From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is interesting times.

Right now, people are arguing about whether cancel culture is back, and this time, coming from the right.

And it certainly looks like the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel and other controversies do represent a kind of conservative revenge for the great woke cancellations of 2020 and 2021. But I really think that you need to understand

the conservative cultural strategy right now much more in terms of institutions than celebrity

individuals.

Long before the Charlie Kirk assassination, the Trump White House saw a once-in-a-generation to try and push America's cultural institutions, movie studios, TV networks, meaningfully to the

right. This week, I want to talk about the most significant

of these efforts. More important, even than the late-night TV wars. And that's the administration's

attempts to change elite academia, to change the way big universities admit students, their faculty,

to change the way they handle free speech debates and much more.

And my guest, May Mailman, is the perfect person to discuss the Trump administration's strategy

because she's been in charge of it.

So, May Mailman, welcome to interesting times.

Thanks for having me.

So I want to start with a very, very big picture question.

Tell me, what is wrong with the American university? Yeah, and I don't think it's every university,

but I would say, in general, you've got a lot of different problems. And the biggest one that comes for me is a culture of victimhood, a glorification of victimhood

that is ultimately bad for Western civilization and bad for the country.

And I think you can notice it in little pieces like when Justice Kavanaugh was going through his confirmation hearings, the need for grievance sessions, the need for coloring books, the amount of emotional support people needed to suffer through Trump's electoral victory. And I think that there's this culture that universities have been

perpetuating, maybe I call it Morgan Markle syndrome as well, where like the greatest good,

the greatest height that you can be is a victim. So I think that's one thing. And I think then

pieces of it trickle down to racism and admissions, racism in hiring. You're hiring people to do things

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