Analysis of: Ohio State reels from multiple scandals amid wider crisis in higher education
The Guardian | May 24, 2026
TL;DR
Ohio State's cascading scandals—sexual abuse, corruption, academic suppression—reveal how universities function as ideological state apparatuses serving capital. The deindustrialized Midwest shows what happens when education becomes dependent on billionaire donors and sports commodification.
Analytical Focus:Material Conditions Historical Context Contradictions
Ohio State University's convergence of scandals—decades of covered-up sexual abuse, presidential corruption involving misuse of public funds, and systematic attacks on academic freedom—cannot be understood as isolated institutional failures. These crises emerge from the fundamental transformation of American higher education under neoliberalism, where universities have become dependent on billionaire donors, corporate partnerships, and the commodification of student athletes' bodies. The material foundation of this crisis is rooted in deindustrialization. As the article notes, when manufacturing jobs disappeared in the late 20th century, Ohio State's football program became 'a rare source of pride'—revealing how spectacle and athletics filled the ideological vacuum left by productive labor's decline. The university now claims to support 117,000 jobs and contribute $19 billion to Ohio's economy, positioning itself as the region's economic backbone. Yet this very dependence creates perverse incentives: protecting revenue streams (athletics, donor relationships with figures like Les Wexner) takes precedence over protecting students and workers. The Wexner connection crystallizes these contradictions. A billionaire with documented ties to Jeffrey Epstein has donated $200 million to the university, his name adorning buildings across campus. Despite hundreds of requests for removal, the university defends him as a 'great supporter.' Meanwhile, faculty face what Professor Wainwright calls 'the most significant attack on academic freedom in at least a century,' with DEI programs eliminated and conservative-aligned courses receiving taxpayer funding. The superstructure of academic knowledge production is being actively reshaped to serve ruling-class interests, demonstrating how education functions not as neutral knowledge transmission but as an ideological apparatus whose content is contested terrain in class struggle.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Billionaire donors (Les Wexner), University administrators, Student athletes (workers producing spectacle value), Faculty (intellectual workers), Sexual abuse survivors, State legislators, Political figures (Jim Jordan), International students
Beneficiaries: Billionaire donors who receive naming rights and institutional legitimacy, Athletic department officials who maintained revenue streams by covering up abuse, Politicians who benefited from institutional silence (Jim Jordan), Conservative political forces using state power to reshape curriculum
Harmed Parties: Student athletes sexually abused by Dr. Richard Strauss, Faculty facing suppression of academic freedom, Students losing programs and majors, International students facing enrollment restrictions, Ohio taxpayers funding conservative ideological projects, Working-class families dependent on university employment
Power flows from capital to institution: Wexner's $200 million buys not just naming rights but protection from accountability despite Epstein ties. University administrators serve as mediators between donor class and educational mission, consistently prioritizing the former. Student athletes occupy a contradictory position—celebrated as representatives of institutional pride while their bodies are commodified and their abuse concealed to protect the athletic revenue apparatus. Faculty, despite credentials and expertise, find themselves subordinated to state legislative mandates and donor preferences.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Declining birthrate (16% since 2006 in Ohio) reducing domestic enrollment, Trump administration restrictions on international students eliminating major revenue source, University as $19 billion economic engine and 117,000-job employer, Athletic programs as revenue centers requiring protection, Billionaire donations creating dependency relationships, State funding cuts forcing reliance on alternative revenue
The university operates as a site of multiple production relations. Student athletes perform unpaid or minimally compensated labor generating billions in television revenue and merchandise sales—a form of surplus value extraction masked by 'amateur' status. Faculty produce knowledge and credentials as commodities, their labor increasingly casualized through adjunct positions. The institution itself produces both skilled labor power for capital and ideological legitimation for existing social relations. The contradiction between education's social character and its private/market-driven appropriation generates the dysfunction visible in these scandals.
Resources at Stake: $61 million already paid in abuse settlements, tens of millions more expected, $200 million in Wexner donations, $1 billion annual research expenditure, Taxpayer funds redirected to conservative programming, International student tuition revenue, Athletic program revenues, Institutional reputation as recruitment tool
Historical Context
Precedents: Penn State/Sandusky scandal revealing systematic athletic abuse cover-ups, Nationwide defunding of public higher education since 1980s, Wisconsin attacks on tenure and shared governance, Koch network funding of university programs nationally, Historical pattern of billionaire philanthropy as reputation laundering
Ohio State's crisis exemplifies the neoliberal transformation of American higher education over four decades. Public disinvestment forced universities to seek corporate and donor funding, creating dependencies that compromise institutional integrity. Simultaneously, the commodification of athletics produced an apparatus where student bodies generate enormous surplus value while being denied worker protections—a system that incentivized covering up Strauss's decades of abuse to protect revenue streams. The current attack on academic freedom represents capital's attempt to reshape the ideological function of universities, eliminating critical perspectives (DEI, certain humanities programs) while amplifying those serving ruling-class interests. This follows the broader pattern of neoliberalism: privatize gains, socialize costs, and discipline institutions that might produce counter-hegemonic knowledge.
Contradictions
Primary: The university must simultaneously serve as a public good (education, research, regional employment) and as a capital accumulation machine dependent on billionaire donors, athletic commodification, and market-driven enrollment. These functions are irreconcilable: serving the former requires accountability and critical inquiry; serving the latter requires protecting revenue streams and donor relationships at any cost.
Secondary: Athletic programs celebrated as sources of pride while the bodies producing this value are systematically exploited and abused, Claims of academic excellence alongside systematic suppression of academic freedom, Public institution dependent on private billionaire funding from figures like Wexner, University as regional economic backbone while eliminating programs and facing enrollment collapse, Ethics professor assaulting journalist asking questions about donor accountability
These contradictions are intensifying rather than resolving. Enrollment decline from birthrate drops and international student restrictions will deepen financial pressures. Legal settlements for abuse will drain resources. Faculty demoralization from academic freedom attacks will accelerate brain drain. The likely trajectory under current conditions is further corporatization—more donor dependence, more athletic revenue prioritization, more ideological discipline of curriculum. A progressive resolution would require public reinvestment decoupled from donor influence, labor rights for student athletes, and genuine faculty governance—but this requires class struggle beyond the institution itself, challenging the broader neoliberal transformation of education.
Global Interconnections
Ohio State's crisis reflects global patterns in how capital subordinates educational institutions. The attack on DEI programs mirrors international right-wing campaigns against 'critical theory' from Hungary to Brazil. The exploitation of international students—now being restricted—reveals education's role in global labor arbitrage, where peripheral countries subsidize training costs while core countries capture skilled workers. Wexner's Epstein connections place Ohio State within transnational elite networks where billionaire philanthropy serves as reputation laundering while purchasing institutional compliance. The deindustrialization underlying Ohio's dependence on universities as economic engines reflects the broader hollowing-out of productive capacity in imperial core countries, where financialization and service economies replaced manufacturing. Universities became crucial for this transition—producing credentialed workers, legitimating meritocracy ideology, and providing regional economic substitutes for lost industrial employment. But this model is exhausting itself as demographic and political shifts undermine the enrollment growth it required.
Conclusion
Ohio State's scandals are not aberrations but symptoms of higher education's structural crisis under late capitalism. The path forward requires recognizing universities as contested terrain where class forces struggle over knowledge production, resource allocation, and ideological reproduction. For faculty, this means building solidarity across institutions to resist academic freedom attacks and casualization. For students, it means demanding genuine governance power and, for athletes, organizing for labor rights that their productive role entitles them to. For communities, it means fighting for public reinvestment that breaks donor dependence. The alternative—continuing subordination to billionaire donors and market logic—promises more cover-ups, more corruption, and more ideological capture. The scandals at Ohio State reveal what's at stake: whether education serves human development or capital accumulation.
Suggested Reading
- Prison Notebooks (Selections) by Antonio Gramsci (1935) Gramsci's analysis of educational institutions as part of the ideological state apparatus illuminates how universities produce consent and how that function is being actively contested at Ohio State through curriculum battles and donor influence.
- The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's framework helps explain how crises (enrollment decline, scandal) become opportunities for restructuring institutions in capital's interest—exactly the dynamic visible in Ohio's elimination of programs and expansion of conservative curricula.
- Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti (1997) Parenti's analysis of how liberal institutions accommodate and enable right-wing politics helps contextualize the university's protection of figures like Wexner and its compliance with legislative attacks on academic freedom.