America is exporting its worst ideas across the Atlantic
It’s hard to be taken seriously in today’s foreign policy establishment when talking about the harms of what is broadly referred to as “woke culture.” Russia’s expansionist war in Ukraine, the ascendance of totalitarian China, the ever-present risk of jihadist terrorism, and many other threats would seemingly leave little room to focus on the American culture war. However, foreign policy specialists are now beginning to recognize that this is in fact a problem worth paying attention to.
In an interview with Elle magazine in 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron said imported "woke culture" from the United States is "racializing" France and creating more division among minorities. That same year, France’s national education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, said: “People who claim to be progressive and who…distinguish people by the color of their skin are leading us to things that resemble fascism.” Today, Macron is acting to distance France from the U.S. in an effort to avoid becoming “America’s followers.”
Macron and Blanquer are far from outliers in being displeased with America’s peculiar culture wars spreading to their countries. With every trip I take to the EU– from Copenhagen to Lisbon and even Iceland– I increasingly hear the same thing: America’s internal problems are negatively affecting European countries. We are exporting our unique cultural conflicts to places that have entirely different histories and frameworks for how to think about difficult topics such as race relations.
The people I speak to in these countries are incredulous as to how and why America has arrived at this contentious cultural moment. The American citizenry is becoming increasingly divided, and, thanks to the internet, we are successfully exporting this division to our international allies. It’s no wonder that leaders who are concerned with maintaining stability in their countries would try to distance themselves from this cultural influence.
One of France's leading magazines, Le Spectacle Du Monde, ran a cover story in 2021 titled "The Suicide of America." The magazine blamed America's retreat from Afghanistan on a “woke dictatorship" and questioned whether the American empire was collapsing. Not only might America be collapsing, but we might also be taking down significant swaths of European countries with us. The longer we cling to hyper-polarization and sensational “social justice” ideas (or wokeness, for lack of a better term), the more likely we are to abdicate our position as a world leader, and the less likely our allies— and more importantly, our enemies, such as Russia and China—are to take us seriously.
If we value our reputation as a world superpower, we need to be taken seriously by the rest of the world. In order to be taken seriously, we must effectively counter extremism at home. Two clear actions we can take are to invest in organizations that combat polarization, and to promote education for young Americans that gives them a comprehensive view of history and America’s place within the global community.
We must reject extremism in every form. Whether it is wokeism, far right authoritarianism, or religious fundamentalism. America once represented a beacon of hope and democracy, and it’s not too late to return to that. The time to right the ship was years ago, but we’ve arrived at a critical moment in which we have a choice to make: continue down the path of extremism and watch the American experiment become consigned to the dustbin of history, or do the hard work of uniting the American people, and by default, our international allies, around principles of freedom, democracy, and decency.
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As a foreign policy analyst and former Fulbright prof in the field myself, I thank you for this. The deletrious influence on our foreign policy of our ideological thought-suppression at home is something I have observed for years, seen the toll it has taken on relations with friends around the world, but despaired of other Americans noticing it. I am glad you have noticed it and called it to a wider attention. The costs have grown incredibly high. They go far beyond the costs of recent cases that you have found the space to mention here.
The source of this problem in America is academia - specifically the liberal arts and social 'sciences'. University professors vie for status among their peers - and the cheap and easy way to become top-dog is by becoming ever more extremist. With enough wordplay and rhetoric (the currency in these academic fields) you can convince impressionable students that segregation is equity, grievance is justice, and truth is a social construct (unless the gatekeepers disagree with that 'truth' in which case its supporters must be deplatformed). These fields have no use for evidence, empiricism and fact-checking ideas - often they decry evidence as oppression - hence they run the risk of descending into demagoguery.
There is good news on the horizon - the academic bubble is going to burst and Academic excess will bring it about! First, these impressionable students are taking on an unsustainable debt burden for degrees in grievance & victimhood (which aren't marketable enough to pay off the debts - so these degrees are increasingly only accessible to the sons & daughters of privilege). Second, due to grade inflation (one way to bribe students into majoring in these fields is by giving away grades) employers no longer trust GPA's and Diplomas and assess skills and abilities of interviewees - and grievance studies majors develop few skills that employers actually want (these unfortunate students learn to write in 'academese' which is unsuitable for businesses). Third, companies are seeking more 'new-collar' employees - a new category of workers with valuable skills but no college degree - a lot of technicians and coders fall into this category. These, combined, signal a decline in University enrollment - we can already see it happening. Enrollments are dropping but the decrease is not uniform across all majors - STEM majors still see robust enrollments - Universities will cut back on departments which are not in demand. Liberal Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences will wither and die due to their own selfish excesses - those Profs have been exploiting their students' trust to boost their own careers and they will learn that truly you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Also, I predict that within one decade we will see students file class-action lawsuits against Universities for 'selling worthless degrees.' Students who are deep in debt and unable to pay off the loans will realize that they were mislead by the educators that they trusted or even idolized. The excuse of 'broadening of minds' will ring hollow to those who are working 3 jobs to pay off debts and have no time to feed their mind. They will come to realize that Universities turned them into debt slaves - how ironic: their greatest grievance will be with those who taught them the culture of grievance.
Academia is digging its own grave - let's hope something new and beautiful grows from its compost!