Other than President Trump himself, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is probably the most hated and most frequently maligned member of the Trump administration. Yet, after both meeting the secretary and covering her tenure as education secretary since 2017, it’s hard for me to see what rational basis critics have for their hatred.
Many Democrats, progressives, and liberal journalists are obsessed with DeVos, and their criticisms are often so hyperbolic that they seem sinister rather than sincere.
For instance, left-wing Harvard students and professors protested DeVos when she spoke on campus, offering not a rational criticism of her policies but instead smearing her as a pro-rape white supremacist. So, too, one Slate writer called the secretary’s due process reforms for college campuses “protections for sexual assaulters (sic)” and accused her of seeking to “go easy on accused rapists.” Meanwhile, the prominent left-wing feminist Jessica Valenti wrote in the Guardian that Devos is “enabling rape deniers” and “treating rape survivors like garbage.”
This is not exactly thoughtful disagreement. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much par for the course.
In 2017, New York Times readers voted DeVos the “worst member of the Trump cabinet,” and Democratic politicians regularly scapegoat the secretary. From Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren forming a “DeVos watch” to numerous 2020 Democratic aspirants repeatedly invoking the secretary to score some cheap political points — even at the LGBT issues presidential forum, of all places. If there has been any articulation of an actual basis for their hysterical hatred, then I’ve never seen it.
Of course, there’s no reason some Americans can’t disagree with the secretary or criticize her tenure. But all in all, Devos’s time at the Department of Education has been far from the disaster that leftists, such as those who comprise the New York Times editorial board, warned of during the confirmation process. In fact, DeVos boasts a number of impressive accomplishments. She has reduced the department’s staff by 10%. She has rolled out pro-free speech and pro-due process reforms in higher education. She has expanded school choice in Washington, D.C., and she has proposed further expansion in educational freedom in the form of a federal tax credit program to boost scholarship donations.
A nightmare scenario? Not exactly.
So, when I sat down across from DeVos alongside other members of the Washington Examiner editorial board for an exclusive interview in late November, I asked the secretary: “Why do you think that left-wing critics, out of all the people in the Trump administration, have a particular fascination — I would characterize it as an obsession — with you?”
The question prompted the first slight slip in DeVos’s gentlewoman-like, calculated demeanor. She let out a laugh and said, “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
I could tell she’d built up a great deal of frustration with critics who seem to try and tear her down no matter what she does. As to these critics’ motivations, DeVos offered one simple answer: unions.
“I think it comes back to the fact that I’m challenging the education establishment and status quo and, you know, I know that the heads of the two main teachers’ unions, they know that I was effective … and they don’t like that,” the secretary said.
It’s certainly true that the Democratic Party is motivated by teachers’ unions and their political and financial clout. Teachers’ unions give more than $32 million in political donations, and the money almost exclusively goes to Democrats. Their lobbying is, in part, intended to keep the party opposed to the kind of school choice programs DeVos champions — which would be good for students but bad for unions — even though many Democratic voters actually support such reforms.
“I represent a threat,” DeVos said.
She continued: “I continue to call them out on dismal results, poor performance for kids, and — and really, you know, selling a lot of kids short, and protecting the system that actually facilitates that, is really not a happy thing for them.”
DeVos is a threat, indeed. The backlash she has faced offers a case study in what happens to those few in government who dare try to disrupt the status quo. Let’s just hope her experiences don’t successfully discourage future reformers from fighting for educational freedom — or else the establishment will win, but students will ultimately lose.
