RANGE - SoundSage

Hey y’all. A couple weeks ago the DC-based Chronicle of Higher Education ran https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-county-turns-against-its-community-college (a story) from right in our backyard about a coordinated effort by Kootenai County Republicans to run for the ostensibly non-partisan North Idaho College Board of Trustees on explicitly conservative talking points. They leveraged the full power of the local Republican Central Committee, ended up winning a super majority on the board, then quickly came into conflict with the college’s administration, faculty and staff.

The report’s author, https://twitter.com/EmmaJanePettit (Emma Petti)t, joins us to get the details.

It’s a fascinating window on our region and a great conversation, though one important question remains unanswered: whether this is a new tactic in the conservative war on higher education or if it’s just https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/wackadoodles-north-idaho (Kootenai County being Kootenai County).

As a bit of a coda, this week Emma wrote a quasi-follow up piece about https://www.chronicle.com/article/anti-american-pushing-marxism-and-more-do-you-recognize-your-college-here?cid2=gen_login_refresh&cid=gen_sign_in (Idaho Freedom Action’s campaign to “Fix Idaho Colleges”) by robocalling about Marxism and how students are conditioned to “apologize for being white.”