Political Polarization Is Sorting Colleges into Red and Blue Schools

Florida’s public universities, unlike most others, require an SAT or ACT score for freshman admission. Republicans in the Sunshine State are seeking to purge diversity and equity programs from those schools, weaken tenure protections for professors and limit the teaching of concepts such as “critical race theory” and “radical gender theory.” By contrast, California’s public universities ignore the test scores and avow the importance of diversity. The Democratic-led state requires them to offer abortion medication through student health centers. Tenured faculty wield immense clout within the University of California. Gender studies is not under threat in the Golden State. With their competing visions, the two megastates spotlight an emerging red-blue divide in higher education: The culture wars are breaking public universities into polarized camps. At stake is who goes to college, whether those students feel welcome on campus and who decides what gets taught there.