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I took this photo of my @chronicle colleagues during Trump's inaugural address 4 years ago. We were all on the cusp of a paradigm shift. You could feel that.
Trump had previewed skepticism of higher education before he was sworn in, but I hadn't remembered until looking back today that education was a pillar of his "American carnage" critique.
What I remember most of those first few months was just how quickly Trump consumed every facet of our coverage. His election had been a finger in the eye to higher education. https://bit.ly/2LSRTXU
When college presidents came to our office in DC, a common occurrence before Covid, many were reticent on the subject of what Trump meant. But you could feel their discomfort, and I've seldom had more off the record groans uttered in my presence than I did in those first weeks.
The travel ban was an early indication that our corner of the news world was going to be transformed and tested by this presidency, and @karinfischer covered it tirelessly.
Stories that at first blush didn't seem to be about Trump became about Trump. His Access Hollywood tape, and the race/class divisions he'd stoked, loomed over an ugly incident I reported on at Amherst at the start of his presidency. https://bit.ly/2LSg2xZ
We kept trying to take stock of Trump's presidency and its clashes with higher ed. https://bit.ly/39Nl5b0 . But this wasn't a story with a bookend ...
It was a way of being. Constant conflict. Diametric opposition that would continue over four years. https://bit.ly/2XV0jRd
The only person I knew in higher education with direct access to Trump was Jerry Falwell Jr., then president of Liberty. At least at first, Falwell was calling Trump on his (presumably not secure) cell phone to chat.
Falwell and I had an interesting relationship. He seemed to revel in talking to a publication like The Chronicle, a sort of Trumpian way of crashing the classy party. ("Blame it all on my roots, I showed up in boots" sort of vibe).
Falwell had been tickled when I asked him in late 2015 to take me shooting guns on Liberty's range. He had one rule (on behalf of the board that has since forced him out): Don't photograph him actually holding a gun. (As it turns out, other photos became the problem).
Falwell ordered multiple paper copies of the resulting shooting range article, and we kept talking over the years. https://bit.ly/390ZxID . I kept pressing Falwell to help me get an audience with Trump, and in May 2017 it looked like it would happen.
Trump was slated to give the commencement address at Liberty, and Falwell said he could get me a few minutes with the president.
Trump's comms team ushered me into a small private room in Liberty's football stadium complex. I fidgeted with multiple tape records and prepared for a conversation I thought could last 30 seconds or 30 minutes.
"This isn't going to happen," a Trump aide told me minutes later. Disappointed, I schlepped down to the football field and joined a pool of reporters on the sideline waiting for Trump to address the crowd.
Undeterred, I texted Falwell and pleaded for a few minutes. "Get up here," he replied. Moments later, a secret service member ran across the football field and locked eyes with me: "Are you the reporter?" he said with urgency.
In a beat we were off, running across the football field in front of the commencement audience. It must have looked like we knew of a bomb threat.
Sadly, by the time we got upstairs Trump was already headed toward the stage. Falwell would call me later that day and tell me the backstory. Trump, he said, had been eager to chat and kept saying, "Where's Stripling? Where's Stripling?"
The story is a fun one for cocktail parties, but also indicative of the impulsivity that governed Trump's presidency. It's on. It's off. It's on. It's off again. It was the whipsaw higher ed leaders experienced over and over again.
An indelible moment came three months later. I was alone in the newsroom on a Sunday in August 2017 on the phone with Teresa Sullivan, then UVa's president, who described to me in detail how a terrifying torch-bearing mob had overrun UVa's Lawn two nights before.
College campuses had become a literal battleground. The tinderbox was aflame. “Violence was no longer hypothetical," Sullivan told me. "It had happened.” https://bit.ly/3nVeKPK
A proxy war over the future of the country was being waged on college campuses. Few pieces of journalism captured this as well as @stevekolowich's collaboration with This American Life. https://www.chronicle.com/article/state-of-conflict/
It's been a hell of a four years for the nation and for The Chronicle. https://www.chronicle.com/article/trump-picked-a-fight-with-higher-ed-its-still-learning-to-punch-back
We're going to feel the ripple effects for a long time. https://bit.ly/3ituMPE .
The tone has changed remarkably today from what my colleagues and I watched on that newsroom TV four years ago. We'll see what else changes.
