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This week, John Murawski’s “Alive and Kicking, News of Woke’s Death Is Greatly Exaggerated” has been top of mind.

Over the last few years, reformers have accumulated some victories. The Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions. And President Trump has pressured colleges and universities to reform on issues ranging from gender ideology to anti-Semitism and student loans. So, it is tempting to conclude that the battle for higher education reform—and for cultural renewal more broadly—has largely been won.

That temptation is a mistake.

As Murawski writes, “wokeness… was never a spontaneous outburst… but a philosophy and a worldview that were decades in the making.” Woke ideas did not spring up overnight. They took root over generations in colleges and universities, foundations, nonprofits, government bureaucracies, and the broader culture. They are not going to disappear after just a few years of pushback.

Murawski points to universities that have rebranded rather than eliminated “diversity, equity, and inclusion” offices, New York’s replacement of the words “mother” and “father” in state law with “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent,” states that continue to pursue reparations programs, and the growing normalization of polyamory. He also notes that biological males continue winning girls’ athletic competitions. (By the way, since the Supreme Court left the issue of biological males participating in girls’ and women’s sports to the states in its recent decision, the practice will continue in much of the country.) Murawski also points to a federal court that ordered a women’s spa to admit a biological male who identifies as a woman, and to the Daughters of the American Revolution, which voted to continue granting membership to “transgender daughters” who were born as sons.

What makes all of this so significant is that wokeism continues even while “the Trump administration, Republican-controlled states, and conservative legal advocates are doing everything they can to stop these ideas from spreading.”

Minding the Campus readers will find much that sounds familiar. We have reported on California’s latest attempt to repeal Proposition 209 so as to restore race-conscious policies, including race-based college admissions. We have shown how universities and museums use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to reclassify ordinary historic artifacts as Native American funerary objects and remove them from scholarly study. We have also explored the changing culture of relationships on campus, including, much as Murawski does, the growing acceptance of polyamory. And I just reported on a North Carolina women’s college that admits men.

The more the Chris Rufos of the world keep saying, We’re winning, the easier it becomes for donors, members, and the public to conclude that the work we do is largely complete. It isn’t.

I strongly encourage you to read Murawski’s article. It is one of the clearest reminders I’ve read in recent months that the work of institutional reform, just as the work of institutional capture before it, will be a long march.

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