Alena Selezneva
Dear J—:
I get it. Like you, I arrived in that small Connecticut city (though I graduated the year you were born) and felt like an anthropologist on Mars. My classmates used “summer” as a verb, came from families whose names were on multinational companies and carved into the buildings where we had classes, buildings that, like medieval cathedrals, seemed designed to make me feel small and insignificant. Back home in rural upstate New York, the prom kings were athletes. In college, the cool kids sang a cappella and made fun of the football players.
For years I wrote that I never used the name of our alma mater and “happy” in the same sentence. Except, of course, for all the times I wrote that exact sentence. I left college having learned to cover up my insecurity with unfelt bravado, though I made friends I still have and hold close.
It was when I went back for my 20th reunion—only because it was a chance to see those friends—I realized what my problem with our institution really was. It was me. I was too insecure to fill my plate at the intellectual buffet. I seethed with class rage and resentment for years as I spent most of my paltry paycheck paying off student loans while my classmates attended bonfires of the vanities.
As I’ve moved through higher education circles over the years, my personal experience broadened into a systemic understanding. Belonging is hard to come by, especially for the have-nots. But I’ve come to realize something uncomfortable: how much currency I gained from an alma mater I still don’t feel was my place, but on whose reputation I continually cash in.
This tension, between gratitude and resentment, between recognizing privilege and feeling like an outsider, is one that many of us in higher education carry. And it makes your current positions on education excruciating to watch, especially when I consider the path that led you to the top.
You joined the Marines, a good choice (my best student ever came to college after being a machine gunner in the Marines). When you got out of the service, you went to a state flagship, where you thrived under the tutelage of professors who actually cared. That’s what we in higher education do: We help our students learn to believe in their own potential. That gave you the courage to apply to and attend law school. Surely you were, like most of us, chasing prestige, connections and, yep, money.
There, you met people who didn’t look like you, who didn’t come from anywhere you knew, and they shaped your path. J—, you married one of them.
And now here you are, at the top of the heap, pulling the ladder up behind you, cutting off access to students just like you were. When you attack diversity, equity and inclusion programs, you dismantle the very support systems—mentorship, community, tailored resources—that often make elite institutions navigable for first-generation and underrepresented students. When you question the value of higher education, you undermine the transformative potential of institutions that have historically uplifted communities. And when you advocate for cuts to federal financial aid, you erect insurmountable economic barriers that lock out aspiring students from humble backgrounds. You’ve turned the class resentment we both carried out of that ivy-walled campus into political expediency and aimed it at the wrong enemy.
I used to assign your book in my creative writing classes to students from the rural inland Northwest, because it’s rare for them to see their experiences in print. I wanted them to understand that Appalachia and our region aren’t all that different. We read memoirs by people from various backgrounds, but the voice of poor whites hasn’t gotten as much attention in literary spaces. I stopped using your book because my students felt you were placing blame on them, though it did motivate that Marine to go to law school because he thought he was a better writer than you (the truth: He was).
I know you and your friends in D.C. have the sense that working-class white experiences have been sidelined. But true diversity means creating space for all kinds of stories, all kinds of backgrounds. Economic, geographic and ideological diversity matter if we want to understand each other and build the kind of educated citizenry democracy requires. By attacking what you think DEI is, you make the case that we shouldn’t keep reading memoirs like yours, shouldn’t create pathways for rural students, shouldn’t invest in first-generation college programs.
When someone with your background and your platform leads the attack on higher ed, you make it exponentially harder for the next kid from Anytown, Ohio, to get the education that changed your life.
You’ve been called a flip-flopper (among other things). I’m hoping, then, you’ll remember that your trajectory wasn’t entirely of your own making. You didn’t bootstrap your way to the top. You were given a boost by institutions that, sure, are imperfect, often infuriating, but saw potential in a kid like you and opened the gates to social mobility.
Many of us in higher education have complicated relationships with our own alma maters. On some level, we probably agree with your criticisms that higher ed can be exclusionary, elitist and out of touch. We know we need to change. The fact is, many if not most, colleges these days are focused on being more accessible to kids exactly like you.
Consider how a fancy-pants law degree paved your path to success. Sure, you have mixed feeling about the place. Me, too. But I am grateful for all the things I know it gave me. And I’m finally big enough to know that what I didn’t like about it was insecure little me.
The question now is whether you can find that same maturity and use your position to build bridges rather than walls, to expand opportunity rather than restrict it. Imagine the impact of advocating for increased Pell Grants, championing support for regional public universities or investing in community college–to–four-year pathways and creating policies that genuinely broaden access for students from all walks of life.
The next generation of students from places like Appalachia and rural upstate New York are counting on it. The country we both love depends on it.
