Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Googly Eyes And Yard Signs: Deconstructing One Professor’S Successful Rebuffing Of A Right-Wing Attack On An Academic Institution, Theresa Catalano, Ari Kohen

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Right-wing populism is on the rise worldwide, and political attacks against universities have increased in the United States since the election of Donald Trump. In 2017, an incident occurred at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln which resulted in accusations of hostility toward conservative students. Just over a year later, political forces again attempted to denigrate the university’s reputation, but this time they did not succeed. This (multimodal) positive discourse analysis/ generative critique combines collaborative auto-ethnography to describe the way these events were represented in the media, deconstructing a professor’s methods of countering a right-wing attack on an academic institution. Findings demonstrate …