The Web of Legislative Control: Anti-Intellectualism in U.S.

Two weeks ago, I presented “The Irony: Anti-Intellectualism in the U.S.,” part one in a series tracing the long history of anti-intellectualism in American life from colonial evangelical Protestants’ suspicion of educated elites and Jacksonian populism through the Scopes trial and McCarthyism to current book bans and political assaults on higher education.

Last week, I continued my series in “Follow the Money: Anti-Intellectualism in the U.S.” by pointing to the financial and commercial machinery (patents, tech-transfer offices, tuition, debt and administrative growth) that remade the university into a market enterprise, and to the political actors who now invoke that very transformation as a pretext to seize control. I traced how the century-long commercialization of higher education handed critics both the tools and the justification for external control. What began as language in think-tank white papers and newspaper op-eds has since hardened into statute. Now, the same forces that commercialized higher education use that very transformation to declare it unfit to govern itself.

The first two essays in this series watched anti-intellectualism migrate from rhetoric toward architecture. This essay follows infantilization into the machinery of government, where Congress and, increasingly, state legislatures no longer merely accuse higher education of incompetence but write that verdict into law—dismantling tenure, unraveling shared governance and stripping scholars of curricular authority to hand it to elected officials and political appointees. From a single congressional hearing to a coordinated wave of state bills, the logic is always the same: Declare the patient incompetent, then appoint a guardian.

Congress and lawmakers use the framework of infantilization to gaslight the public into mistrusting higher education with accusations of moral bankruptcy. In December 2023, the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania testified before the House Education and the Workforce Committee regarding campus antisemitism. The presidents argued that disciplinary action depended on context, an answer that triggered condemnation.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise stated, “This was not a hard question—in fact, it was probably the easiest question they could have answered. The abject failure of these presidents to defend even the most basic of human rights exposed the moral bankruptcy at these elite universities to the world.” The infantilizing posture is the implication that elected officials must supervise university presidents through congressional hearings and force them—through threat of subpoena and funding loss—to reach the “right” moral answer, as if they cannot be trusted to arrive there independently.

Writing from a progressive perspective, The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky argued in his Dec. 8, 2023, essay, “The Real Problem With Those College Presidents? Gross Incompetence” that the presidents were so overprepared for a trial that they forgot to answer like human beings, faulting them not for their legal reasoning but for basic moral and political incompetence: “You exist, that is, at the center of an ideological tornado. You know this, or should. And you show up to Capitol Hill so unspeakably ill-prepared that you—and your coterie of almost-certainly overpaid handlers—haven’t prepped for exactly the line of questioning that Stefanik pressed upon you? Indefensible.” He dismissed the presidents’ professional judgment as simply not up to the task while assuming a simpler, more obvious answer was available to any competent adult.

Most recently, state legislators have acted like characters in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892). Like the husband in the story, the legislators force higher education into taking a “rest-cure” to remove agency. By passing laws to dismantle shared governance, academic freedom and tenure, states declare someone mentally incompetent, strip them of their rights and transfer power to a guardian or conservator, even though they are not actually incapacitated.

PEN America, in “With a Wave of New Bills in 2025,” documented at least 60 such bills or policies employing tactics to undermine academic freedom. In 2025, six states enacted shared governance restrictions, and 14 educational gag order bills were enacted, including seven targeting higher education. Between 2021 and 2023, over 150 bills were introduced in 35 states aimed at eroding tenure, undermining academic freedom, weakening faculty governance or imposing restrictions on curriculum and DEI.

In an interview with Ryan Quinn for Inside Higher Ed’s Aug. 19, 2025, article, “Higher Ed Alone Cannot Save Democracy,” AAUP President Todd Wolfson scoffs that red states are “apparently trying to outdo one another on who can create the most undemocratic, anti-faculty legislation.”

In Florida, SB 7044 (effective July 1, 2022) initiated mandatory post-tenure review, requiring all tenured state university faculty to undergo a comprehensive review every five years. As reported by Inside Higher Ed’s Colleen Flaherty in her April 19, 2022, article, “Florida Passes Posttenure Review Law,” at the bill’s signing, Governor Ron DeSantis stated, “It’s all about trying to make these institutions more in line with what the state’s priorities are, and quite frankly of the priorities of parents throughout the state of Florida.”

This statement is explicit infantilization. The standard for faculty performance is no longer professional peer assessment but political compliance determined by elected officials, not subject-matter experts. Florida’s SB 266 (signed in 2023) gave governing boards of the university and college systems the authority to decide which courses could fulfill general education requirements, effectively stripping faculty of curriculum authority.

New College of Florida became the most documented case of state-directed institutional takeover. After DeSantis appointed six new trustees to its board in January 2023, the board denied tenure to five faculty members who had already been recommended by peer review and dismantled academic programs, including gender studies. The AAUP voted unanimously in 2024 to sanction New College, calling the changes “an unprecedented politically motivated takeover” and finding that the board had “thoroughly restructured the college’s academic offerings without meaningful faculty involvement and denied academic due process to multiple faculty members during their tenure applications and review.” The AAUP Report on Political Interference in Florida provides a more in-depth critique.

In January 2025, the Florida Board of Governors approved an extensive overhaul of general education curricula across all 12 public colleges, removing hundreds of classes touching on race and gender. Courses such as Black Women in America and LGBTQ History were stripped of general education credit status. Patronizing higher education by deeming race and gender studies unworthy of study and investigation infantilizes faculty and the people represented in these studies. It is deeply disrespectful of their lived experiences, agency and humanism; Florida’s SB 7044 represents unconscionable marginalization and discrimination and functions as a means to justify exclusion and power imbalance.

Texas’s SB 18 (effective Sept. 1, 2023) gave local boards discretion over whether to grant tenure, standardized the definition statewide, imposed new due-process frameworks for dismissal and required all community colleges to adopt formal tenure policies. At a 2022 press conference, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the bill’s political driver, stated, “Tenure, it’s time that that comes to an end in Texas. Right now, tenure is reviewed about every six years, and pretty much anything you do in those six years, there’s nothing the university could do about it. They can’t fire you.”

Patrick’s framing strips tenure of its academic framing, recasting it as a barrier to managerial control. The implication that the inability to fire a professor at will is, by itself, a problem is infantilizing. Professionals cannot be trusted without the threat of punishment, like a parent (the government) withholding privileges (such as arbitrary funding cuts) from noncompliant children.

In addition, Texas’s SB 1489 (proposed in 2025, did not pass) would have required each faculty senate to obtain permission from the institution’s governing body to exist, and then only in an advisory role, prohibiting them from having any decision-making authority or taking any action on behalf of the institution. Removing faculty senates is especially significant because one of their roles is to approve the curriculum and courses.

Natalie Schwartz explains in her February 2026 article for Higher Ed Dive, “Blueprint for state bills aims to tighten control over gen eds,” that the Manhattan Institute shared model legislation to provide states and governing boards greater authority over general education, weaken shared governance and end diversity and inclusion initiatives. She notes, “Just last year, state lawmakers proposed 25 anti-DEI bills influenced by model legislation from the Manhattan Institute and another think tank, five of which became law, according to an analysis from PEN America, a free expression group.”

For example, after Texas lawmakers passed a general education–review bill in 2025, the Texas A&M system adopted a policy across its 12 campuses barring professors from teaching content about race, sexual orientation or gender identity without prior approval from university presidents. Substituting political judgment for professional judgment about what constitutes a sound pedagogical approach continues to illustrate the infantilization of higher education. Like Florida, it discriminates against and marginalizes people to maintain power and control.

Inside Higher Ed and Higher Ed Dive coverage of Ohio’s SB 1 (signed March 28, 2025) highlights the bill’s inversion of the traditional authority structure of a learned professional: It bans DEI offices and DEI language in job descriptions and scholarships and bans strikes by full-time faculty. Mandates include the public posting of all undergraduate syllabi, including instructor names and qualifications, and that student assessments account for a specific percentage of faculty evaluations. Institutions are required to “demonstrate intellectual diversity” in curriculum, general education requirements, course evaluations and annual faculty reviews.

Also, it permits immediate “for cause” post-tenure review at any time for documented underperformance. ACLU of Ohio chief lobbyist Gary Daniels argues, “At best, this language is the micromanaging of individual courses and instructors by the General Assembly. At worst, it will require all sides of every issue to be evenly presented by instructors, ignoring their First Amendment right to academic freedom.”

An Oklahoma executive order from Governor Kevin Stitt in February 2026 directs the state’s regional universities to “phase out tenure” and instead employ faculty on renewable contracts “tied to teaching effectiveness, student completion, job placement, and economic alignment.” Faculty at research universities may still receive tenure but face mandatory post-tenure review every five years. The state has “a constitutional and statutory responsibility to steward taxpayer dollars wisely and ensure public institutions of higher education operate with accountability, transparency, and measurable outcomes.”

When addressing the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Stitt said, “No job funded by taxpayers should be exempt from regular, meaningful performance reviews, whether you’re the governor or you are a university professor.” Stitt’s framing equates professors with all other state employees, deliberately erasing the professional distinction that makes academic freedom meaningful. The analogy to the governor himself is revealing—it implies that scholarly expertise confers no special authority beyond that of any salaried public employee.

Like other states, Alabama’s HB 580 (effective Oct. 1, 2026) abolishes faculty senates unless the institution’s governing board ratifies them. The function of the approved faculty senates is limited to confidential advice to the administration. The senate cannot make final decisions and may not issue public statements. Half the senate must be appointed by the institution’s president. Governing boards possess full authority over any course or subject taught. Accrediting agencies are prohibited from penalizing institutions for complying with the law. Post-tenure reviews are required. Grounds for dismissal include “professional incompetence,” neglect of duty and “other good cause” as the governing board may define it.

In defense of the bill, legislators mask control as protection (in keeping with the infantilization of higher education, particularly faculty). According to Alabama Political Reporter, Rep. Danny Garrett, a Republican, co-sponsor of the bill, seeks parental control as if faculty were naïve innocents who need saving: “It appropriately shifts authority upwards, away from faculty senates, towards boards of trustees and university leadership. This is entirely appropriate because those are the institutions and individuals who are ultimately held accountable when problems arise.”

Although Auburn University was constitutionally exempt from HB 580, its board of trustees voluntarily dissolved the university’s Faculty Senate in June 2026. They replaced it with the Presidential Academic Advisory Council, with its members appointed by university officials. The board simultaneously gave itself and the president more direct control over the curriculum. Auburn’s official statement described the new structure as intended to give leadership “faculty expertise and perspective on matters including curriculum, educational quality, faculty affairs, student success, accreditation and institutional effectiveness.”

Tennessee’s HB 2194 (signed 2026) states that when deciding whether to suspend or fire tenured faculty based on “misconduct” allegations, university presidents and provosts may not consider recommendations from other faculty. The bill eliminates the core due-process protection that tenure has historically provided—the right to have one’s case heard by professional peers who can evaluate the academic context of the conduct. Replacing peer review with a single administrator’s discretion is structurally equivalent to eliminating the professional standard of care.

The ability to fire a tenured faculty without peer review has a chilling effect on scholarship, as explained by a Pellissippi State Community College faculty member, Grant Mincy: “A professor who knows that a single administrator can end their career based on undefined ‘misconduct,’ with no obligation to meet an evidentiary standard, may hesitate before publishing research, challenging institutional direction or speaking plainly on matters of public concern.”

The Hill published Glenn C. Altschuler and David Wippman’s essay, “Red state speech laws pose an existential threat to academic freedom,” which provides examples such as those in Indiana. Indiana adopted a statute in 2024 requiring public universities to deny tenure or promotion to faculty deemed “unlikely to foster a culture of intellectual diversity.” Governing boards were given authority to define what “intellectual diversity” means. Indiana’s attorney general argued in subsequent litigation that, as state employees, professors must follow the state’s direction on the “subject matter” and “perspectives” taught.

The “intellectual diversity” framing appears to protect freedom of thought while, in fact, substituting political judgment for professional judgment about what constitutes a sound pedagogical approach.