The Rebel Campus Boosters Rising Up Against Wokeness on Campus
Things have changed: Alumni foes of campus radicals are getting organized, raising money, and fighting back.
In the plummy world of alumni relations, where distinguished graduates are awarded honorary degrees and major donors are fêted at the president’s mansion, it is virtually unheard of for former students to set up shop as a political counterweight to the university, challenging its modes of governance and day-to-day operations.
Alarmed by academia’s dominant ideological ethos of social justice activism – particularly the holy trinity of race, sex, and gender – more than two dozen dissident groups have emerged seeking to rebalance the culture at leading public and private universities across the country, including Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, UCLA, Williams, the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia.
They are expected to gain traction with Donald Trump back in the White House.
The dissident alumni organizations are not shoestring operations, but well-honed machines, some raising several hundred thousand dollars a year; a number of them have hired executive directors, professional staff, or consultants. This loose coalition of local chapters has also developed into a national movement with its own umbrella group, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance.
Drawing on alumni resources and connections, the dissidents have curated email lists totaling thousands of recipients, diverted financial contributions from longtime university donors, attracted financial support from foundations, organized speaker series and public events, and generated critical reports and investigative articles, especially regarding policies advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. They have invited prominent…