The Trump Administration is going after academia. I have mixed feelings.
Trump is using the enormous leverage he has through Federal grants to force universities to comply with his demands. Actually, so far, his demands haven’t been unreasonable. He freed up $400 million in taxpayer money for Columbia when the school agreed to add three dozen members to its campus security team, develop a formal definition of antisemitism and prohibit wearing masks to conceal identity — they’d sill be allowed for health reasons.
Now he’s going after Harvard and Princeton and several other elite universities. The UW is anticipating the fallout. We’ll have to see what he demands of them, but if it’s the same kind of stuff, I don’t have a problem with it.
Here’s what I don’t like about all this.
I don’t like the fact that Trump is using grants that are mostly about research in the sciences to leverage political change. Most of this money goes to make the U.S. stronger through better medicines to fight diseases, through better products, through all kinds of innovations based on knowledge and even through research related to military defense — something the left once hated. And ironically the STEM departments are the very places on campuses that are usually the least politically engaged.
I don’t like the fact that Trump is using antisemitism (which is a valid concern on campuses) to drive what feels like an attack on free speech generally. I didn’t much like the campus protests over Gaza either. But as long as they weren’t violent it doesn’t matter what I like. We have the First Amendment precisely to protect speech that is unpopular.
That’s what I don’t like about what Trump’s doing. But here’s what I don’t like about the attitude of universities.
The irony of campuses now screaming about free speech when for decades they’ve shouted down (sometimes literally, but more often in more subtle ways) conservative speech they didn’t like is so rich you need to check your blood sugar. And let’s be honest. If it were a Harris Administration threatening to withhold money over transgender policies that they felt didn’t go far enough, the left would be cheering.
The money they get from taxpayers is not a right ordained in heaven. You don’t get to take billions and then condescend to the very people paying the bills. Campuses have long been more liberal than the nation as a whole and protests are a rite of passage for some students, but the contempt often expressed for average Americans is bound to have a backlash. They should have seen this coming.
There has long needed to be a correction. University administrations should try as hard as they can to stay out of politics. Sure, students and faculty will do what they do, as is their right, but administrations should just keep the peace, keep classrooms open and let the kids do their thing on the mall.
And there does need to be a push for real, meaningful diversity on campus — diversity of thought. What we have now is a self-sustaining system in which very liberal faculty hire very liberal faculty. I suppose there might be various ways to break that cycle. Those ways should be explored now. A couple years ago, under pressure from Speaker Robin Vos, the UW got rid of “diversity” statements in faculty hiring. “Diversity” statements earn the quotation marks because they were anything but that. They were actually there to make sure only liberals need apply. Anyway, that’s a good start. The audit of DEI programs, also forced by Vos, is a good next step and we’ll see what other reforms that will bring. It has already resulted in weeding out outrageous overspending in the Madison campus’ DEI agency.
So, do I like what Trump’s doing with regard to universities? Not entirely. He’s Trump so he’ll probably go too far at some point. But to this point he hasn’t. Academia has become untethered to the real political world outside of it. That’s its prerogative, but they shouldn’t expect to be eccentric on the public dime.
On this website we believe in:
Free speech.
The rule of law.
Reason.
Tolerance.
Pluralism.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Sure this defunding isn’t actually a page from the fascist playbook?! And:
“If it were a Harris Administration threatening to withhold money over transgender policies that they felt didn’t go far enough, the left would be cheering.”
You are wrong.
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Dave, are you kidding me? This goes against everything your own mission statement says. This is an authoritarian censorship campaign being conducted on behalf of one foreign country. There’s never been anything like it before. And now legal immigrants are being snatched off the streets in unmarked vans because they wrote op-eds or made online comments criticizing the carnage in Gaza?
Progressive cancel culture bears no resemblance to this — conservative religious universities (BYU, Notre Dame etc) have not hand their federal funding yanked because of their conservative policies on sexuality, gender etc
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Boy, I don’t think it’s a censorship campaign being conducted on behalf of Israel. Jewish Americans — liberals all — who I know have mixed feelings on this — as I do, as expressed in my piece. They do think that campuses have allowed anti-semitism to be expressed when those same campus administrators were quick to shut down other forms of hate speech. On the other hand, they hate Trump and are uneasy in supporting anything he does.
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You have mixed feelings about fascism. OK.
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C’mon, Jack. I respect your point of view, even if you’re to the left of me. This is beneath you.
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Dave, this is straight up McCarthyism and the idea that it’s being done to combat antisemitism is a joke. Trump and the Israel Lobby don’t give a fuck about antisemitism –– they excuse and embrace actual antisemites as long as they support ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank.
You didn’t mention that legal residents are being picked up on the street and thrown into unmarked vans for writing op-eds or engaging in peaceful protest. Seems like something that would bother someone who cares about pluralism and free speech.
The irony is that, just like everything else that Netanyahu and AIPAC have done for Israel, this censorship campaign is doing long-term harm to the country’s standing in the world. Perceptions of Israel have plummeted in the past year, particularly among the young. It is on its way to becoming a pariah state.
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There is no indication that the Trump administration has freed up the $400 million in funding to Columbia, most of it coming from the NIH. Instead, it has been considered a “first step”.
“Columbia is now swept up in negotiations with the federal government in an attempt to retain its federal funding, which has already resulted in multiple policy changes that Shipman will be tasked with implementing” With Armstrong out, Shipman inherits a University still in crisis 4/1/25
“The federal government has yet to restore $400 million in frozen funding to Columbia even after the Ivy League school agreed to change its disciplinary policies, as the administration demanded.” Trump tactics against Columbia worry other universities 4/1/25
If you have information to the contrary, please post the link.
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Speaking of diversity of thought on campus, I’m surprised you didn’t mention the endowed professorship focusing on “conservative politics or thought,” that UW agreed to establish as part of its bargain with Vos to unlock funding for the engineering building.
In general my biggest beef with conservatives withholding the purse strings for research funding is the hypocrisy they exhibit by so frequently attacking science (on vaccines, climate change, etc) while simultaneously proclaiming that the STEM fields are the only valid fields of study (as a way of bashing liberal arts programs). So which is it conservatives? Science isn’t only valid when it’s convenient for you.
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Well, yes, good point and I agree. However, there is this same unfortunate tendency on the left. There’s evidence, for example, that DEI programs as currently practiced actually only induce resentment and do nothing to further understanding. And yet Democrats fight every attempt to question DEI — even an audit by the widely respected and nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau. And there’s growing evidence that the CDC was probably wrong in their shut-down approach to fighting COVID. It was probably well-intentioned, but it was based on thin science even at the time. So, while I completely agree with your criticism of the right, there is also a kind of religious fervor about certain topics on the left as well.
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Yes, I agree with you on that as well regarding much of the DEI push.
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I’m late to the comment game on this piece but I’m wondering why being outraged at what Israel is doing to Palestinians (at the hands to their current now clearly corrupt leader who has done everything in his power to scuttle the two state solution for decades) is being considered a far left position?
There are plenty of left, right and centrists who are absolutely disgusted, disgusted at the Biden administrations blind embrace and enabling Israel’s murderous campaign and disgusted at the Trump administration’s clear embrace of this for self-enrichment.
This is not antisemitism, it’s bold disgust for the inhumanity playing out at the hands of a civilized society, employing American weaponry by of all people, those who should know based on relatively recent history how to show the world a path to an intelligent yet compassionate solution for the oppressed better than anyone.
Likewise, I’m no fan of how the DEI initiative has been used as a cudgel — look no further than what the current Chazen Museum director did to the all-volunteer docent crowd for a tidy example.
However, I’m struggling with the difference people keep drawing between DEI and antisemitism efforts. What, antisemitism is a right wing issue but if it’s labeled DEI it’s a left wing issue? Fundamentally both are about managing prejudice for healthy outcomes for all. Frankly both, if one insists they aren’t the same thing, are being handled equally horribly by right and left.
So maybe it’s time we stopped buying into this supposed tribal right-left divide the political parties so desperately want us to believe in and start focusing on our common sense as American tax payers who all want the best out of those in office who are living off our tax dollars.
That’s where the real problems lie now, too many people in power (administrators building their little empires on college campuses and a raft of elected officials that extends right to the top office) who are there just to be in power, entertained and self-enrich, not to make things better for the people who pay their salaries and benefits, all of us, the tax paying public.
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