… "Before the protests, the university, fondly known as Mizzou, was experiencing steady growth and building new dormitories. Now, with budget cuts due to lost tuition and a decline in state funding, the university is temporarily closing seven dormitories and cutting more than 400 positions, including those of some nontenured faculty members, through layoffs and by leaving open jobs unfilled.
Few areas have been spared: The library is even begging for books." …
I think the author is either playing down, or is simply unaware of, the fact that a significant part of the decline is due to a perception that the university leadership excessively indulged the demands of protesters out of a fear of being accused of racism.
…or that more black students are avoiding it now than before.
The university seems to have handled everything badly - they let things go so long that it sparked protests, then they didn’t deal with them until the football team got involved, then they just had lost all credibility and didn’t try to be open or honest. Some think they clamped down too hard, some think they didn’t clamp down enough - no one was happy.
Not “lately”. It’s been the case for about 60+ years, with a lull in the 1992-1997 period, roughly, due to reorganization within the army, secret services, and counter intelligence.
Those (Mizzou) would be ‘training’ operations. Due to the end of the cold war, many Americans have been lulled into a sense of safety and didn’t even register that when the Russian leadership said the greatest catastrophe in the 20th century was the fall of the Soviet Union, ie, the fact Russia relinquished world leadership to the US is something to be offset by any means.
The facts bots were part of the Mizzou mess isn’t surprising as it’s similar to other situations that we can he aware of, but interesting nevertheless.