Commentary: Elise Stefanik, Dean of Faculty

April 22, 2024 1 min read

Chronicle of Higher Education
David Bell (Professor of History, Princeton)

Excerpt: No matter what you think of American academe, you still should not want Elise Stefanik to run your campus. Unfortunately, over the past six months, this canny and effective five-term congresswoman from New York, chair of the House Republican Conference, and a zealously servile supporter of Donald Trump, has maneuvered herself into a position of dangerous influence over higher education.

Her goal has not been simply to humiliate these educators, but to force them to accept her diagnosis of what is happening at their institutions, and to push them to change their policies. The consequences of her bullying became crystal clear last week at Columbia University.

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