As the national press is – again – focused on the administration's actions at a handful of elite colleges, ProPublica has published an excellent piece on Southern Illinois University and how attacks on research funding and "DEI" are devastating for its entire community.
Federal funding for research, though relatively small at SIU, funds jobs in an otherwise economically stressed area. The University had been working for years to build its research infrastructure, for the survival of the campus and the community.
The focus of research was often regionally grounded and focused on solving the problems of the area's citizens. Local businesses depended on a robust student body, on community jobs at the university, on people going to restaurants before going to the basketball games. "DEI" efforts were focused on a renewed commitments to serving everyone in the community in an era of declining enrollment and shifting demographics.
And, of course, the university just up the road from the farms and small towns made college seem possible for poor and working-class students who might not otherwise consider applying.
The ignorance/indifference/intentional actions of wealthy policy makers (and elite-educated journalists covering them) in treating regional state colleges as political props will constrain the lives of so many poor and working-class people – the students, local businesses, families aspiring to send their children to a now depleted college, citizens whose lives would be enriched by research into their life circumstances.
And while everything happening at the elite east coast schools is horrific and alarming, this is also a political moment to speak up as clearly as possible on behalf of public education that was already struggling before January and is now facing a slow and painful demise.
