The Conservative Influence on Higher Education: Strategies and Impacts

Have you been enjoying stories about all-powerful student activist groups shutting down vigorous debate on college campuses? Of the insidious cabals of Performance Studies professors thwarting the progress of science? Well, wait till you get a load of the people who actually run the show. In this episode, Moira and Adrian are joined by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd (of the American Campus podcast) to discuss the trustees, their role in university governance, why we tended not to hear much about them ... and why suddenly, in 2025, we very much do!

Books, articles and podcasts discussed in this episode:

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars (2023)

William F. Buckley, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom' (1951)

Richard White, Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University (2022)

Matt Seybold, The Gilded Network (Podcast, 2025)

Nathan Heller, "Will Harvard Bend or Break" (The New Yorker, 2025)