A challenge to leftist bias moves into America’s public universities

In 1951 a 25-year-old Yale graduate published a 240-page polemic inveighing against his alma mater’s left-leaning bias. The book launched the career of William F. Buckley, the most influential conservative intellectual of the post-war era. Although Buckley managed to reshape the Republican Party, his war against academia proved less successful. Conservatives still haven’t given up on changing the academy. The most robust reform momentum now is building at public university systems. In Florida, in particular, a trio of Yale alumni have ambitious plans to change the future of higher education.

Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who graduated from Yale in 2001, likes to say that his state is “where woke goes to die”. In universities he put in place a tenure-review process, which critics say weakened academic freedom, and he has used his appointment powers to influence institutions. At New College of Florida, a public liberal-arts college that had been a bastion of progressivism, he appointed new trustees who fired the president and replaced him with a former Republican lawmaker. Scores of faculty and students left.