Reposted by Mary Anne Franks
Any discussion about declining "public trust" in higher ed needs to start with acknowledging that the default stance in media coverage of higher ed looks like this: bsky.app/profile/ashe...
Mary Anne Franks
@maryannefranks.bsky.social
20K followers 1.9K following 506 posts
Law Professor at George Washington Law. President of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Author of Fearless Speech (2024) and The Cult of the Constitution (2019). First Amendment, civil rights, technology, criminal law, family law, firearms law.
![There is little evidence of the "campus culture crisis" that Civility Providers claim to address-and no evidence that their alleged "solutions" are effective:
Just 2%
of college students-including just 3% of
Republicans-say they feel they don't belong on their campus due to their political views 3]
3 months
is how long it takes for the supposed benefits of so-called depolarization programs to "completely evaporate" 14]
These programs aren't needed and they don't work-so what are the true motives driving their growth?
To find out, we conducted a first-of-its-kind analysis of roughly 400 foundations that made grants to Civility Industry programs. The results are alarming:
20 out of 23
of the biggest funders in the pluralism, civic thought, and
"bridge-building" space also make large grants to
conservative or "pro-Israel"
groups 5.
161171
These funders are driven by an anti-democratic agenda. Our investigation of 100+ campuses that
97%
of dollars from those top-23
Civility Industry funders
come from the 20
foundations with major
investments in conservative
or "pro-Israel" organizations](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:776hcssquwcv2ihpptzvttxj/bafkreiddzdqxzk7sbposapjkxl6m4j77v72s6sjvrhupk5wfv4ixxqmwt4)
