How much of academia is infiltrated by activists? Some conservatives claim that “neo-Marxism” and its sister paradigms like feminist pedagogy, post-structuralism, and post-modernism have long infected certain departments in the humanities and social sciences. Those paradigms have now spread to more disciplines and funding committees.
However, conservatives have been slow to explain how activist departments capture institutions. In that light, this policy brief reviews two feminist papers that detail institutional capture. The campus activism process is quite successful and it’s critical to show how activists use academic departments to capture institutions (both on the faculty and the administrative sides). For leaders who want to protect institutions against a political takeover, some workable and achievable policies can help them preserve a free academy.
