  Just like in government (and the Catholic Church?), the Republican strategy to undermine peoples' faith in the institution seems to rely on having Republicans run it.  I'm guessing universities may be next.