A Manifesto for a Progressive Land-Grant Mission in an Authoritarian Populist Era

Abstract

In this article, we offer a manifesto for a progressive twenty-first century land-grant mission in an era of rising authoritarian populism in the United States. We explore the historical context of this mode of political engagement, argue that scholars based at land-grant universities are uniquely positioned to address this political moment, and offer examples of land-grant scholars who have embraced this political obligation directly. In the midst of the U.S. Civil War, the federal government provided grants of land to one college in every state to establish universities especially with extension-oriented missions committed to agricultural research and training; today, there are seventy-six land-grant universities. Just as the constitution of these universities at a significant moment in the country’s history served a political purpose, the current political climate demands a robust political response from contemporary land-grant scholars. Given the mandate for land-grant universities to serve their communities, how can a critical land-grant mission respond to the current political moment of emergent authoritarian populism in the United States and internationally? What responsibilities are entailed in the land-grant mission? We consider some strategies that land-grant scholars are employing to engage with communities grappling most directly with economic stagnation, climate change, and agrarian dispossession. We also suggest that, amid the dramatically shifting political climate in the United States, all scholars regardless of land-grant affiliation should be concerned with land-grant institutions’ capacities to engage with the country’s most disenfranchised populations as a means to pushing back against authoritarian populism. Key Words: authoritarian populism, higher education, land-grant institutions, public geographies, United States.

我们于本文中，在美国兴起威权民粹主义的年代中，提供激进的赠地任务宣言。我们探讨此一政治参与模式的历史脉络，主张以赠地大学为基地的学者，特殊地置于应对此一政治时刻的位置，并提供直接拥抱此一政治任务的赠地学者之案例。在美国内战期间，联邦政府在每州赠地给学院来建立大学，特别是有关农业研究与训练的伸展导向任务；目前共有七十六所赠地大学。如同这些大学的组成是在国家历史上的显着时刻提供政治目的一般，当前的政治环境亦要求当代赠地学者的强烈政治回应。有鉴于赠地大学必须服务其社区，批判性的赠地任务如何能够回应美国与国际浮现中的威权民粹主义之当前政治时刻？赠地任务继承了什麽样的责任？我们考量赠地学者用来涉入最直接应对经济停滞、气候变迁与农业流离失所的社区的若干策略。我们同时主张，在美国剧烈变动的政治环境中，所有的学者，无论是否关乎赠地，皆必须考量赠地机构与该国公民权最受到剥夺的人口交涉之能力，作为反制威权民粹主义的工具。关键词: 威权民粹主义, 高等教育, 赠地机构, 公共地理学, 美国。

En este artículo presentamos un manifiesto por una misión progresiva de concesión de tierras (land-grant) del siglo XXI en una era de creciente populismo autoritario en los Estados Unidos. Exploramos el contexto histórico de este modo de compromiso político, sostenemos que los académicos y eruditos basados en universidades del tipo favorecido por la concesión de tierras están posicionados singularmente para abocar este momento político, y ofrecemos ejemplos de eruditos de tal tipo que han abrazado directamente esta obligación política. En medio de la Guerra Civil de los Estados Unidos, el gobierno federal otorgó concesiones de tierras a un instituto universitario de cada estado para establecer universidades especialmente aquellas con misiones orientadas a la extensión comprometida con la investigación y el entrenamiento agrícola; en el momento actual, existen setenta y seis universidades del tipo land-grant. Justamente como la constitución de estas universidades en un momento significativo en la historia del país sirvió un propósito político, el actual clima político demanda también una respuesta política robusta de los eruditos contemporáneos del tipo land-grant. Considerando el mandato que se dio a las universidades land-grant de servir a sus comunidades, ¿cómo puede una misión land-grant crítica responder al momento político actual de emergente populismo autoritario en Estados Unidos e internacionalmente? ¿Qué responsabilidades van implícitas en la misión land-grant? Consideramos algunas estrategias que están empleando los eruditos land-grant para involucrarse con comunidades que luchan más directamente con el estancamiento económico, el cambio climático y la desposesión agraria. Sugerimos también que, en medio del dramáticamente cambiante clima político de los Estados Unidos, todos los académicos, independientemente de la afiliación land-grant, deben preocuparse con la capacidad de las instituciones land-grant para involucrarse con las poblaciones de mayor privación en el país, como un medio de devolver golpes al populismo autoritario.

Palabras clave:

• educación superior
• Estados Unidos
• geografías públicas
• instituciones de concesión de tierras
• populismo autoritario

Acknowledgments

The authors initiated the conversations that resulted in this piece while each of us was either a faculty member or a PhD student at a U.S. land-grant university. The authors thank James McCarthy for his helpful editorial comments as well as three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, which greatly improved this article.

Notes

Notes

1 By common sense, Gramsci (and, by extension, Hall, who drew on Gramsci) referred to the diverse beliefs and seemingly self-evident truths that both derive from and entrench class-based cultural, political, and economic hegemony (see also Crehan 2016).

2 The 1887 Hatch Act established colleges of agriculture within the land-grant system and focused on serving rural communities through agricultural extension. McDowell (2003), however, importantly pointed out that this agricultural focus has never been the sole objective of the land-grant mission, writing that “for many inside and outside Land-Grant universities, the Land-Grant principle, whatever it means, is explicitly agricultural. That misunderstanding of a principle central to the Land-Grant universities continues to mislead and confound the understanding of an insight significant to the future of the academy and higher education” (33).

3 The populist politics of the Confederacy itself are perhaps the greatest example of this (Isenberg 2016); however the xenophobic “Know Nothing Party” (Formisano 2008)—the politics of which have been compared with those of Donald Trump (Reston 2015)—represented an early strand of authoritarian populism. Abraham Lincoln’s own strand of populist politics resulted in the Homestead Act of 1862, under which the federal government gave small grants of agricultural lands west of the Mississippi to non-Confederate white Americans (Oliver and Shapiro 1997).

4 There are currently seventeen historically black colleges designated as land-grant institutions.

5 Indeed, voter dissatisfaction with land-grant institutions was expressed dramatically when the Connecticut General Assembly revoked the land-grant charter from Yale, which had been one of the first land-grant institutions. The large agricultural voting bloc objected to what it perceived to be elitist admissions standards and a curriculum that did not serve Connecticut farmers (Schiff 2009; Bomford 2017).

6 Compare global analysis of the agrarian question (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2009; Edelman et al. 2014), within which the transnational role of the United States has largely been paid greater attention than rural–urban transitions within the United States itself.

7 Cornell University’s Alliance for Science is one example, a program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that supports research on and advocacy for genetically modified crops and foods (Schnurr 2015; Antoniou and Robinson 2017).

8 Here we direct attention to the alternative populist visions that Hall (1980) referred to as “popular-democratic.”

9 The capacity of individual scholars to negotiate these possibilities is deeply inequitably distributed based on professional demands and hierarchies, including requirements and incentives for hiring and promotion and the rise of contingent academic labor contracts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jenny E. Goldstein

JENNY E. GOLDSTEIN is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include land use politics, political ecology of climate change, and intersections between digital technology and development.

Kasia Paprocki

KASIA PAPROCKI is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment in the London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include the political economy of development, agrarian studies, and the political ecology of climate change.

Tracey Osborne

TRACEY OSBORNE is an Associate Professor in the School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include the political ecology of climate change mitigation in forests, climate justice, and engaged scholarship.