Colleges Face Blowback from Boomer Alums. NewsWire

NewsWire: 12/18/21

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• A growing number of alumni organizations are withholding college donations over concerns about free speech. Most of these groups are run by politically moderate or conservative Boomer men. (The Wall Street Journal)
• NH: It isn’t easy to be a college administrator these days. Declining enrollment (see “College Enrollment Continues to Fall”), fewer international students, constantly changing Covid-19 restrictions, student protests…the list goes on.
• Now they have something new to worry about: alumni withholding large donations over concerns about free speech. Of the nearly $50 billion that colleges and universities raised in 2020 from outside sources, more than $11 billion of it came from alumni.
• About 20 alumni organizations dedicated to this issue have sprung up over the past two years. In October, groups from five schools--Princeton, University of Virginia, Cornell, Washington and Lee University, and Davidson College--united to form a national organization called the Alumni Free Speech Alliance. Most of these groups are headed by politically conservative or moderate Boomer men who believe that conservative viewpoints are being stifled on campus.
• At the top of their bill of particulars: reports that some faculty and students are afraid to express their views in class or in print, and instances of celebrated scholars being disinvited to speak on campus due to the possibility that their remarks would violate "diversity, equity, and inclusion" standards.
• Colleges maintain that the environment on campus has changed because their student bodies are much more diverse than when many of these alumni were in school. The way they see it, they’ve gotten caught in the middle of a bigger conflict. Will Dudley, the president of Washington and Lee, told the WSJ: “We’re living in an environment where people on both sides, right and left, are engaged in a culture war and they want to use universities.”

Did You Know?

• Capital Punishment Keeps Declining. In 2021, 18 Americans were sentenced to death, and 11 prisoners were executed. Both of these figures are at or near historic lows. The number of death sentences equals last year’s total for the fewest in 49 years, while the number of executions is at its lowest in 34 years. This is according to the latest report from the Death Penalty Information Center. With Virginia outlawing the death penalty in March, more states now ban or restrict the use of capital punishment than allow it. Only seven states have conducted any executions since 2020, and just three states--Alabama, Texas, and Oklahoma--accounted for a majority of both death sentences and executions. The nationwide shift away from capital punishment has tracked declining support for the death penalty among Americans since the early 1990s. In 1994, 80% of Americans surveyed by Gallup supported capital punishment for convicted murderers. In 2020, 54% supported it--a 50-year low.