How We Got Here — and How We Begin to Get Out of Here
With Dr. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
Good morning, everyone,
Before we get to this week’s post, I want to say if there’s one thing that stands out to me from our explorations of the past—other than, of course, John Foster Dulles’ index finger, which he used to stir his drinks as secretary of state in the 1950s—it’s that we’re part of a thread of resistance that extends back centuries.
In the next few weeks, I’ll send out a survey asking what kind of history you’ll find most helpful as we prepare to live under Trump again. I’m interested in people who’ve pushed back on challenging circumstances, even if they didn’t live to overcome them, because they gave us the space to continue fighting oppression. I think we have a similar role to play, and we need to keep the hope of change alive for ourselves and whoever comes after us.
In the spirit of my vision for the future, there’s no paywall this week. In an increasingly fascist age when history will be whitewashed and erased—all in the pursuit of diminishing democracy, as Dr. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd highlights below—the cost of blocking off interviews grows. Skipped History will remain subscriber-supported, but my hope is that readers who are able to contribute can make Skipped History free for those who can’t. If you believe in sharing history, please chip in $5/month which, for the record, is the cheapest rate Substack allows me to set and, adjusting for inflation, is about the same amount that our top diplomat in the 1950s paid for milk that he dunked his index finger in.
Huge thank you to paying Skippies who’ve helped Skipped History appear in the NYT, WashPo, Teen Vogue, and more! In the months ahead, I’ll look to history more than ever as a blueprint for figuring out how we move forward. On that note, to this week’s post, where Dr. Shepherd and I talk about the right-wing long game playing out before our eyes—and how we can learn from it.
Dr. Shepherd (University of New Orleans) is the author of Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America. She’s also the host of the American Campus Podcast. Her work, which has appeared in various national publications, traces the modern conservative movement to campus wars in the late 1960s. In her estimation, neither Trump nor the conservative agenda is actually very popular. The question is how we can advance policies that are.
A condensed, edited transcript of our conversation is below. You can also listen to the interview on the Skipped History podcast:
Ben: I've been thinking about the long-term conservative effort that’s brought us to this point. We can date it back as far as a hundred years, but in many ways, we can also trace it back to the 1960s on college campuses.
Can you talk a little about that history? I’m interested in using it as a starting point for understanding not just how we got here, but for how we might find our way out.
LLS: Sure. So, my book Resistance from the Right explores the postwar conservative movement’s relationship with colleges and universities, focusing on 1967 to 1970. But, as you said, we could trace it back further—maybe to the 1930s, when anti–New Dealers set up think tanks to challenge the Keynesian economic ideas coming out of universities. Or we could look to the 1940s with McCarthyism.
I focus on the ’60s because by then, after years of conservatives viewing campuses as suspicious or anti-American, you had a generation of students entering college who inherited this view. These students witnessed antiwar protests, the rise of the New Left, Black nationalist movements, and other activism on campus. It reinforced their sense that the campus was a subversive place.
And the people I’m talking about here include names like Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Jeff Sessions—
Ben: —Bill Barr.
LLS: Exactly—people who are very familiar if you follow GOP politics. In their college years, they cut their political teeth on campuses. They’ve held high positions of power since, and they’re not shy about their animosity toward academia.
Ben: Nor are they shy about their developing preferences for authoritarianism. Early in your book, you discuss how young conservatives used their college training “to consciously drive American politics and culture further to the authoritarian right, with the Republican Party as their vehicle.” Could you expand on that?
LLS: To understand that shift, you can even look back to 1964, when Barry Goldwater, an arch-conservative, ran for president. He had support from libertarians, free-market advocates, and also the segregationist South because of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. Young conservatives, including a group called Young Americans for Freedom, really latched on to Goldwater as their hero. He failed miserably in the 1964 election, but in his concession speech, he urged conservatives to take over the GOP, which at that time was still the party of Lincoln—it included lots of liberals, African Americans, and all sorts of people.
Goldwater’s call to arms resonated with young people who, over the following decades, took up that mission.
Ben: Speaking of seminal conservative calls to arms you also mention the Powell Memo, which shaped conservative policies on higher education and beyond. Can you explain the memo a bit?
LLS: The Powell Memo was written by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, targeting multiple institutions. He wrote it to chambers of commerce and business leaders, essentially warning that campuses had become “too radical.” He argued that too many people—especially those from non-white, non-wealthy backgrounds—were gaining access to college, which he believed led to the unrest seen on campuses.
The memo was written in the early ’70s but addressed demographic shifts that happened after WWII, like the GI Bill bringing more working-class veterans into higher education, the rise of women in coeducational spaces, the nascent LGBTQ movement, and the Black Campus Movement. His solution was to restrict access to college to the ultra-wealthy or at least the upper-middle class.
Ben: To circle us back to the present day, you explore how the Powell Memo inspired Young Americans for Freedom member Paul Weyrich to cofound the Heritage Foundation in 1973, along with beer magnate Joseph Coors—the Heritage Foundation of course being the proud author of Project 2025.
Who knows how successful conservatives will be in accomplishing everything they lay out there, but clearly they seem to be following a blueprint laid out fifty years ago.
LLS: Yeah, it’s a long game, and it’s no surprise that’s the approach they took. When I interviewed dozens of former activists for my book, they all admitted how unpopular their views were at the time.
Ben: Again focusing on your expertise to understand the broader dynamics of what we’re about to be in for, how do you think the incoming Trump administration might change higher ed over the next few years?
LLS: I have a lot of thoughts on that. With Republican control of the Supreme Court and Congress, Trump could make significant policy changes. However, in his first administration, even with control of Congress, he failed to deliver on major promises, like building the full border wall. So, who knows? New policies may face lengthy legal challenges, too.
Trump didn’t focus much on higher ed in his platform this time, but it’s a key part of Project 2025. Even though he hasn’t talked about it much, we should remember how he and J.D. Vance, for example, describe universities. Trump has called them “dominated by Marxist maniacs.” Vance has called professors “the enemy,” which echoes Nixon’s language from 1972. So, the hostility toward higher education is very much there.
One policy Trump proposed in 2023, though he hasn’t mentioned it much since, is something called the “American Academy.” It’s envisioned as a free, online national college that bans “wokeness” and “jihadism”—Trump’s words. This academy would offer a “classical liberal arts” curriculum, with a heavy emphasis on ancient Greece and Rome. Conservatives frame it as classical education, but it’s essentially a whitewashed, Eurocentric version of the liberal arts.
Ben: Their response to “When did you last think about ancient Rome?” is basically, “Always.”
LLS: Ha, right—five minutes ago.
Then there’s the question of who will actually teach. From what I’ve read, they suggest study groups, mentors, industry partnerships, and “the latest breakthroughs in computing,” which to me likely means AI-designed courses created by Silicon Valley tech, not academic experts.
I’ll be honest with you: I don’t think Trump cares about what goes on in colleges. I think he actually likes them. There’s this sort of inconsistency where, on one hand, the Right loves college for the hierarchy of it all—how it’s supposed to be a gateway into professional careers. Even the furthest right people have Ivy League degrees.
But they don’t like the actual faculty or students. They’re fine with STEM because they love high-tech innovation. Give us all the rockets, right, the Elon Musk high-tech stuff. But humanities like history, English, and sociology—obviously gender studies—are seen as too democratizing; too challenging to the structures of power they want to maintain.
So, those willing to teach a politicized, sanitized history will find jobs in these spaces, likely well-paid ones, as legitimate humanities roles are replaced.
Ben: And the cost of this shift is, I guess, more sort of hyper-masculine innovation, like the Tesla trucks—
LLS: —or testicle tanning.
Ben: ...testicle tanning. What—what is testicle tanning?
LLS: Oh, you missed this? It’s a Tucker Carlson phenomenon from a couple of years ago. Testicle tanning is supposed to increase testosterone or something like that.
Ben: Okay... so the pro of more conservative curricula is an emphasis on Vitamin D counts. How would you describe the cost?
LLS: We lose a vibrant, informed democracy. The Right’s goal here, in my view, is fewer people voting or participating meaningfully in our national project. And it’s effective, especially in K-12, if students only learn one national narrative—one of American exceptionalism and national greatness. Because then they think that’s what has always been the case—and if that’s always been the case, then society’s current hierarchical structure must be right; it must be “natural.”
By erasing Indigenous history, Black history, LGBTQ history, or anything that complicates this view, you intentionally avoid presenting students with perspectives that challenge the past and show how the future could be otherwise. And again, that’s the point.
Ben: As you write, “Conservatism seeks to maintain social and political conditions that bolster the already powerful.”
With the Right’s long-term strategies paying off, do you ever wish the Left had a similar approach?
LLS: You know, it’s a common discussion among people who study the Right—why isn’t there an equivalent on the Left? There are liberal think tanks like the Brookings Institute, but there’s no equivalent long-term project aimed at training and positioning people in power.
Some argue that the Left should counter the Right with similar tactics. My take is, well, that’s not exactly democratic either. To be clear, I’m always for tipping the scales away from power, but I think we need to rebuild in a transparent, inclusive way. Not that I’m against subversive action when necessary, but as a national project, this needs to be aboveboard.
Ben: Unlike, say, the Powell memo, which was secret at first.
LLS: Right. I think the simplest takeaway from my book is that the Right knows it’s in the minority. As the people I interviewed for my book articulated, they always knew their views weren’t popular, so they worked within the system to secure technical victories, learning which levers and buttons to press to keep power tilted in their favor. They know they’re not widely liked, which is why I was so surprised by the popular vote in this election.
My whole family are Trump voters, so I’m under no illusions about his appeal, but I don’t think most Americans actually like Trump personally, or Trumpism. Why then, as a country, did we vote as we did? Lots to unpack there—gender, economic issues, racism—but I have to believe that if we had true democracy, with full civic participation and people invested in local and national politics, we’d reach a freer society. That idea heartens me.
Ben: My read from what you’re saying is that it’s not a question of reinventing the wheel or that there’s been some major political realignment. Rather, it’s a question of how we can advance popular policy more robustly. I would certainly place a lot of blame on Democrats for not doing that more.
LLS: Same here.
Ben: We can play the blame game in our next convo after we finish discussing testicular tanning. I still have so many questions.
LLS: Happy to chat more.
I’ll add though that buy-in, even if it’s for policies most people support, is not organic. It takes organizing.
Speaking from my higher ed angle, there’s already an academic labor movement afoot. Groups like United Auto Workers, United Campus Workers, and the AAUP have done significant work addressing right-wing attacks on higher ed. I’m part of Higher Education Labor United, a nationwide group advocating for coast-to-coast academic organizing. It’s slow, but it’s happening, and it’s a long game of our own that we need to be involved in.
Ben: More broadly speaking, your point speaks to the centrality of labor in building a countermovement in the right way.
LLS: Absolutely. And when I say “we” need to be involved in it, I really mean everyone.