As the most dramatic campus protests since those against a national draft more than 50 years ago wind down, lucid, prescient voices have pinpointed their specific causes in ways that can shift policy for the better. These plausible policy shifts range from a more careful hand with immigration at home to a change in America’s approach to Israel abroad to sustained government pressure on institutionally-backed “wokeness.” But, along with specific causes, there’s a possible deeper reason for these protests that deserves consideration, one with a less controllable effect: higher education’s proximity to government power, and that proximity’s effect on students.
For 80 years, elite universities and their emulators have forged connections with the Washington administrative agencies and their corporate, academic, nonprofit, and media outgrowths that form our “deep state.” These connections have increasingly…
