“攻击大学。”特朗普的副总统候选人 JD Vance 对高等教育发表了严厉的言论

【中美创新时报2024 年 7 月 16 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）在JD万斯（JD Vance ）身上，唐纳德·特朗普选择了一位将学院和大学视为“敌人”的竞选伙伴。对此，《波士顿环球报》记者麦克·达米亚诺（Mike Damiano）和希拉里·伯恩斯（Hilary Burns）作了下述报道。

万斯是一位来自俄亥俄州的民粹主义共和党参议员，出身贫寒，毕业于耶鲁大学法学院，他在演讲、采访和写作中明确表示，他认为大学是国家分裂和不平等的根源。他说，大学接受了数十亿美元的纳税人资金，却让年轻人背负着沉重的学生债务，从而破坏了“社会契约”。他们放弃了寻求真相的使命，转而兜售“欺骗和谎言”。他们向学生灌输进步的政治正统观念。

“我们必须诚实而积极地攻击这个国家的大学，”万斯在 2021 年题为“大学是敌人”的演讲中说道。

如果特朗普赢得大选，万斯现在将成为副总统，他可能有能力根据这些信念采取行动。这对高等教育究竟意味着什么还有待观察，但许多学术界人士担心，他的崛起可能会开启一段政府强力干预的时期。

万斯本人在 5 月接受哥伦比亚广播公司采访时表示，“需要有一个政治解决方案”来解决高等教育的弊病。

那会是什么样子？他说，最近夺取了该国大学控制权的匈牙利右翼独裁领导人维克托·奥尔班“在那里做出了一些明智的决定，我们可以借鉴。”

在其他公开讲话中，他走得更远。万斯告诉右翼杂志《欧洲保守派》：“我认为 [奥尔班的] 方式必须成为我们的榜样：不是要消灭大学，而是要让大学在生存和采取更少偏见的教学方式之间做出选择。” 2021 年，奥尔班政府将该国的公立大学置于奥尔班政治盟友领导的基金会的控制之下。

“我并不赞同维克托·奥尔班所做的每一件事，”万斯告诉哥伦比亚广播公司。“我主张纳税人有权决定如何花钱。”

共和党已将高等教育作为总统竞选的重点。共和党纲领承诺通过“创造更多、更实惠的传统四年制大学学位替代方案”来“降低高等教育成本”。在经历了动荡的学年（包括抗议以色列与哈马斯战争的抗议活动）之后，特朗普竞选团队承诺“驱逐支持哈马斯的激进分子，让我们的大学校园再次变得安全和爱国”。

万斯的许多批评都呼应了右翼对大学的攻击。与佛罗里达州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯和保守派活动家克里斯托弗·鲁福一样，万斯表示，多元化、公平和包容的官僚机构已经失控；教授们正在教授批判性种族理论，对美国历史描绘出过于负面的画面；学者们允许科学被意识形态腐蚀。

但万斯将这些批评与他自己的民粹主义情感结合起来，这有时会让他听起来既像参议员伯尼·桑德斯，又像唐纳德·特朗普。他在 2021 年的演讲中说：“如果你是我们国家任何种族的下层阶级人士，你想过上好日子，你经常被告知你必须上大学。” “如果被告知必须去背负 60,70,80,200,000 美元的学生债务才能在我们国家过上好日子，谁会从中受益？”

近年来，许多大学教授开始感到震惊，因为德桑蒂斯和其他共和党领导人通过废除 DEI 计划、规范某些言论和教学以及任命政治盟友担任领导职务来干预公立学院和大学的管理。

甚至在万斯被选为特朗普的竞选搭档之前，一些学术界人士就看到了这些举动与独裁政府国家对高等教育的打压之间的联系。

“土耳其、波兰、委内瑞拉等地的大学被胁迫得沉默，”哈佛大学政府学教授史蒂文·列维茨基 (Steven Levitsky) 在今年 1 月表示，当时哈佛大学正面临共和党议员的强烈批评和国会调查。“美国极右翼公开崇拜匈牙利的独裁政策。”

亨特学院和纽约城市大学的历史学教授本杰明·赫特 (Benjamin Hett) 表示，大学很容易成为右翼政客的目标，因为大学“往往充满了政治自由主义或左翼倾向的人”。

学者很容易被描绘成“危险的颠覆分子，向年轻人易受影响的头脑中灌输毁灭性思想，”他说。“我们不是一群受欢迎的人。所以这让我们成为像万斯这样的煽动性政客的良好目标。”

万斯 2021 年演讲的标题是“大学是敌人”，指的是理查德·尼克松总统 1972 年对国家安全顾问亨利·基辛格的评论。“教授是敌人，”尼克松在录音谈话中说。“把这句话写在黑板上 100 遍，永远不要忘记。”

万斯批评的一个目标是大学的 DEI 计划，他认为这是管理者掩盖大学以牺牲普通民众为代价来促进精英利益的方式的诡计。

“大学告诉我们，只要我们在多样性、公平和包容方面开拓创新，普通人受到伤害就没关系……他们更关心身份政治……而不是他们自己的社会和生活在其中的人民，”他在演讲中说道。

卡内基梅隆大学亨氏学院多样性、包容性、气候与公平副院长达琳·巴斯玛 (Dareen Basma) 表示：“在某种程度上，我甚至可以说我理解他的观点，因为近年来 [一些 DEI 项目] 具有表演性。但他忽略了一点，DEI 旨在为每个人创造包容性和社区。它不只是针对特定的群体和学生。”

哈佛大学历史学家蒂莫西·帕特里克·麦卡锡 (Timothy Patrick McCarthy) 认为，右翼对 DEI 的批评是对大学教育日益多样化的学生群体的努力的强烈反对。“像万斯和 [共和党众议员埃利斯] 斯特凡尼克这样的白人政客声称与工人阶级有亲和力，他们想要关闭教育他们的学校的大门，就像他们想要在养育他们的国家边境修建围墙的原因一样，”他说。“他们不是对精英的正义反抗。这是精英的种族主义抵抗。”

万斯在畅销回忆录《乡下人的悲歌》中写道，他从小在阿巴拉契亚山区长大，家境贫寒。他在耶鲁法学院结识了妻子，妻子是印度移民的女儿。耶鲁法学院是精英高等教育的顶峰，培养了最高法院法官和两党政治家。

有人说，常春藤盟校毕业的政治家抨击高等教育是虚伪的。

“不幸的是，讽刺的是，那些从大学教育中受益匪浅并继续享受这些好处的人，却成了高等教育最直言不讳的批评者，”马萨诸塞州独立学院和大学协会首席执行官罗布·麦卡伦说。

作为一名新任参议员，万斯通过立法将矛头指向大学。据参议院办公室发布的一份新闻稿称，去年 12 月，他提出了一项法案，如果大学不遵守“平等保护条款和第六章禁止种族歧视或种族偏好的规定”，联邦政府将停止向大学提供资金。该法案的出台是在最高法院去年夏天作出禁止在大学招生中使用平权措施的决定之后。

去年 12 月，他还提出了一项法案，将私立大学捐赠收入的税率从 1.4% 提高到 35%。（100 亿美元以下的捐赠将被豁免，宗教大学也是如此。）参议院民主党人在 12 月阻止了这项立法。

“大学是这个国家社会契约的一部分，”万斯在 CBS 采访中说。“他们没有履行自己的承诺。”

环球通讯员 Ava Berger 对本报道亦有贡献。

题图：共和党副总统候选人参议员 JD Vance 在共和党全国代表大会前走下舞台。PAUL SANCYA/美联社

附原英文报道：

‘Attack the universities.’ Trump’s VP pick JD Vance has harsh words for higher education.

By Mike Damiano and Hilary Burns Globe Staff,Updated July 16, 2024 

In JD Vance, Donald Trump has chosen a running mate who sees colleges and universities as “the enemy.”

A populist Republican senator from Ohio who grew up poor and graduated from Yale Law School, Vance has made clear in speeches, interviews, and writings that he believe universities are at the root of the country’s divisiveness and inequality. They have broken the “social contract,” he has said, by accepting billions of taxpayer dollars while burying young people under mountains of student debt. They have abandoned their truth-seeking mission and instead peddle “deceit and lies.” They indoctrinate students into progressive political orthodoxy.

“We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country,” Vance said in a 2021 speech titled “The Universities Are the Enemy.”

Now poised to become vice president if Trump wins the election, Vance may be in a position to act on those convictions. What exactly that could mean for higher education remains to be seen, but many in academia worry his ascent could usher in a period of heavy-handed government intervention.

Vance himself said in an interview with CBS in May that “there needs to be a political solution” to the ills of higher education.

What might that look like? He said that Viktor Orbán, the right-wing authoritarian leader of Hungary who recently seized control of his country’s universities, “has made some smart decisions there that we could learn from.”

In other public remarks, he has gone further. Vance told The European Conservative, a right-wing journal: “I think [Orbán’s] way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give the[m] a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching.” In 2021, Orbán’s government placed the country’s public universities under the control of foundations led by Orbán’s political allies.

“I’m not endorsing every single thing that Viktor Orbán has ever done,” Vance told CBS. “What I’m advocating for is for taxpayers to have a say in how their money is spent.”

The Republican Party has made higher education a focus of the presidential campaign. The GOP platform promises to “reduce the cost of higher education” through the “creation of additional, drastically more affordable alternatives to a traditional four-year college degree.” And after an academic year marked by turmoil including protests against the Israel-Hamas war, the Trump campaign has promised to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.”

Many of Vance’s criticisms echo right-wing attacks on universities. Like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and conservative activist Christopher Rufo, Vance said that diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies have run amok; that professors are teaching critical race theory and painting an excessively negative picture of American history; and that academics have allowed science to be corrupted by ideology.

But Vance pairs those critiques with his own populist sensibilities, which can sometimes make him sound as much like Senator Bernie Sanders as Donald Trump. “If you are a lower-class person in our country of any race and you want to live a good life, very often the story that you’re told is that you must go to a college or university,” he said in the 2021 speech. “Who benefits from being told they have to go and acquire $60, $70, $80, $200,000 of student debt to live a good life in our country?”

Many university professors have grown alarmed in recent years as DeSantis and other Republican leaders have intervened in the management of public colleges and universities by abolishing DEI programs, regulating certain kinds of speech and instruction, and installing political allies in leadership roles.

Even before Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate, some in academia saw a link between those maneuvers and the crackdowns on higher education in countries with authoritarian governments.

“Universities in Turkey, Poland, Venezuela, and elsewhere have been bullied into silence,” Steven Levitsky, a Harvard professor of government, said in January when Harvard was facing intense criticism and congressional investigations from Republican lawmakers. “The far right of the US openly admires authoritarian policies in Hungary.”

Benjamin Hett, a history professor at Hunter College and the City University of New York, said universities are an easy target for right-wing politicians because they “tend to be full of people who lean politically liberal or left.”

Academics are easily painted as “dangerous subversives pouring devastating ideas into the impressionable minds of young people,” he said. “We’re not a popular lot. So that makes us a good target for demagogic politicians like Vance.”

The title of Vance’s 2021 speech, “The Universities Are the Enemy,” is a reference to a comment President Richard Nixon made to his national security adviser Henry Kissinger in 1972. “Professors are the enemy,” Nixon said in an audiotaped conversation. “Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.”

One target of Vance’s critiques is universities’ DEI programs, which he sees as a ploy by administrators to mask the ways that universities advance the interests of the elite at the expense of the common people.

“The universities tell us that so long as we’re trailblazing on diversity, equity, inclusion, it doesn’t matter if normal people get screwed. . . . They care more about identity politics . . . than they do their own society and they do the people who live in it,” he said in his speech.

Dareen Basma, an associate dean of diversity, inclusion, climate & equity at Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University, said, “To some degree I could even say that I see where he’s coming from because there has been a performative aspect [to some DEI programs] in recent years. But what he’s missing is DEI is designed to create inclusion and community for everybody. It is not just targeting specific groups and students.”

Timothy Patrick McCarthy, a Harvard University historian, sees the right-wing critique of DEI as a backlash against universities’ efforts to educate increasingly diverse student bodies. “White politicians like Vance and [Republican Representative Elise] Stefanik, who claim affinity to the working class, want to close the gates of the schools that educated them for the same reason they want to build the wall on the border of the country that raised them,” he said. “Theirs is not a righteous revolt against elites. It is a racist resistance by elites.”

Vance, who grew up poor in Appalachia, as he wrote in his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” met his wife, the daughter of Indian immigrants, at Yale Law School, the pinnacle of elite higher education, producing Supreme Court justices and politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Some say it is hypocritical of an Ivy League-educated politician to bash higher education.

”It is unfortunate, and ironic, when individuals who have benefited greatly from a college education, and continue to reap those benefits, are the most vocal critics of higher education,” said Rob McCarron, chief executive of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts.

As a freshman senator, Vance has taken aim at universities through legislation. Last December, he introduced a bill that would withhold federal funding to universities if they failed to adhere “to the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI prohibitions on racial discrimination or racial preferences,” according to a press release from his Senate office. The introduction of that bill followed the Supreme Court’s decision last summer banning the use of affirmative action in college and university admissions.

He also introduced a bill last December that would increase the tax rate on income from private university endowments from 1.4 percent to 35 percent. (Endowments under $10 billion would be exempted, as would religious universities.) Senate Democrats blocked the legislation in December.

“Universities are part of a social contract in this country,” Vance said in the CBS interview. “They’re not meeting their end of the bargain.”

Globe correspondent Ava Berger contributed to this report.