In her dedicated an entire article to “four separate free-speech controversies” in under a month on Columbia’s campus, including the brouhaha over a sexist ice hockey recruitment flyer, the Teacher’s College’s commitment to “social justice” and ensuing conservative opposition to the same, student protesters storming the stage during a speech by the founder of the hyper-xenophobic Minutemen Project, and protests that led the school to reverse a speaking invite to then-Iranian president and actual antisemite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
When John McCain—did you know he was Meghan McCain’s father?—delivered Columbia’s commencement address in May 2006, “dozens” of students protested by turning their backs, booing the Senator’s speech, or opening umbrellas with the words “No War” and “Pro-Choice” written on them. As recently as 2019, McCain reportedly “credit[ed] the liberal environment on campus with teaching her how to be a good debater.” In 2008, she said pervasive liberalism at Columbia had helped her settle on her own conservative beliefs. So why’s she so afraid her kids aren’t capable of doing the same?
“McCain’s party is doing everything it can to erase LGBTQ folks, particularly transgender people, from just living their lives.”
Frankly, it’s silly for McCain to suggest that her daughters will face political persecution as the right is waging, and god forbid winning, one of the most revanchist education campaigns since massive resistance. Her favored candidate, Rob DeSantis, is doing everything he can denigrate and outlaw the study of black history; it’s only thanks to a federal court ruling that college professors can still discuss race, sexuality and gender identity.
McCain’s party is doing everything it can to erase LGBTQ folks, particularly transgender people, from just living their lives. The falling college numbers for Black kids are, study after study finds (beyond pandemic declines) due to the fact that they are forced to juggle too many activities, because college is expensive and they often don’t have the resources of their white peers—a result of systemic racism and lack of intergenerational wealth—and the level of anti-black racism on campuses.
While Republicans like Meghan McCain are out here talking about how college diplomas are devalued because liberal arts, humanities and wokeism make higher learning useless, they ignore that their policies—defunding state institutions and causing tuition hikes (especially at community colleges which serve large minority populations), opposing student debt relief (which, remember, Republicans claimed was racist because it sought to narrow the wealth gap)—drive down student numbers for everyone, but of course, especially for Black students. (And I won’t go into shit like the decimation of unions or tax plans that further income inequality.)
White folks without college degrees are still living better than debt-saddled black college graduates. The very thing that McCain hates so much—colleges attempting to make their students less racist and discriminatory than previous generations—is the key to having a functioning multiracial democracy. But Meghan McCain does not give a damn about that. For her there’s far more money to be made in whining about “wokeism.”
