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WORK TITLE: RESISTANCE FROM THE RIGHT
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PSEUDONYM(S):
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WEBSITE: https://www.laurenlassabe.com/
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married.
EDUCATION:University of Southern Mississippi, BA, 2011; William Carey University, MEd, 2013; University of Southern Mississippi, PhD, 2020.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Professor and writer. Professor in Department of Education and Human Development, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA.
AVOCATIONS:Pilates, yoga.
AWARDS:IUPUI Community Scholar, Society for US Intellectual History, 2023.
WRITINGS
Contributor to various anthologies and periodicals such as the Washington Post and American Educational History Journal.
SIDELIGHTS
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Lauren Lassabe Shepherd is a professor at the University of New Orleans, and her focus is on U.S. higher education in the twentieth century and into the present. She focuses particularly on the conservative backlash against what they view as the liberal ivory tower, and she often punctures their talking points. Her first book, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars, examines how the leaders of conservative campus movements in the 1960s turned into the Newt Gingrich Republicans of the 1990s.
Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars might sound like a book about the 2020s, but it actually begins in the 1960s with conservative students pushing back against the New Left. Shepherd argues that those students were not organic protestors but were in fact financially backed by anti-New Deal business interests. She then describes how those students because the New Right of the 1970s and then the dominant force in conservatism during the anti-Clinton years. The book is based on historical research and interviews with more than fifty individuals who were part of that time. She emphasizes how conservatives have seen the liberal academy as a bastion of anti-Americanism.
“A thoroughly researched, revelatory political history” is how the writer for Kirkus Reviews described the book in their review. They praised Shepherd for the “compelling evidence” she marshals for the influence of conservative students. The book has “abundant relevance for today,” the reviewer wrote.
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2023, review of Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America.
ONLINE
Lauren Lassabe Shepherd website, https://www.laurenlassabe.com (July 27, 2023), author website.
Society for US Intellectual History website, https://s-usih.org (March 25, 2023), author interview.
Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
historian, writer, teacher
Shepherd’s expertise is in the history of United States higher education from the 20th century to present, especially on the topic of backlash against progressivism in the academy. She teaches in the Department of Education and Human Development at the University of New Orleans.
Shepherd’s first book, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars is forthcoming in 2023 from the University of North Carolina Press.
Her second book is a historical survey of American colleges and universities since the 1960s.
In addition to research and writing, she enjoys teaching Pilates and practicing yoga. She lives with her husband and their dogs in South Mississippi.
She can be reached at llassabe@uno.edu and on Twitter at @llassabe.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
2020 PhD, Higher Education Administration (Institutional Research), University of Southern Mississippi
2013 MEd, History, William Carey University
2011 BA, History, University of Southern Mississippi
Publications
BOOK
2023. Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
BOOK CHAPTERS
2024. “Authoritarianism and the University: Global and Historic Perspective from the Last Century.” In Leaning into Politics: Higher Education’s Role in Building the Democracy We Need, edited by Abe Goldberg and Carah Ong Whaley. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
2023. “Simone Weil.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Thinkers, edited by Brett A. Geier. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
2021. “Trinity College: Civil War Comes to Duke University.” In Persistence through Peril: Episodes of College Life and Academic Endurance in the Civil War South, edited by R. Eric Platt and Holly Foster. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.
BOOK REVIEWS
2023. “Review of Rick Bass. Fortunate Son: Selected Essays from the Lone Star State. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2021.” PASSWORD: Quarterly Journal of the El Paso County Historical Society.
2022. “Lauren Lassabe Shepherd on Robin Marie Averbeck’s Liberalism is not Enough - Roundtable Entry 2.” Society for US Intellectual History.
2022. “Review of Miller-Adams, Michelle. The Path to Free College: In Pursuit of Access, Equity, and Prosperity. Harvard Education Press, 2021.” Community College Journal of Research and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2022.2135635
2022. “Lauren Lassabe on Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. WW Norton, 2020.” Society for US Intellectual History.
2022. “Review of Ellen Schrecker, The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2021 and Carl R. Weinberg, Red Dynamite: Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism in America. Cornell UP, 2021.” American Educational History Journal 49.
2021. “Review of Alexis N. Walker, Divided Unions: The Wagner Act, Federalism, and Organized Labor, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020; and Dan Kaufman, The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics, New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2019.” Labor History 62, no. 3, https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2021.1959826
2021. “Review of Greg Sethares, The Impacts of Neoliberalism on US Community Colleges, New York, NY: Routledge, 2020.” Community College Journal of Research and Practice 46, no. 4: 299-300 https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2021.1996483
2021. “Review of Daniel Grassian, An Insider’s Guide to University Administration, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.” Journal of Faculty Development 35, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2021.1996483
OPINION EDITORIALS
2022, November 21. “School policies are at the heart of DeSantis’s political success. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/21/desantis-nationalism-public-schools/
2022, May 19. “Bringing CPAC to Hungary betrays the origins of the conservative movement.” Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/19/bringing-cpac-hungary-betrays-origins-conservative-movement/
2021, July 7. “Critical race theory is just the new buzzword in conservatives’ war on campuses.” Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/07/critical-race-theory-is-just-new-buzzword-conservatives-war-campuses/
2021, April 16. “Conservatives have long embraced ‘cancel culture.’” Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/04/16/conservatives-have-long-embraced-cancel-culture/
Presentations & Invited Lectures (selected)
2023, April. “The Student Silent Majority: Buckley, Nixon, and the Conservative Countersphere on Campus.” The Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference. Virtual.
2023, March. “The Past, Present, and Future of the American University: Putting the Perpetual and Worsening Crisis in Perspective.” Panel discussant. Organization of American Historians annual conference. Los Angeles, CA.
2023, March. “Roundtable on Teaching the History of Education: The Responsibilities of Historians.” Southern History of Education Society annual conference. The University of New Orleans. New Orleans, LA.
2022, November. “Current Issues in Higher Ed Labor Organizing” Roundtable. Discussant and organizer. Society for US Intellectual History conference. Boston, MA.
2022, March. “Young Voters for Nixon, Students for Reagan, and Youth for Wallace: Law and Order Student Organizing in the 1968 Election.” Southern History of Education Society annual conference. Georgia State University. Atlanta, GA.
2021, October. “Backlash U: The Deconstruction of Progressive Traditions and Formation of Anti-liberal Infrastructure in American Higher Education from 1945 to Present.” Organization of Educational Historians annual conference (Virtual).
2020, December. “Counter-revolutions and Resistance to Reform in American Higher Education” panel organizer and presenter. Society for United States Intellectual History annual conference (Virtual).
2020, March. “The Other Kent State Reaction: Campus Backlash in Support of the Invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State Massacre.” Southern History of Education Society annual conference. The University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. (Virtual).
2019, November. “The Politics of Backlash and Reaction” panelist. Society for United States Intellectual History annual conference. The New School, New York, NY.
2019, October. “Resisting the New Left: Counter-Revolutionaries on Campus in the 1960s.” History of Education Society annual conference. Columbus, OH.
2019, April. “The Birth of the Student New Right: The Loyalty Oath Provision of the National Defense Education Act of 1958.” Susan Siltanen Graduate Student Research Symposium, The University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS.
2019, March. “Conservative Intellectualism and Activism in Postwar United States Higher Education.” Southern History of Education Society annual conference. University of North Georgia, Dahlonega, GA.
2018, August. “A Guide for Social Studies Teachers: Teaching Students to Identify Fake News in Online Media.” Essential Pieces annual conference. Gulfport School District, Gulfport, MS.
2018, March. “Between Suffrage and Roe vs. Wade: Anti-feminism among Mid-century American College Women.” Women’s History Month Luncheon presented by the Committee on Resources and Services for Women. The University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS.
2017, November. “’Race Mixing is Communism’: Fighting Subversion on Southern Campuses.” Mid-South Educational Research Association annual conference. Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS.
2017, February. Griffin, Amanda. K., and Lauren Lassabe. “An Exploration of the Influence of Community Service on the Academic Life of Graduate Students.” Southwest Educational Research Association annual conference. San Antonio, TX.
2016, November. “Bra Burners, Feminists, and the Sexual Revolution: Myths, Stereotypes, and Realities of 1960s College Life.” Three Minute Thesis Competition. The University of Southern Mississippi. Hattiesburg, MS.
(Received first place in the Business, Education, and Social Sciences division)
2016, March. “’Far Removed from Common Sense’: Student Conservatism as an Agent for Maintaining the Segregation of Southern Higher Education.” Susan Siltanen Graduate Student Research Symposium. The University of Southern Mississippi. Hattiesburg, MS.
2016, March. “Guardians of Tradition: Young Americans for Freedom in the Sixties South.” Southern History of Education Society annual conference. The University of Southern Mississippi, Gulf Park campus, Long Beach, MS.
2016, February. Griffin, Amanda. K. and Lassabe, Lauren. “Learning How to Teach: Examining the Relationship between Practice Teaching Opportunities and Preparedness for Student teaching. Southwest Educational Research Association annual conference. New Orleans, LA.
(Received Dean’s Award)
2015, December. “An Introduction to the Mississippi Statewide Teacher Appraisal Rubric.” Guest lecture in Amanda K. Griffin, REF 469: Educational Tests and Measurements. University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS.
2014, December. “Mentor Expectations of Pre-service Teachers during Field Experience.” Guest lecturer in Deanne Stephens, HIS 488:Methods of teaching social studies and practicum. University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS.
2013, April. “First Year Teaching Experiences and Classroom Management.” Guest lecturer in Deanne Stephens, HIS 488: Methods of Teaching Social Studies and Practicum. University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS.
Awards (selected)
2023. Society for US Intellectual History - IUPUI Community Scholar.
2016. Spencer Foundation Grant. “Ethnic Schooling in the Ecclesiastical Square: Educational Opportunity, Social Divide, and the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century New Orleans.” With R. Eric Platt (PI). The Spencer Foundation, Chicago, IL.
2018. Dale Center Research Award. Dale Center for War and Society. The University of Southern Mississippi. Hattiesburg, MS. November 2018.
2018. Karen M. Yarbrough Graduate Education Scholarship. The University of Southern Mississippi Graduate School. Hattiesburg, MS.
2017. Peggy Jean Connor Grant. The University of Southern Mississippi’s Committee on Services and Resources for Women. Hattiesburg, MS.
2016. Dean’s Award. Southwest Educational Research Society annual conference. New Orleans, LA.
2016. First Place in Educational and Social Science, Three Minute Thesis. TMT Finalist. The University of Southern Mississippi. Hattiesburg, MS.
2016. College of Education and Psychology Scholar. The University of Southern Mississippi. Hattiesburg, MS.
2016. Teacher of the Year Award. The Historical Society of Gulfport. Gulfport, MS.
Courses Taught
EDFR 6705: Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods
EDAD 6620: History and Philosophy of Higher Education
REF 601: Educational Research: Interpretation and Application
REF 400: Public Education in the United States
HIS 1163: World Civilizations I
HIS 1173: World Civilizations II
LS 101: Academic Support I
SARA GEORGINI MARCH 25, 2023
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USIH-IUPUI Community Scholars Spotlight: Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
Welcome to our inaugural group of USIH-IUPUI Community Scholars! In partnership with the Institute for American Thought at IUPUI, we are proud to host such a fantastic array of scholars studying diverse aspects of the field. Please join us in welcoming our USIH-IUPUI Community Scholars: Cari S. Babitzke, Matthew Guariglia, Zachary Jacobson, Drew Maciag, L. Benjamin Rolsky, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, and Rick Townsend. We’ll be introducing you to a new Community Scholar daily, so please stay tuned right here for their research finds and updates.
Lauren Lassabe Shepherd is an instructor at the University of New Orleans. She is the author of Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). She is active on Twitter and Instagram at @llassabe. Read on to learn more about Lauren’s scholarship and her plans as a USIH-IUPUI Community Scholar:
“In my first book, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars, I argued that anti-New Left student groups of the 1960s weren’t organic as they claimed, but designed and funded by conservative movement leaders and anti-New Deal business interests to do their political bidding on the campus. This cohort of college students graduated and ‘grew up’ to become the New Right of the 1970s who took over Congress in the 1990s. The goal for each of these generations of movement leaders was (and remains) to create bulwarks against an apparently rampant and destructive anti-Americanism they believe emanates from the ivory tower.
I intend to pick up where I left off in Resistance from the Right for a second monograph, tentatively titled “Since the Sixties” about the Right and their endeavors in steering—even dismantling—public higher education into the twenty-first century. The youth organizations I studied in the first project not only still exist but are supplemented by new right-wing think tanks and educational nonprofits. Through these nonprofits, the Right continues to train and fund young conservatives headed for the academy as professors and administrators, as well as others whose future careers will influence higher education through policy, the media, or the legal system.
For the last decade, much ink has been spilled over multiple concurrent crises in public higher education: the adjunctification crisis, the student debt crisis, the enrollment crisis, even conservatives’ manufactured crisis over critical race theory. This book seeks to answer the question: How did we get here? Right-wing educational nonprofits and the policies, laws, and people they have influenced are the focus of this post-Sixties political and social history of the academy.”
Shepherd, Lauren Lassabe RESISTANCE FROM THE RIGHT Univ. of North Carolina (NonFiction None) $29.95 8, 22 ISBN: 9781469674490
The roots of right-wing politics on 1960s college campuses.
In her debut book, historian Shepherd draws on oral histories, archival sources, and interviews with 56 individuals to offer a deep examination of the reactionary movement on college campuses from 1967 to 1970. Students involved in organizations such as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Young Americans for Freedom, and others benefited from financial support and mentorship from "anti-New Deal elders" seeking to foment "an astroturf mobilization against a so-called liberal establishment in higher education." Shepherd investigates the many political, evangelical, libertarian, and "sizable and energetic" White supremacist clubs and organizations that reacted against peace and Black Power movements and that rallied in support of the Vietnam War. Some members of those groups became famous political figures, including Newt Gingrich, Bill Barr, Jeff Sessions, Karl Rove, Pat Buchanan, and David Duke. All became powerful leaders in business, law, higher education, and conservative think tanks, where they continued to promote the views that they honed in their college years, driving American politics and culture further to the authoritarian right. The author clearly shows how "the current panic from the Right over student culture; curricula; and faculty hiring, tenure, and promotion is part of a longer historical pattern." Although she reveals some in-fighting and ideological splits within student groups, their demographic was largely cohesive. In the 1960s, she reports, 95% of college students were White, middle class, and, except in women's colleges, male. They presented themselves as "heteronormative white Christians," proud to call themselves squares, as opposed to their long-haired hippie classmates. The groups disseminated their ideas through magazines and campus media; carefully curated speaker events; and, after campus protest demonstrations in 1968, calls for increased punishments for leftist student activists. Shepherd presents compelling evidence for the ways that these groups, although a minority on campus, have exerted long-lasting influence.
A thoroughly researched, revelatory political history with abundant relevance for today.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Shepherd, Lauren Lassabe: RESISTANCE FROM THE RIGHT." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A752723055/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0ac6ba99. Accessed 17 July 2023.