In recent months, politicians from both sides of the aisle have been busy exerting influence on state universities. In Virginia, a newly elected Democratic governor has quickly put her stamp on higher ed, adding political allies to university governing boards and reportedly forcing out some members with whom she disagrees. Citing concerns about recent personnel decisions at the University of Kentucky, the state’s Democratic governor declared this month that he was losing confidence in the flagship’s leadership. Meanwhile, Republicans in states across the country are ever more aggressively targeting universities over diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Politicians and governance experts alike often extol the virtues of depoliticizing universities, but does anyone actually think that’s realistic now?

Related Reading

Virginia’s Boards Leap Left (The Chronicle) 

At Texas Tech, Even Some Student Research on Gender Will Be Banned (The Chronicle) 

The New Order: How the Nation’s Partisan Divisions Consumed Public-College Boards and Warped Higher Education (The Chronicle) 

Guest

Andy Thomason, assistant managing editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education 

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.