Jon Reisman

Higher Education in America is in for some change. The change process is not pretty or pleasant, but it is necessary because American higher education is the source of quite a bit of the toxic ideology and idiocy that has poisoned America in recent years, including identity/oppression politics, critical race theory, equity, and climate alarmism. DEI divas and defenders were created and trained on America’s campuses. 

The academic commitment to free speech has been surrendered to leftist authoritarians who are happy to gag and censor “disinformation” that conflicts with the approved oppressor/oppressed narrative. The result is antisemitism (Goodbye Columbia) and failure and refusal to stop racial discrimination (Harvard was found guilty of discriminating against Asians on behalf of other, more deserving races). As one of the centers and sources of Trump Derangement Syndrome, American Higher Ed is determined to protect their inherent right to access taxpayer dollars and tell Americans how they should live, behave, and think. As a retired emeritus member of American Higher Ed, I have some regrets and convictions.

In the fall of 1973, I started a fifty-plus-year association with Higher Education when I matriculated at Colby College as an environmental studies major. The first OPEC oil crisis, Watergate, and Stagflation led me to add economics as a second major. My first undergraduate environmental economics paper opined that AMTRAK was a complete disaster and waste of money. (Even in the 1970’s I knew that Delaware Senator AMTRAK Joe Biden was a corrupt moron.) My environmental studies friends thought I had sold out, and my econ professors thought I was some kind of hippie.

I graduated from Colby and moved South to Providence and Brown’s economics department. After a couple of years, I began teaching at area schools, including Bryant, Radcliffe (Seminars), and Fall River Community College. In 1984, the University of Maine at Machias hired me. I worked and taught there for 38 years. Along the way I got some additional public policy experience, studying at The Muskie Institute at the University of Southern Maine, serving Governor Angus King getting rid of car testing and implementing the 1990 Clean Air Amendments, opposing the Atlantic salmon endangered species listing and serving as the 1998 2nd Congressional District GOP sacrificial nominee against Congressman and future Governor John Baldacci.

Higher Education certainly skews left, and, in my opinion, has gotten worse in recent years. The broad promotion of equity and its associated preferences has not, however, led the University of Maine to actually define equity. Gaia forbid that our leading scholars would actually define their goals and terms. The definition scofflaws includes UMS Chancellor Malloy, UM President Ferrini-Mundy, UM Law School President (and former Chief Justice) Leigh Sauffley, Governor Mills, and potential gubernatorial candidates Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future Director Hannah Pingree and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. Hopefully, our Republic can withstand their failures, ironically advanced in the name of “Democracy.”

Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Selectman and a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own, and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here or to him directly via email at [email protected].