It appears that being unrelentingly woke means that you need fewer dormitories. The University of Oregon is facing a major budget crisis and will cut $65 million from its budget and close dorms due to low enrollment. That growing crisis, however, did not stop Oregon from burning almost a million dollars fighting against free speech. It also did not induce its faculty to offer greater intellectual diversity and tolerance to prospective students. Oregon is a cautionary tale for a generation of academic social warriors, but also an opportunity for those who want to restore balance in higher education.
Oregon has long been an example of academic orthodoxy. While most state schools begrudgingly yield to First Amendment demands and offer better free speech alternatives to private universities, Oregon is known as a hardened silo for the far left in teaching.
We previously discussed how Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley, who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting “All men are created equal.” Oregon spent almost a million dollars fighting to bar such speech.
Such controversies have plagued the university for years, with no sign of self-examination by administrators or academics. The university was criticized for its monitoring of social media to punish errant thoughts or microaggressions. The law school’s law review was accused of anti-Israel discrimination.
The school previously gave special recognition to University of California (Santa Barbara) Professor Mireille Miller-Young, who criminally assaulted pro-life advocates on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara. At the University of Oregon, she was honored as a featured speaker at the University of Oregon’s Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Part of its “black feminist speaker series,” Miller-Young’s work was highlighted by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English to show “the radical potential of black feminism in the work that we do on campus and in our everyday lives.”
Now, the school is facing declining revenues and enrollments.
President Karl Scholz recently announced that this was due to lower out-of-state first-year enrollment, which means lower tuition revenue, increased costs, and a loss of grant funding.
Strangely, while closing dorms, the school is still building two new dorms.
Putting aside the school’s past budget judgment and discipline, the university’s reputation for intellectual orthodoxy deters many who do not want to pay tuition for their children to be indoctrinated or silenced. Even with plunging trust in higher education, administrators and faculty cannot resist the temptation to exclude opposing voices.
Oregon is not the only school facing such shortfalls. Some woke institutions have closed entirely. The irony is that faculty would seem to prefer to see their institutions die than restore balance to their departments. However, this may offer a real opportunity for legislators and donors to force real changes in the culture of these schools.
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