Marble Falls Not having made it through higher education except in starts and stops over a couple of years, I can’t pretend to be an expert in all of the ends and outs of the academy, as understood in the United States. Along with most Americans, though, I do understand the institutional claims of independence from state control and exercise of academic freedom. Under Trump II, both are either endangered or dead, maybe along with free speech and other monuments to our past and principles.
Academic freedom in theory still exists, if allowed by some institutions. This would be the privilege of scholars to study as they choose, write as they wish, and engage in independent research pursuits and classroom proceedings. Such freedom is being proven to be contingent at this point on the paymaster. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is just a softer and gentler salt mine. Teachers and scholars are certainly more privileged and esteemed than other miners, but they are workers at the end of the day who are looking for a pay check and only protected in their professions based on the ways and means of their bosses in the university.
The Trump government is now reminding universities, both high and low on the academic totem pole, that federal grants and largesse come with newer and harsher conditions, and they had best toe the line. University administrators can read the papers, as easily as the rest of us, so they knew that the Musk chainsaw contract cancelling hordes would impact them as well as federal agencies. Nonetheless, the recession of $400 million in grants to Columbia University, a New York-based bastion of the Ivy League, was more like a hammer to the head, than a shot across the bow. The administration through several of its agencies has sent a letter to Columbia mandating changes in its admissions and internal discipline procedures. The Justice Department has a hit list of 10 other top universities that it is now investigating. The Education Department sent similar letters to another 60 institutions.
In some cases, the point of the federal assault is eliminating any vestiges of diversity, equity, and inclusion or DEI programs. Most institutions have tripped over themselves in off-loading such programs, while the government has shut off funding and staffing to support DEI as well. The cover for other intrusions on the independence of the academy is a claim by the state that they are trying to root out disparate treatment for students based on antisemitism. This is obviously false. The state can’t privilege one kind of alleged discrimination over another under equal protection. It would be impossible to believe that this across the board attack on higher education is not premised on the tired conservative talking point that professors and universities are all brainwashing students with liberal and leftwing ideologies. To quote a former ACORN leader, these are lies in the skin of reasons.
If these academic ideals were so cherished, why are they collapsing so quickly? None of us may have realized how dependent higher education has become on the government. This government, unlike many in the past, wants a pound of flesh for its money and cares not a bit for any pretense about independence or academic freedom. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has announced layoffs of 2000 employees. Others will follow.
Right-wingers now, much like the ‘60s, abhor the existence of demonstrations on college campuses, whether about war or Gaza or race or whatever. This assault is also payback to curtail speech and protests. The chilling arrest and attempted deportation of a Palestinian protestor at Columbia last year who had a green card, is married to an American, and had been cleared of charges and dismissal by Columbia through its internal disciplinary system and reinstated, yet has now seen the State Department revoke his status in retaliation, is an outrageous breach of basic rights under the constitution.
Tragically, we will see more of this, because universities, Columbia first among others, are folding like a cheap suit. What we decried, as autocrats in Hungary and Nicaragua shut down and arrested people in universities that disagreed with the state, we are now seeing in action in America.
I read the pleas in Science magazine and elsewhere about the harm these cutbacks are doing to future research and development in the US across the board, but, as we now see, many of the institutions depend on foreign students and federal grants in order to balance their books. The state is now calling in its chips, and for too many of these institutions the money is more important than any notions of independence or academic freedom.