Degrees of Division: Higher Education and Political Sorting in America (Featuring Dr. David Hopkins)

In this episode of Deep Dive, we examine the growing educational divide driving polarization in American politics and its implications for democracy. Dr. David Hopkins, co-author of the book Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, joins the pod to explain how college attainment correlates with political alignment and explores cultural factors contributing to this complex landscape. We dig into:

• how the diploma divide influences voter behavior and party affiliation;
• if/how higher education shapes cultural and political identities; 
• how populism connects with working-class cultural concerns; 
• the fact that urban areas lean Democratic; rural areas gravitate towards
  Republicans;
• the perceived liberal bias in academia fuels skepticism among conservatives;
  and 
• how/why dialogue and empathy are vital for bridging educational divides.

-------------------------
Follow Deep Dive:
Bluesky
YouTube

Email: [e-mail]

Music:
Majestic Earth - Joystock

Episode Transcript

Dr. Hopkins (00:00):
Conservatives aren't wrong when they see
academia as a profession andsector that's not inherently
friendly to their point of view.
Where they're not quite rightis the idea that this is why
people with college degrees aremore left-of-center is that they

(00:23):
get indoctrinated on campus tobe so.
There isn't a lot of evidencethat students change their
politics in a strongly liberaldirection between the moment
they enroll in college and themoment they graduate.

Shawn (00:44):
Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig.
This isn't a shocker, but inrecent years, the United States
has become increasinglypolarized, with deep divides
cutting across political,cultural and geographic lines.
One of the most strikingdivisions, and perhaps
consequential, especially inthis last presidential election,

(01:06):
is the growing partisan gapbetween Americans with college
degrees and those without.
This educational divide isreshaping the nation's political
landscape, influencing not onlyelectoral outcomes but also the
broader health of democracy.
The polarized educationaldivide isn't just about
differing levels of knowledge oraccess to opportunities,

(01:28):
although it is that.
It's also about how educationshapes political identities and
values.
College-educated Americans aremore likely to adopt progressive
cultural and political views,aligning them with the
Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, those withoutcollege degrees, particularly
white working-class voters, haveincreasingly shifted toward the

(01:50):
Republican Party, drawn byappeals to cultural conservatism
and populism.
This sorting has created astark partisan divide rooted in
education, with profoundimplications for governance and
political strategy.
Outside of electoralimplications, the consequences
of which we will all be livingthrough for at least the next
four years, this matters inother ways and for other reasons

(02:13):
too.
This educational divide fuelsresentment and misunderstanding
between groups, makingcompromise and consensus even
harder to achieve.
It also exacerbates thegeographic sorting of political
preferences, as urban, highlyeducated areas lean Democratic,
while rural, less educatedregions align with Republicans.

(02:35):
This sorting amplifiespolarization in Congress and
weakens incentives forbipartisanship, and the divide
threatens the democratic processitself.
When parties are increasinglyaligned along rigid demographic
and cultural lines, the stakesof elections grow dangerously
high and trust in institutionssuffers.

(02:55):
The result is a fracturedelectorate, less willing to
engage in dialogue or evenaccept electoral outcomes.
My guest today is Dr DavidHopkins, associate professor in
the political science departmentat Boston College and co-author
of the book Polarized byDegrees how the Diploma Divide
and the Culture War TransformedAmerican Politics.

(03:17):
We discuss this educationaldivide, how it plays out in
elections, if higher educationis liberally biased and, if so,
how we can fix it, and what itall means for the future of
American democracy.
All right, if you like thisepisode, or any episode, please
give it a like, share and followon your favorite podcast
platform and or subscribe to thepodcast on YouTube.

(03:39):
And, as always, if you have anythoughts, questions or comments
, please feel free to email meat deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom
.
Let's do a deep dive, drHopkins.
Thanks for being here.
How are you?

Dr. Hopkins (03:59):
Doing very well, s, thanks so much for having me.

Shawn (04:02):
Absolutely, I'm kind of excited to have you over the
last.
Well, not kind of, I am excited, but over the last few weeks
I've had a couple of differentguests on to help me understand
some of the underlying thingsthat might be happening in our
electoral politics or that isshowing up in our elections that

(04:22):
we might be undervaluing asbeing somewhat important.
And so last week I talked tosomeone about the decline of
unions and how that's kind ofreshaped the electorate by way
of example.
But you know, elections havenarratives that are assigned to
them.
Sometimes they're driven by thecandidate or the party
themselves.
In advance of an election theydesign their strategy, design

(04:45):
their platform, how they'regoing to message that, how they
want to frame the election.
The media also plays a role here.
So in this last election therewas a lot of time and energy put
into framing around a gendergap democracy versus
authoritarianism, the Latinovote and then after an election,
sometimes new narratives emergein the I guess postmortem about
what really happened or maybewhat didn't happen.

(05:07):
So you know, as we look back atthis past election, it looks
like maybe the gender gap wasn'treally any more wide than it
has been in other recentelections.
But that, all being said, youknow, like I led with, there are
other dynamics at play thatdon't always get the attention
that they probably deserve.
So you study some of this stuff, so I want to pick your brain
about it.
So, given your work on populism, the culture, wars, the

(05:35):
realignment of voters,particularly along educational
lines, how?

Dr. Hopkins (05:36):
do you explain the outcome of the November election
?
Well, elections are always kindof a product of both short-term
and long-term trends anddynamics, and I think if we want
to explain 2024, in the shortterm, the easy explanation is
Americans were dissatisfied withthe economy, and generally when

(05:59):
that occurs, it's bad news forthe ruling party.
And if you look at really anyreputable source of public
opinion data, you saw prettydeep dissatisfaction and
pessimism with the economicperformance of the country,

(06:20):
arguably even more than would besort of expected based on the
objective performance of theeconomy.
But people's perceptions werethat the economy was very much
going in the wrong direction.
They were unhappy aboutinflation in particular, and so
it shouldn't be a shock thatthis was a tough environment for

(06:42):
the Democrats.
But then there's also thelong-term story, and you
mentioned education polarization, which I'll say right off the
top, is my obsession of themoment and the subject of my
most recent book with MattGrossman, which is a trend
that's now sort of entering itsthird decade in American

(07:06):
politics, which is a steadydivergence, partisan divergence,
separating voters with collegedegrees from voters without
college degrees, and this isalso not a unique trend to the
United States.
It's happening most placesaround the world, and especially

(07:26):
almost everywhere in thedeveloped, rich, democratic West
, and the big kind ofdevelopment in 2024 was not just
that this trend continued ingeneral, which is not such a
surprise, but also, veryimportantly, we saw unmistakable
signs that it was extendingbeyond just white voters to

(07:48):
black and Latino voters as well,especially Latinos, and that
therefore, this was a trend weshouldn't just treat as
restricted to one ethnic group,but that really was a broader
development across theelectorate and since there are
more people who did not graduatefrom college than did graduate

(08:10):
from college, and because,especially among the non-white
population, you had a lot offormer Democratic supporters who
do not have college degrees,therefore the poaching by the
Republicans.
This also, of course, playedinto Trump's victory in terms of
giving him a new source ofvotes that had not previously

(08:30):
been there for Republicancandidates.

Shawn (08:34):
So I want to talk a little bit about something that
I think I mean I'm going to putmyself in the.
Well, I'm not going to putmyself, I just am in the
educated, I guess firing line,as it were, and so I don't know
if I'm coming from what is asomewhat elitist position or
perspective, or have thatperspective.

(08:54):
But I feel like there's adynamic that's emerged that's
becoming particularly potent inour elections, and that is the
dynamic between, and theinterplay between, economic
concerns and quote unquoteculture, war concerns, and it's
been part of our politics since,you know, time immemorial.
And maybe it's just that wehave evolved, or we think that

(09:16):
we've evolved so much as asociety that when these two are
at play in past I think aboutwhen queer rights were becoming
a much bigger issue in the late80s and the 90s and early 2000s
I think it was easier as asociety when we were pitting
economy versus culture indetermining our vote.
It was easier for us to acceptthe idea that people would give

(09:40):
the economy more weight.
Right, and so, even though theymight disagree on a culture type
issue, they would still votebased on the economy, and that
might be a vote againstthemselves to some degree, but I
feel like now these have becomeso salient that it's difficult
for me to wrap my head aroundthe idea that a I don't know how

(10:02):
to phrase this without soundinglike a real asshole, but that a
decent person would vote forsomeone like Trump, based solely
on economy, given some of theyou know rhetoric that is so
culturally demeaning andsocially demeaning to people.
So I guess where I'm going withall of this is do you think
this is just an elitist typeview, or does it fit into that

(10:23):
camp, or is there something moreto that?

Dr. Hopkins (10:27):
Yeah, there's a tradition of us kind of treating
economic interests and economicbeliefs and views and
preferences as kind of onedimension you know, one kind of
ideological dimension andcultural beliefs, values,
preferences, interests as beinga kind of separate dimension.

(10:47):
And there's some validity tothat in that there are people
who line up more with one partyon one set of issues and more,
on the, you know, with the otheron the other set of issues.
But there's also evidence thatthere's interplay between them
and that, for example, peoplewho feel more economically
vulnerable often are more opento culturally conservative

(11:11):
political messages.
And if you look, for example,at the issue of immigration and
globalization, which is drivingso much of our politics right
now, you really see thisinterplay of, on the one hand,
seeing immigration andglobalization as an economic
threat to the working class ofAmerica, as a source of economic

(11:35):
competition and the outsourcingof jobs.
But you also, of course, have avery strong cultural component
to that issue, about sort ofconcerns that diversity and
migration threaten the ethniccomposition of the country,
threaten the cultural values ofthe country, and so people don't

(11:59):
necessarily make a clean breakin their own minds.
Along those two lines and one ofthe reasons I think that Trump
has had such success with theworking class and even not just
the white working class, but theworking class in this country

(12:21):
has been that he has departedfrom the kind of traditional
conservative economic messagewhich was that government
programs that help the workingclass were too generous and
should be cut, which was thesort of the position of the sort
of common philosophical,limited government Republican

(12:42):
Party for a long time.
But that was a realvulnerability for them.
Anytime they wanted to try tokind of, you know, attract
working class support, was thatthe Democrats could always come
in and say, yeah, but thesepeople want to cut your Social
Security, they want to cut yourMedicare, they want to, you know
, deprive you of healthinsurance.
And one of the, I think,underappreciated strengths that

(13:07):
Trump has had as a politician isthat he long recognized that
this was, whatever other meritsyou might have to small
government conservatism, not apopular electoral position to
take.
And so he simply has jettisonedthat from the sort of
Republican Party platform, theRepublican Party emphasis, and

(13:29):
he has not proposed or attemptedto deprive, to cut Social
Security benefits or to deprivepeople of Medicare coverage or
these other sorts of things, andthat has, I think, freed him to
ground his appeal to theworking class more on the
cultural issues where theirproclivities line up better with

(13:51):
the kind of conservativecultural message.

Shawn (13:54):
I think in my camp it's easy for us to I don't know that
we're confused, but it's easyfor us to paint these voters
that care about the messagingcoming from Trump or are
inclined to believe themessaging coming from Trump and,
I guess, by the RepublicanParty at large these days, as it
relates to governmentintervention and programming and

(14:18):
you know, quote unquote welfareprogramming and taking care of
working class voters, et cetera,as just rhetoric, and that
these voters themselves arebeing hoodwinked.
And in that regard, then, thesevoters are voting against their
own best interests.
Right, we hear that all thetime, but we might be missing
something in that Trump actuallyis delivering beyond just the

(14:38):
rhetoric, and I'm not sure whatis happening here, if people are
voting against their own bestinterests or if the Republican
Party under Trump is actuallyevolving to be something
productive for these voters.

Dr. Hopkins (14:50):
You know I personally am always reluctant
to define in my own mind whatsomeone else's best interests
are.
I find that often just puts youin a place where it's difficult
to get out of, becauseinterests, in my view in

(15:13):
politics, are not just abouteconomic interests and they're
not just about the dollars andcents that you can measure in
terms of, like, the budget of asocial program or something like
that.
All of us have, and I think wecan recognize this in ourselves.
We're motivated by thingsbeyond just which party promises

(15:34):
us the, you know, the mostmoney and the most generous
benefits.
We think politics is about morethan that and we think that our
interests are not just thatnarrowly defined, that they also
go to things like social statusand social respect, acceptance,
symbolic gestures of affinity.

(15:57):
So I think that you knowthere's a common.
You know progressives inparticular are sometimes just
sort of mystified by workingclass conservatism because they
sort of define their ownpolitical movement as kind of
objectively sticking up for theinterests of the working class.
But I think again, classconservatism, because they sort
of define their own politicalmovement as kind of objectively
sticking up for the interests ofthe working class.

(16:19):
But I think again once you getbeyond economic redistribution.
There are other sets ofinterests where maybe
progressives don't speak for theinterests of all members of the
working class, and certainlyfrom the point of view of the
working class, I mean, this isobjectively true.
They are decreasingly likely tobelieve that the Democratic

(16:40):
Party speaks for their interests, and so that's something we
need to understand, and I canappreciate that for progressives
that's a source of frustration.
But it seems to me that thefirst step in trying to resolve
the issue is to kind of sort ofunderstand what it looks like

(17:02):
from the perspective of theseworking class voters who, I do
think, see Trump as speaking fortheir interests, and not just
their economic interests buttheir overall social and
cultural worldview as well, andthey see a Democratic Party as
increasingly disconnected fromtheir interests, and I think

(17:25):
that's part of the story.
Now, of course, there's acountervailing trend that's
important as well among educatedpeople, people with college
degrees, who used to be mostlyRepublican, that they have
become more alienated from theRepublican Party under Trump.
They used to think Republicans,you know, spoke for their
interests, and they too haverevisited their traditional

(17:50):
partisan ties, and that's where,to the advantage of the
Democrats and the left in, youknow, in among the more educated
and affluent segment of theelectorate.
So it hasn't been obviouslyonly in one direction.
But I do think that part of thereason so many people find our
current political moment sobaffling is that they sort of

(18:13):
impose a logic on the worldviewof some of their fellow citizens
that the citizens themselvesdon't actually, you know, don't
actually share.

Shawn (18:24):
So we can follow this thread a little bit because I
want to dig into and understanda bit better the I don't know,
maybe emerging cleave as itrelates to partisanship and
higher levels of education.
But one of the arguments thatyou make in Polarized by Degrees
, is that people with higherlevels of education are more
likely to consistently engage inpartisan behavior.
And I want to place thisagainst what you just said,

(18:46):
because I think what I hear isthat this might not in what you
just said about conservatives,that conservatives with higher
levels of education are perhapsleaving the Trump Republican
Party, and so this argumentseems to cut against what is
happening as it relates toconservatives with higher levels
of education.
So I want to give you a littlebit of space to kind of explain

(19:07):
you know this finding as itrelates to partisanship and
partisan behavior based onlevels of education, and then
what might be happening orevolving with conservatives as
it relates to it.

Dr. Hopkins (19:19):
Sure, you know, the relationship between education
and opinions on cultural issuesis a longstanding you know it's
a longstanding correlation, youknow, going back all the way
back to where we start to havereliable public opinion data in
the mid-20th century, is thatpeople with college degrees have

(19:40):
more liberal cultural viewsthan people without college
degrees, especially on issues ofrace or gender or
internationalism, or, you know,gay rights, abortion rights, all
of those kinds of package, guncontrol, all those kind of
package of what we generallycall culture issues or cultural
war issues.

(20:00):
People with college degrees are, you know, are more left of
center than people without.
But in the past we had a partysystem that was mostly
structured around economicinterests and economic points of
view, and so those people,though they were more liberal on
those issues, still werepredominantly Republicans

(20:20):
compared to Democrats, becausefor them it was more salient
that the Republicans were theparty of laissez-faire economics
.
And the reverse was true.
Among the working class.
You had working class peoplewho had more conservative
cultural views, but they werestill mostly Democrats, because
what really mattered most tothem was that the Democrats were
the party of um, you know, ofof big government, of of uh

(20:42):
active um, amelioration of ofeconomic um, of economic
deprivation, um, and reallywhat's happened over time has
been that, you know, ourpolitics has become more and
more about the culture war, andso people are changing their you
know the salience in theirminds of what issues matter most
to them, and that's really theprimary explanation for why this

(21:06):
diploma divide has gotten solarge.
And so a lot of people ofhigher education attainment were
already moving away from theRepublican Party even before
Trump came along.
But Trump sort of superchargedthat trend because a lot of
these people found him, inparticular, objectionable.

(21:29):
And you know, you sort of yousee this in obviously certain
circles of the conservativemovement, which is sort of at
the intellectual level, which isvery much split over the
question of whether Trump is,you know, a hero or a villain.
And you have people who haveconsidered themselves to be

(21:49):
conservatives in the past,someone like Bill Kristol, for
example, who once Trump comesalong and say, well, you know,
this is not the conservativemovement I signed up for, I find
Trump loathsome and I'mactually going to go over and
support you know, I'm going tosupport Joe Biden, I'm going to
support Kamala Harris, and so,again, that's a part and parcel

(22:11):
of these larger socialdevelopments of, you know, a
conservative movement that hasmoved in a populist direction
which has alienated moreintellectually-minded people,
even people who used to considerthemselves right of center,
used to consider themselvesRepublican supporters, and so

(22:31):
that's, that's had interestingimplications at the, you know,
among the, the higher ed, youknow higher educated, you know
sort of segment of of thepopulation, but of course that's
that's still a minority when wetalk about the voting
electorate overall.
And and that trend has been,has been, you know, sort of

(22:51):
counterweighted by the, themovement toward the Trump led
Republican party among the, thesegment of the, of the public
without, without college degrees, um, and so again, this is um,
you know it's.
It's easy to tell a story herewhere it's all about, it's sort
of all about Trump, um, andTrump is really just the center

(23:12):
of everything.
And, gosh, if Trump hadn't kindof semi-accidentally wound up
being the nominee of theRepublican Party in 2016, we'd
live in a very different world.
But where we think in the book,you know, a cautionary
perspective should come for thatset of assumptions is looking

(23:33):
internationally, should come,for that set of assumptions is
looking internationally.
And you know, you lookinternationally.
You see, well, gosh, similarkinds of things are happening at
lots of other places.
Right and the sort ofTrump-esque figures and
Trump-type movements populistnationalist movements are
popping up all over the world,and the progressive or left of

(23:55):
center parties and movements areincreasingly adopting, you know
, cultural stances that are morepopular among educated people
than less educated people again,all over the world and moving
to the left, on issues of genderand race and immigration and

(24:21):
LGBT rights.
That's not unique to the UnitedStates either, and so the more
you dig into it, in my view, themore you see it as well.
This is just kind of the momentin history we're all living
through.
This is something that's sort ofhappening globally, as our
species, if you will, sort offinds itself at a moment in time

(24:45):
where these sorts of issues areimportant to people, where
migration and economic globalintegration and secularism and
progressive ideas about genderand race are just sort of being

(25:07):
confronted and worked througheverywhere, or almost everywhere
around the world, and so thenwe should not be so surprised, I
think, as we were at the time,that a Trump-like figure has
come to dominate our politicsand come to personify the

(25:29):
conservative movement in America.
It's really just onemanifestation of a much bigger
set of trends that, again, werealready in motion before Trump
came, that we sort of can seeTrump as a consequence, and not
just a cause, of all of thistransformation.
And I think, you know, if wesort of take that big picture,

(25:52):
historical and globalperspective, I think we can do a
better job of kind ofrecognizing our moment,
recognizing where we fit in andwhere the controversies of the
day fit in, and I think thatthat's a valuable way to try to
make sense of all the thingswe're seeing around us these

(26:13):
days, of make sense of all thethings we're seeing around us
these days.

Shawn (26:17):
So one of the things that you know as it relates to how
we think about higher educationand the role that higher
education can play in ourpersonal lives and then, I
suppose, by extension, ourfamilial lives and society at
large, is that, you know, highereducation provides you a
toolbox to success, right, tomaybe attaining some element of

(26:38):
the American dream or at leastsome middle class stability,
right.
And I feel like what's happened,especially in kind of the right
wing media, you know, I don'tknow echo chamber is this
framing and I want to approachthis from a different direction
in a minute, but first you knowthis framing that higher
education settings are liberallybiased and, as a result of that

(27:00):
, it feels like that's the lensthrough which a lot of maybe
Biden to Trump or Obama to Trumpvoters are seeing higher
education through, and that's avery different way to perceive
of higher education and it feelsto me as if that's fueling a
cultural divide that ispotentially existential to

(27:22):
higher education, if it's notjust that a significant chunk of
the electorate sees highereducation as not being an
effective tool to success, butactually sees it as something
threatening to them tool tosuccess but actually sees it as
something threatening to them.

Dr. Hopkins (27:49):
Yeah, we have a lot of data in the book that show
that there's been a big turnagainst higher ed among
Republicans over the last 15,.
You know that faculty areoverwhelmingly and
administrators areoverwhelmingly liberal, that
they punish conservatives, thatthey have a biased worldview
that they try to inculcate instudents and you know that is

(28:13):
obviously something, as you say,the conservative media and
Republican politicians have verymuch encouraged this view.
So Democrats traditionally,when they talk about higher ed,
as you say, they sort of treatit as a kind of a stepping stone
to success, upward mobility inthe US, and of course, people do

(28:36):
, to a large extent, perceivethat as being the case.
They do agree that it's easierto get ahead in America if you
go to college, and that is oneof the reasons most people who
do go to college go is that theyexpect that they will make more
money and have a higher socialstatus after they complete their
studies at college.

(28:57):
And you know, overall, overtime, as we show in the book,
there has been a pretty dramaticincrease in the share of
Americans who attend college andgraduate from college.
That used to be a very rareexperience if you go back a few
generations.
And now, even though it's, youknow, most Americans have at
least attended some college andapproaching 40% of them now have

(29:17):
graduated from a four-yearcollege, and that's much higher
than it has ever been before inhistory.
But I do think that people onthe left in the Democratic Party
haven't always been sensitiveto the idea that there are
always going to be people whodon't want to go to college.
There are always going to bepeople who are skeptical of
colleges and people who go tocollege, and what's their

(29:40):
message for those people?
And, you know, you've sort ofbelatedly in the last couple of
years, have seen some Democraticpoliticians try to acknowledge
that and try to.
For example, we've had somegovernors, including here in my
state of Massachusetts,reclassify some state jobs as no
longer requiring a collegedegree, as a kind of a way to,

(30:01):
you know, curry favor amongnon-college educated people,
kind of a way to, you know,curry favor among among
non-college educated people, andso you've seen a little bit of
that.
But there hasn't really been a,you know, a bigger rethinking
of the, the message on education, other than, well, you should,
you should get it, everybodyshould get as much as they can,
because that's what you need toget ahead.

(30:23):
A lot of people want to live inthis country, want to live in a
world where you don't have toget a college degree to get a
good job, and you know what'sthe message for those people,
and that's something I think theDemocrats have struggled with a
little bit more than theRepublicans have.
The Republicans have a messagethat says, yeah, college is not

(30:43):
necessary, or it wouldn't benecessary if we didn't have so
much immigration andglobalization.
So that's exactly where a lotof this, I think a lot of this
conflict does lie that theparties increasingly do see

(31:04):
higher ed differently, and this,I think, is starting to have
policy effects If you look atwhat's happening, especially in
Republican-controlled states, atthe state level, of course, a
lot of our higher ed policy ismade at the state level in this
country, and a lot of the moneyfor higher ed is appropriated at
the state level, and you havethese state public university

(31:25):
systems that are, you know,while they don't get the
attention that the Ivy Leaguegets, educate a whole lot more
Americans than the Ivy League orthe sort of the top elite
private institutions do, and sothat's very, very important in
terms of overall educationpolicies.
Looking at what happens withstate university systems and we

(31:54):
do see increasing partisanconflict there we do see state
legislatures becoming moreactive not only in changes to
the funding of the programs butalso in passing laws to abolish
DEI programs at state universitysystems, to abolish certain
programs or disciplines ordepartments that are seen as
kind of havens of left-wingthinking and to establish and

(32:14):
this is sort of important andagain maybe understated trend to
establish sort ofcountervailing, more
conservative brandedinstitutions.
So we're seeing at Texas andTennessee and North Carolina, a
lot of these states, these newcenters on campus for the study

(32:35):
of liberty and constitutional,you know, principles and things
like that which are sort of so,I think, fairly transparently
attempts to rebalance theideological tenor on campus by
providing, you know, aninstitutional support of
resources for more conservativescholars and more conservative

(32:56):
students.
And so, yeah, that's a majorarea of partisan dispute these
days.
Higher ed has not always beenin the partisan line of fire
that much.
There's often been a lot ofbipartisanship in the past on
education policy, both federaland state levels, and we're

(33:17):
seeing increasingly as theculture war continues to sort of
incorporate higher ed.
You know, debates over highered policy we're seeing that that
really extend to higher edpolicy, and a lot of it is
driven by the perception thathigher ed is sort of enemy

(33:38):
territory for conservatives andthat this is something that
conservatives need to payattention to, because young
generations of Americans arebeing you know, are being
indoctrinated on campus byliberal values, and so that's a
major concern of people on theright.
Obviously, people like RonDeSantis have done a lot at the

(33:58):
state level to, you know, torespond to these perceptions,
and, again, this isn't somethingthat should surprise us, given
all the other trends we'reseeing around us.

Shawn (34:09):
Point blank.
Let me just ask are highereducation settings generally
liberally biased?

Dr. Hopkins (34:19):
Yes, the answer is clearly yes of the ideological
proclivities of faculty andadministrators in the United
States, and not just the UnitedStates, and certainly the United
States shows thatoverwhelmingly there's a lot
more people on the left than onthe right.
That varies a bit bydisciplines, but even in the

(34:44):
sciences and engineering andeconomics and medicine, which
used to be the more conservativedisciplines compared to the
humanities, it's still thesedays very much true that it's,
you know, left to center.
Now, not everyone who's aliberal spends their time, you
know, talking politics, but Ithink it's fair to say that the

(35:07):
overall climate on most campusesis friendlier to, you know, to
the left than than the right.
Um, I think there's there'sreason to believe that that's,
uh, that that's true.
And the farther up you go inthe kind of ladder of status of
the institutions, the more thatthat tends to be true.

(35:29):
And so conservatives aren'twrong when they see academia as
a profession and sector that'snot inherently friendly to their
point of view.
Where they're not quite rightis the idea that this is why

(35:51):
people with college degrees aremore left-of-center, is that
they get indoctrinated on campusto be so.
There isn't a lot of evidencethat students change their
politics in a strongly liberaldirection between the moment
they enroll in college and themoment they graduate.
You know, so that that that isnot really what's happening.

(36:13):
And, of course, many of us whoteach students like to say that,
you know, if we had that kindof power over over what students
thought and did, we'd use it toget them to.
You know over what studentsthought and did, we'd use it to
get them to.
You know, uh, read the syllabusmore.
And you know, uh, learn, learn.
You know, learn the coursematerial better um than than to,

(36:35):
you know, try to change theirpolitics.
Um.
So so you know, not everyconservative critique of
academia is a fair one, but thefundamental idea that academia
is a liberal environment andthat, in particular on issues of
race and gender and other sortof cultural issues, that there's

(36:56):
a sort of a set of norms thattend to prevail in the campus
environment and within the worldof higher ed that are not
friendly to conservative viewson those topics, I mean that's a
fair observation.

Shawn (37:11):
So, assuming this were or is a problem that would need to
be fixed, you know there's alot of different avenues to do
that and one is what?
One of the things that youmentioned earlier, which is
states and, I suppose, privatedonors funding universities and
university systems that arespecifically conservative minded
, as I suppose I don't want tosay bulwark, but a balance,

(37:33):
right to strike some type of abalance.
That's one approach.
I suppose Another would be kindof a profound restructuring and
redesign of the universitysystem as we know it, and that
would need to come from, Isuppose there's some exogenous
factors that could put pressure,but that would there would need
to be endogenous factors aswell.
So, like you know, within theuniversity systems themselves,

(37:56):
the influential folks makingdecisions to alter these things,
to provide or strike a balance.
And I feel like, if, if thesewere our only two options and
this was a problem that neededto be fixed, I want the latter,
because the former, in which wejust have different types of
universities geared towardsdifferent ideologies, just feeds

(38:17):
right into some of the dividethat we're already experiencing
on things like abortion and howmedia is funded in certain areas
and an urban-rural divide, andthat just starts to feel more
threatening to democracy thansomehow addressing the system as
it exists now.
And where I'm going with thisis I'm wondering if you've given
thought to what are some thingsthat universities could be

(38:40):
confronting to try to somehowstrike a balance and deal with a
liberal bias try to somehowstrike a balance and deal with a
liberal bias.

Dr. Hopkins (38:52):
Yeah, I think there's a lot of interest in
this question these days inuniversities.
You know, within the world ofhigher ed and especially higher
ed administrators, the eventsabout a year ago, a little more
than a year ago, with theuniversity presidents that
testified before the House ofRepresentatives and a couple of
them subsequently no longer werethe university presidents long

(39:12):
after that.
That has left a real mark.
The rest of us may haveforgotten, but if you're a
university administrator you'venot forgotten.
I think there's a lot ofinterest right now in thinking
about how higher ed can kind ofnavigate this very, very fraught
political environment that itfinds itself in, dominated by

(39:49):
conservatives.
I don't think that's a verypractical solution, just because
the startup costs of foundingkind of a new Ivy League of the
right are just reallyprohibitive and there just
aren't enough and again, therejust aren't enough conservative
scholars and students to fill it.
And so you might have, you know, the University of Austin, you
might have these sort ofexamples and you might have
again, centers and institutes atexisting universities that are

(40:12):
kind of like the HooverInstitution is at Stanford, that
are kind of like conservativeidentified and friendly to
conservative ideas andconservative scholars and
students.
That might be a more plausibleway to go than to try to sort of
found your own completelyseparate set of universities.
Find ways to placateconservatives at least to some

(40:32):
extent and to avoid some of thethings that have drawn a lot of
negative conservative attention.

(40:53):
And so, even if it's justsomething like renaming your DEI
office some other name that'snot DEI, you know, even if you
don't get, even if the officestays the same and it does the
same things, if it doesn't havethe name DEI, then like it won't
get the same.
You know, attacks from thelegislators in your state

(41:28):
disrupted or attacked so thatyou don't have that kind of
headline that oh, so-and-so cameto your college to speak and
they got, you know, treatedbadly.
Talking a little bit more aboutfreedom of speech and academic
freedom on campus and talkingabout the need to respect
different people and differentpoints of view and to have free
exchange of ideas on campus,sort of reemphasizing that.

(41:49):
More than emphasizing kind ofprogressive ideas about politics
, I think you're going to seesome kind of strategic response
to the election and the eventsof the past couple of years with
an attempt to bring thetemperature down a little bit in

(42:10):
these wars and to protecthigher ed.
Of course what they care aboutmost is the money they get from
the government and to protectthat and the other advantages
that higher ed policy gives toAmerican universities and to

(42:30):
hope that.
You know, some of this blowsover, at least temporarily, and
doesn't attract the sameattention of conservative media
and conservative politicians asit has over the past 10 years or
so.

Shawn (42:43):
So I'm a pessimist, so I envision a different scenario
and it's alarming andparticularly bleak which is that
if it's true that a liberalbias exists, or at least is
perceived to exist, on the rightand they're willing to attack
higher education kind ofrelentlessly, and we also, you

(43:07):
know, layer on top of thatemerge, revolve into a society
in which all people that areliberal or progressive get
higher education degrees andpeople that are conservative do
not.
I don't know what that portendsfor the future, like what that
looks like, but it feels prettybleak to me.

Dr. Hopkins (43:28):
Yeah well, I don't think the lines will ever be
that clean.
I mean, one of the kind offunny things about all this is
that we're increasingly ruled bypeople with college degrees and
that.
But that's not just true of theDemocratic Party in the left,
that's true of the RepublicanParty in the right as well.
I mean, almost every member ofCongress has a college degree,

(43:49):
regardless of the party they'rein.
Donald Trump and JD Vance bothhave Ivy League degrees of which
they're proud.
There's rhetorical attacks onthe right and, in some ways,
policy attacks on the righttowards higher ed, but it hasn't
translated into the idea on theright that you know if you're a

(44:12):
conservative you shouldn't goto college or that you won't.
You know you won't get anadvantage out of going to
college and even graduate school, getting a law degree, getting
an MBA.
Those are still things thatconservatives do, even if most
of the people now who graduatefrom college are more left than
right.
So we're still in a world wheregaining higher social and

(44:39):
economic status usually doesmean attending a university, and
that's true of conservatives aswell.
And so the diploma divide isreal and it's important, but
it's not absolute, and my guessis that that will continue and

(45:00):
obviously that puts eliteconservatives in a weird kind of
bind.
They're going to be attackinghigher ed a lot, not just
rhetorically but in some wayssubstantively as well.
But it also means they stillwant their kids to go to college
by and large, you know theystill have some investment in
the credentials that theythemselves earned in the

(45:21):
educational system meaningsomething for their own success,
the educational system meaningsomething for their own success,
and so that will.
But that of course means thatwithin the Republican Party and
the conservative movement thereis always the potential for a
backlash against the leaders ofthe movement that you can say
well, these people are a bunchof, you know, college educated
snobs and you know, because mostRepublican voters are not

(45:47):
college graduates, they canstill maybe be suspicious of the
leadership of their party fromtime to time as being sort of
out of touch with theexperiences of regular working
class people.
So I think it's going tocontinue to just create tensions
and complexities in ourpolitics rather than kind of

(46:08):
sort out incredibly neatly, youknow, along educational lines.

Shawn (46:14):
So you don't see this playing out such that we become
an educational wasteland?

Dr. Hopkins (46:19):
Well, you know I don't have a good feel for
prediction over the long termand I'm not, you know, I'm not,
I've not been given a crystalball to see into the future.
But I think that you knowthere's a lot of strength in the
higher education system in thiscountry that it would be

(46:41):
difficult for any single youknow party, at least in the
short to medium term, to takeaway, and that I don't even
think they want to do it.
I don't think that the projectof the conservative movement now
is to sort of obliterate highered.
I think it's to rein it in, Ithink it's to assert some more

(47:02):
control over it, more controlover it, and I think that they
may have some success in that.
But there is still avulnerability If they are seen
as not wanting to maintain theuniversity system at all.
I think there are lots ofvoters who, even if they think

(47:23):
well, higher ed's a little toofar left and it's a little too
progressive, I think they woulddraw the line and actually let's
get rid of higher ed or let'ssort of damage it entirely.
And so I think, you know, Ithink we can go too far in sort
of anticipating that this wouldgo to some extreme policy

(47:44):
outcome.
I think a lot of it is simplythat it's a very fertile
political target at the momentfor conservatives, and with some
reason, but that doesn't meanthat their mission in life is to
destroy higher ed.

Shawn (48:02):
So, in addition to things an urban-rural divide in our
politics, a cultural divide, thediploma divide that we've been
talking about there's anotherstory about our politics, which
is that we are becoming moreextreme, especially Republicans,
not to see things like January6th and not see that as being

(48:26):
reflective of our politics andthe state of political violence
in the United States andextremism, and this also
suggests that you know we mightbe headed for some type of a
bleak future.
But, given what you've studiedand what you know, is it true
that we're becoming more extreme?
I can understand the argumentthat the elites might be
becoming more extreme but theelectorate itself is not, or

(48:46):
vice versa, but I guess I'd liketo understand a little bit
better.

Dr. Hopkins (48:50):
Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to the
question of how exactly do wedefine extremity.
That's a word that can beapplied in a lot of different
ways, just like the wordpolarization can be applied in a
lot of different ways.
There's a traditional way oftalking about extremity.
That's just about policy.
Is your policy sort of center,or is it way on one side or the

(49:13):
other?
And both parties have moved, ingeneral, farther apart from
each other on policy over time,and that's sort of the classic
polarization picture.
But there's complexity in thattoo.
As I said earlier, we shouldrecognize Trump's abandonment of

(49:35):
previous Republican positionsabout cutting certain social
programs.
In some ways that's a movetowards the center in its own
way, though it doesn't often getrecognized as that.
And the other thing I would sayis that the Democrats have
become more extreme, you know,compared to how the Democrats

(49:57):
used to be, especially oncultural issues.
The party has moved leftwardfairly steadily over the past 30
years or so, and positions thatwere once, you know, sort of
beyond the bounds of thenational party leadership are
now much more embraced by theparty leadership on social
issues.
So there is an element of ourpolitics that is extreme on

(50:21):
policy, but you're also talkingabout when you're talking about
things like January 6th.
You're talking about the sort ofextremity, about you know, how
much do we respect the workingsof the system?
Versus how much is there kind ofrebellion, including, in some
cases, violent rebellion,against the system and against

(50:43):
the government, and of course,we have seen elements of that
pop up in our politics of thelast few years and that is
certainly troubling to a lot ofpeople.
On the other hand, you know,when you think about historical
perspective and you think aboutthe 1960s, for example, where we
had multiple, you know nationalleaders assassinated and we had
, you know, groups, you knowbombing government buildings and

(51:05):
things like that, it's not likeit's unprecedented, you know,
in this country's history tohave elements of armed conflict,
armed protest and violence,political violence.
There's nothing new about that.
There was, of course, plenty ofpolitical violence in the South
for most of this country'shistory and so I think, yes, the

(51:30):
trend over the short term hasbeen that we've seen an uptick
in that kind of behavior, but Iwould say that's not
historically unprecedented orhistorically unusual if we take
the broad sweep of the legacy ofthis country into perspective.

Shawn (51:53):
All right, Final question you ready for it?
Absolutely Okay.
What's something interestingyou've been reading, watching,
listening to or doing lately,and it doesn't have to be
related to this topic, but itcan be.

Dr. Hopkins (52:04):
Well, I've been interested, I'm getting more and
more interested in therelationship of popular culture
to politics and we have someelements of that in this book.
But I'm continuing to sort ofcollect, mentally, collect in my
mind, more examples and morecases, and I don't know if this
will turn into another researchproject.

(52:26):
But I'm especially interestedin gender and gender roles these
days.
It's just sort of been on mymind a lot since the last
election and how social andcultural ideas of gender and
gender roles relate to politicsand people's politics these days
.
So I've been sort of reading alittle bit about that and

(52:47):
thinking a little bit about that.
And then on top of that I'malways interested in music and
the history of music and musicbiographies and I'm often
reading a music biography.
I just finished one about theReplacements, the alternative
band from Minneapolis in the1980s, which was quite a
remarkable and well-done bookcalled Trouble Boys by Bob Muir,

(53:09):
and learned an awful lot aboutthe underground scene of
alternative indie rock in the1980s.
And so you know, I sort of tryto marry my own, you know, my
own interests, my own tastes,cultural tastes, with my kind of
analytical job to make sense ofAmerican politics.

(53:30):
And that's often where I kindof seem, you know, sort of seen
my own research go is in tryingto make those connections, and
so my guess is that whatever Iwrite about next, it'll probably
have something to do with that.
And so I at least say to myselfthat even when I'm, you know,
engaging my leisure time, thatI'm doing something that might

(53:52):
help inform my next, my nextprofessional project.

Shawn (53:56):
You're so much more legit than me.
You mentioned musicalbiographies and I was like or
autobiographies, and I was likeoh yeah, totally.
And then you mentioned thatbook and I'm thinking well, I'm
reading Cher's book.

Dr. Hopkins (54:07):
Oh well you know that's.
There's another very importantcultural figure, to be sure.

Shawn (54:13):
Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Hopkins (54:14):
Absolutely.

Shawn (54:21):
I do want to just very quickly say, like I've been, I
think this election you kind oftake it apart in the elements
that we assumed would have sometype of an impact and we focus
primarily on pop culture.
I think this election wasreally fascinating and I think
maybe Taylor Swift and Beyonceto some degree have become aware
of this shift, in that theyprobably don't have the same
electoral influence that famousfigures in past have had and I

(54:45):
wonder how much that played intotheir calculus as to how and
when to endorse.
You know, because it doesn'tlook like it mattered at all.

Dr. Hopkins (54:53):
Yeah, and I think that you know, one of the ways
that popular culture andpolitics can sort of play off
each other in ways that can besurprising to people is that
popular culture is oftendominated by the young, and
politics is not a young person'sgame.
The electorate is a lot olderthan the population in general,

(55:15):
and I think there's often anassumption in going into
elections that you know winningthe youth vote and catering to
young people is kind of theticket to victory, but just from
an arithmetical standpoint,that's where the turnout is the
lowest.
The average voter is in their50s and you know, if you want to

(55:38):
reach them in terms of popculture, the latest young pop
star is probably not the way todo it, and so I think there's a
lot of kind of easy assumptionspeople make about the interplay
between pop culture and politicsthat don't ultimately get
validated in the end, and Ithink in 2024, we certainly saw

(56:02):
some of that.

Shawn (56:03):
Dr Hopkins, thanks for taking the time, Thanks for the
conversation and I look forwardto what you're studying next.
Thanks very much, Shawn.

(56:27):
This was a lot of fun.
I appreciate you having me.
Education shapes how we see theworld, what we value and,
ultimately, how we vote.
We are experiencing this inreal time and with real
implications for our lives, ourpolitics and our governance.
This sorting has created twoAmericas one largely urban,
progressive and highly educated,and the other predominantly

(56:49):
rural, conservative and lesseducated.
These divisions deepen mistrustand they harden political
identities.
They make compromise seemimpossible, as we discussed here
today.
The stakes of this divide reachbeyond elections.
They threaten the foundation ofdemocracy itself.
When political identities arerigidly tied to cultural and

(57:10):
educational differences, itbecomes harder to bridge divides
, if not impossible, andmaintain faith in our democratic
institutions.
Like much else about ourpolitics in the United States
these days, these dynamics couldprofoundly impact how we govern
ourselves, and we may notprobably won't like how this
plays out, but it will play outand we need to find some way to

(57:32):
address it, While the solutionsare complex and it pains me to
say this because in many ways Isee Trump supporters as truly
disassociated from thedemocratic experiment.
But since we have to live witheach other in some way, barring
a blue state red state divorce,which, admittedly, is looking
more and more appealing to me,if not inevitable so, since we

(57:53):
have to live with each other, weneed to foster dialogue and
empathy across these divides,because it really is an
essential component topreserving democracy.
So I'll try to do my part.
If you'll try to do yours.
All right, check back next weekfor another episode of Deep
Dive Chat, soon, folks.
Thank you, Thank you.