Wokeness disappeared for a time, but it is endemic to Yale.
Silliman College at Yale University. (Credit: Buckley Institute)
Corinne Cowan
Opinions Editor, The Buckley Beacon
This week marks two years since Trump won the 2024 presidential election. For many conservatives, the 2024 election ushered in the era of the “vibe shift” – when conservative and populist talking points came back into the mainstream. For conservative college students, 2024 marked a turning point in the culture of American higher education.
If I were to chart a history of the last fifteen or so years, 2014 would be the year that the cultural phenomenon of wokeness materialized. 2014 was the year that the Black Lives Matter movement became a national talking point, which was around the time when matters like LGBT rights and cultural diversity became progressive policy measures. The woke paranoia rose to its peak in 2020, amid COVID-19 and racial justice battles, pivoted in 2023, when pro-Palestine protests rocked American universities, and finally took a dive in 2024. Yale has not seen protests to the degree of the ones that rocked campus in 2015 and in 2024.
For conservatives at Yale, 2024 was the year that student culture shifted. While I wasn’t a student then, I’ve heard time and again how students became more conscious of free speech concerns after Trump’s election. When I speak to my older friends, they all emphasize how the culture of fear and silence around conservative ideas diminished in 2024.
But don’t just listen to my friends. Between 2024 and 2025, Yale jumped 97 spots in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s College Free Speech Rankings. Given how abysmal Yale’s spot was before, our move wasn’t fantastic, but it was progress. The Yale Political Union, as well, saw more interest as students became more interested in civic engagement with opposing views.
While the opening up of campus to diverse perspectives was incredibly heartening, I’m concerned that Yale could slide back in an instant to the previous status quo. It may be that this overwhelming Democratic victory in the midterm election rolls back the “vibe shift.”
In the age of information, social media, and easy travel, America has become much more homogenized. America’s college campuses, too, are more and more similar. In many ways, the political culture at Yale is merely a reflection of the political climate of America.
So while I hope that the Democrats would have learned from their bout in identity politics (after all, AOC was recently recorded saying “‘Woke One’ was crazy”), I doubt they will be particularly constrained by the conservative minority. Progressive students at Yale, likewise, will not be as interested in listening to opposing viewpoints post-midterms.
But more than that, I wonder if the phenomenon of wokeness was beyond just collective belief. Let’s be clear: wokeness never disappeared outright after 2024. It merely was beaten back.
Part of the problem with the woke phenomenon is that wokeness is not just an idea that the progressive left picked up one day randomly in 2014. Wokeness is a framework of looking at the world through an oppressed/oppressor lens, a totalizing culture of risk-aversion and safetyism, and an embrace of mediocrity over excellence.
It follows that there are certain governance structures that are more or less conducive to perpetuating the values that wokeness enshrines as its summum bonum. What is the political structure that gave birth to wokeness? Progressive managerialism. This is true of both politics and, in our case, university governance.
Progressive managerialism combines the goals of progressive-era politics with the procedure of systematic and democratic management. It upholds the values of social progress and liberation while viewing administration and oversight as the means to achieve these outcomes.
It is an organizational system that has deep roots in Yale’s current bureaucratic bloat. Every time we fill out a request form, send an email to administrator #1004, or submit the decision to the committee, we subject ourselves to the impersonal judgement of, essentially, the Human Resources Department.
This kind of government absolutely crushes individual freedom and creativity. It hampers innovation, prioritizes comfort, and views students as something to be managed and socially engineered. The politics of progressive managerialism anxiously seeks control. Only then can the people in charge avoid all liabilities and offenses.
A system that values safety and management over risk is a system for which the phenomenon of wokeness is easily adopted. Its ejection is much more difficult. In some sense, wokeness is a movement that is endemic to Yale, because it is sustained by the managerial system that runs Yale.
I’m unsure if the blue wave means that administrators will be more confident in their rollout of more soul-crushing DEI policies. What this will mean, though, is that the progressive culture of safetyism and repressive tolerance will be fed by the administration that is not up for election every two or four years. Yale’s openness to conservative ideas may be on its deathbed.
R.I.P, the Vibe Shift, 2024-2026.