In the months since assuming office in early 2025, the Trump administration has launched a multi-front assault on elite American universities. This assault has seen billions of dollars cut from federal funding grants, demands for governmental oversight of admissions practices, and even review of curriculum relating to the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. In response to these threats, universities were presented with two options: placate the Trump administration or resist the regressive demands of a government hostile to higher education.

            When the Trump administration came knocking at Columbia University’s door in early spring 2025, the university chose the former option. The Trump administration, in its efforts to curb (what it dubbed as) anti-American, pro-terrorist sentiments brewing on Columbia’s campus, cancelled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to the university unless Columbia’s administration agreed to a lengthy list of demands. Columbia opted to agree and regain access to the funding. In a statement released in March 2025, Columbia committed itself to a list of administrative changes designed to ‘make [its] campus safer, more welcoming, and respectful’. The most unfortunate part of these changes, perhaps, was the university’s willingness to undermine the decades of groundbreaking and field-defining scholarship of academics like Edward Said by stripping Middle East-focused departments of academic and administrative autonomy in an effort to promote “fairness in Middle East studies.”  As news of the decision broke, left-leaning outlets chastised Columbia’s “complete surrender to Trump.” Renowned historian Rashid Khalidi went further, lamenting that Columbia – an institution where Middle East scholarship once thrived – now “barely merits the name of a university.”

            While Columbia’s administrators waved the white flag, regrettably sacrificing academic freedom in the process, Harvard’s administrators chose the latter option. In April 2025, the Trump administration requested that Harvard University implement a number reforms targeting its hiring policies, end DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) practices, and accept extensive government oversight. Several days later, Harvard announced that it had informed the government that it did not intend to accept the request, noting it “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” In response to this public act of defiance, the Trump administration announced that it would freeze $2.2 billion in grants and another $60 million in contracts, launch a number of investigations into Harvard’s operations, and freeze an additional $1 billion in health research funding.

            In response to these moves, Harvard took legal action to block the funding freeze, condemning the Trump administration’s “broad attack” on the funding sources that make invaluable research possible (para 2 of Harvard’s legal complaint). While Harvard’s lawsuit makes its way through the courts, the Trump administration has continued to cancel funding grants to the university and its affiliated organizations. These cancellations have culminated in the recent announcement that the administration intended to cancel all federal funds directed to the university.

            In Late May,the Department of Homeland Security announced that Harvard would no longer be permitted to host international students. Harvard, again, sued to block the order, noting that “[w]ith the stoke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission” (para 3 of Harvard’s additional legal complaint). In her ruling, US District judge Allison Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order, freezing the ban on hosting foreign students.

            President Trump has even mused about redistributing Harvard’s research grants to fund trade schools. “What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!” Trump wrote in a recent social media post.

What explains this hostility towards universities?

            President’s Trump’s crackdown on universities is part and parcel of a larger ideological conflict. The crackdown on universities was deemed necessary because of their (presupposed) left-wing bias and commitment to ‘woke ideology.’ In his own words, American universities are “dominated by Marxist Manicas and lunatics.” According to President Trump, Harvard, in particular, “has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots, and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders.’” The scourge of ‘wokeness’, therefore, can only be properly addressed if universities are made answerable to the government and its political values. To achieve these ends, research funding – the lifeblood of any university – was weaponized in ways that seek to force universities into adopting policies more favorable to Trump’s administration.

            Trump’s comments about relocating research funding to trade schools also further underscores this larger ideological point. In doing so, Harvard – the beacon of liberal elitism – is juxtaposed against the ‘salt of the earth’ blue collar image of trade schools. (Though, the persuasiveness of this imagery is undermined when we recall that much of the funding stripped from Harvard was earmarked for various forms of highly specialized biomedical research that is notundertaken at trade schools.)

What now?

            Regardless of one’s ideological perspective, Trump’s ‘war on universities’ raises a number of questions that merit serious thought and discussion: what is the continued socio-political and economic role of the university? What sort of relationship, if any, should universities have with governments? What place should ‘academic freedom’ hold in our society? And is obtaining a university degree even a worthwhile pursuit for the majority of the population, in light of the associated financial costs?

            While I do not have answers to these complicated questions, I do know that I am deeply uncomfortable with the leveraging of research funding to undercut academic freedom and suppress political dissent on university campuses. And so, if it is a choice between doing nothing or openly vocalizing my support for academic freedom and those fighting to preserve it, I choose to throw each of my graduation caps in with the so-called ‘maniacs and lunatics’ at Harvard.