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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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Sorry, minor nitpick, but I wouldn't include all of GMU in any list of conservative universities. I attended GMU and majored in Economics. The Econ department and law school were libertarian anomalies within a rather normal university that was mostly very liberal.

There were constantly left leaning groups trying to oust the GMU econ department. UnKoch My Campus was one of the more well known ones. But there were also attempts by other departments to take control of GMU econ department. One such instance was the faculty trying to create a rule where they would have oversight into other department's hiring practices. It likely would have failed to take control even if it was passed. Walter Williams had control of GMU econ financials and set it up in such a way that it was almost entirely independent from the wider university.


As a result of that minor nitpick I do think that this is an effective move for conservative cultural power. It is often the most obviously non-leftist educational institutions that get attacked the hardest. But there is a limit to attention spans and anger about a thing that doesn't actually effect you. New College has the potential to be a lightning rod for discontent, but other more moderate changes could be slipped in at institutions across the state and not receive as much push-back.

Yeah, was wrong on GMU, thanks. But there are other christian colleges with 10k+ student bodies, many of which have 'christian' or 'baptist' in the name and are fighting with their students over 'how okay are we with gay students' instead of 'should we purge the nonwoke' that I don't think it matters.