The Know-Nothing Campaign Against Higher Learning

Irony and satire in the contemporary American moment.

The second Trump administration has committed itself to upending the knowledge systems and deliberative institutions that have been essential to modern democracy, with the American universitysite of scientific research and liberal educationa primary target. In The Know-Nothing Campaign Against Higher Learning, literary and film critic James Chandler spotlights an American tradition of such hostility to intellectual life, especially the nativist movement of the 1850s that persecuted Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Ironically, Steve Bannon, the self-proclaimed Know-Nothing vulgarian who long ago recruited candidate Trump to his anti-intellectual crusade, is himself the great-grandson of an Irish immigrant who would have faced Know-Nothing backlash in that era.

Such dark ironies define our moment, Chandler argues, and they call out not only for intellec