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    I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi

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    Dear Acting President Shipman,I am writing you an open letter since you have seen fit to communicate the recent decisions of the board of trustees and the administration in a similar fashion.These decisions, taken in close collaboration with the Trump administration, have made it impossible for me to teach modern Middle East history, the field of my scholarship and teaching for more than 50 years, 23 of them at Columbia. Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer”, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June.Specifically, it is impossible to teach this course (and much else) in light of Columbia’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews. Citing its potential chilling effect, a co-author of the IHRA definition, Professor Kenneth Stern, has repudiated its current uses. Yet Columbia has announced that it will serve as a guide in disciplinary proceedings.Under this definition of antisemitism, which absurdly conflates criticism of a nation-state, Israel, and a political ideology, Zionism, with the ancient evil of Jew-hatred, it is impossible with any honesty to teach about topics such as the history of the creation of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, culminating in the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza with the connivance and support of the US and much of western Europe.The Armenian genocide, the nature of the absolute monarchies and military dictatorships that blight most of the Arab world, the undemocratic theocracy in Iran, the incipient dictatorial regime in Türkiye, the fanaticism of Wahhabism: all of these are subject to detailed analysis in my course lectures and readings. However, a simple description of the discriminatory nature of Israel’s 2018 Nation State Law – which states that only the Jewish people have the right of self-determination in Israel, half of whose subjects are Palestinian – or of the apartheid nature of its control over millions of Palestinians who have been under military occupation for 58 years would be impossible in a Middle East history course under the IHRA definition of antisemitism.It is not only faculty members’ academic freedom and freedom of speech that is infringed upon by Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s diktat. Teaching assistants would be seriously constrained in leading discussion sections, as would students in their questions and discussions, by the constant fear that informers would snitch on them to the fearsome apparatus that Columbia has erected to punish speech critical of Israel, and to crack down on alleged discrimination – which at this moment in history almost invariably amounts simply to opposition to this genocide. Scores of students and many faculty members have been subjected to these kangaroo courts, students such as Mahmoud Khalil have been snatched from their university housing, and Columbia has now promised to render this repressive system even more draconian and opaque.You have stated that no “red lines” have been crossed by these decisions. However, Columbia has appointed a vice-provost initially tasked with surveilling Middle Eastern studies, and it has ordained that faculty and staff must submit to “trainings” on antisemitism from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, for whom virtually any critique of Zionism or Israel is antisemitic, and Project Shema, whose trainings link many anti-Zionist critiques to antisemitism. It has accepted an “independent” monitor of “compliance” of faculty and student behavior from a firm that in June 2025 hosted an event in honor of Israel. According to Columbia’s agreement with the Trump administration, this “Monitor will have timely access to interview all Agreement-related individuals, and visit all Agreement-related facilities, trainings, transcripts of Agreement-related meetings and disciplinary hearings, and reviews”. Classrooms are pointedly NOT excluded from possible visits from these external non academics.The idea that the teaching, syllabuses and scholarship of some of the most prominent academics in their fields should be vetted by such a vice-provost, such “trainers” or an outside monitor from such a firm is abhorrent. It constitutes the antithesis of the academic freedom that you have disingenuously claimed will not be infringed by this shameful capitulation to the anti-intellectual forces animating the Trump administration.I regret deeply that Columbia’s decisions have obliged me to deprive the nearly 300 students who have registered for this popular course – as many hundreds of others have done for more than two decades – of the chance to learn about the history of the modern Middle East this fall. Although I cannot do anything to compensate them fully for depriving them of the opportunity to take this course, I am planning to offer a public lecture series in New York focused on parts of this course that will be streamed and available for later viewing. Proceeds, if any, will go to Gaza’s universities, every one of which has been destroyed by Israel with US munitions, a war crime about which neither Columbia nor any other US university has seen fit to say a single word.Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an anti-university, a gated security zone with electronic entry controls, a place of fear and loathing, where faculty and students are told from on high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions. Disgracefully, all of this is being done to cover up one of the greatest crimes of this century, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia’s leadership is now fully complicit. – Rashid Khalidi

    Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine More

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      Brown University reaches deal with Trump administration to restore $50m in funds

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      Brown University has reached an agreement with the Trump administration that will reinstate nearly $50m in research funding and close several federal investigations into the institution, university president Christina Paxson announced in a campus-wide email on Wednesday.The settlement follows the Trump administration’s threat in April to freeze $510m in federal support to Brown. This makes Brown the third Ivy League school to reach a resolution with the federal government this month.Under the terms of the agreement, Brown will commit to nondiscrimination in both admissions and campus programs, and will grant federal officials access to its admissions data. The arrangement brings to an end investigations led by the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education and Justice.A statement from the institution said that the “voluntary agreement will reinstate payments for active research grants and restore Brown’s ability to compete for new federal grants and contracts, while also meeting the core imperative of preserving the ability for our students and scholars – both domestic and international – to teach and learn without government intrusion”.The agreement between Brown and Trump does not require the university to admit any wrongdoing. And unlike Columbia University, which agreed to pay a $200m settlement, Brown’s deal does not involve any financial penalty. The email stated that “the government does not have the authority to dictate teaching, learning and academic speech”.The education secretary, Linda McMahon, had previously described the Columbia settlement as a “roadmap”, predicting it would “ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come”.In addition to a pledge to “reaffirm compliance with nondiscrimination laws” in admissions and programs, the deal also prevents Brown from administering gender-affirming surgeries to minors or prescribing puberty blockers.The university has also agreed to implement the Trump administration’s definitions of male and female (as outlined in a January executive order) for women’s athletics, student programs, campus facilities and housing. More

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      US university leaders challenge campus antisemitism claims in House hearing

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      Rich Lyons, the chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, challenged US House Republicans on Tuesday as they questioned him and leaders of Georgetown University and the City University of New York in the latest hearing on antisemitism in higher education.The committee accused the schools of failing to respond adequately to allegations of bias or discrimination; however, the university leaders said that disciplinary action had been taken where appropriate and stressed the importance of protecting free speech.Lyons pushed back on the suggestion that antisemitism was more present on college campuses than anywhere else.“If somebody is expressing pro-Palestinian beliefs, that’s not necessarily antisemitic,” he said.Lyons, who has just completed his first year as chancellor, is also the first UC leader to face the House committee during the Trump presidency. In his opening remarks, he defended the campus’ commitment to free speech.“As a public institution, Berkeley has a solemn obligation to protect the quintessential American value of free speech,” Lyons said. “This obligation does not prevent us, let me repeat, does not prevent us from confronting harassment and discrimination in all its forms, including antisemitism.”The hearing was the ninth in a series Republicans have held to scrutinize university leadership over allegations of antisemitism on campuses after a wave of protests over Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, which has killed more than 60,000 people, in retaliation to Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. Widely criticized testimony before the committee by the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University in 2023 contributed to their resignations.At Tuesday’s hearing, Democrats blasted Republican committee members for their focus on antisemitism while not speaking on the dismantling of the education department, which is tasked with investigating antisemitism and other civil rights violations in schools.“They have turned this hearing room into a kangaroo court, where they spend our time litigating a predetermined outcome to do nothing, actually, to help Jewish students, just make public theater out of legitimate pain,” said the California representative Mark Takano.Republicans said university leaders have allowed campus antisemitism to run unchecked.“Universities can choose to hire antisemitic faculty, welcome students with a history of antisemitism, accept certain foreign funding, and let the behavior of antisemitic unions go unchecked,” Tim Walberg, a Michigan representative and committee chair, said in his opening statements. “But we will see today they do so at their own risk.”The hearing was periodically interrupted by protesters, who shouted pro-Palestinian slogans before being removed by Capitol police. Randy Fine, a Florida representative, berated the college presidents and said they were responsible because of the attitudes they had permitted on their campuses.Republicans pressed the three college leaders on whether they had disciplined or fired faculty and employees for behavior they said was antisemitic. Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative of New York, pressed the CUNY chancellor, Félix Matos Rodríguez, on the employment of a law professor who worked on the legal defense of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist the Trump administration attempted to deport over his role in protests at Columbia University.Stefanik pushed Matos Rodríguez to answer whether the professor should be fired. Without responding directly, Matos Rodríguez defended CUNY and said antisemitism had no place at the school. He said any student or employee who broke CUNY rules would be investigated.University leaders also emphasized the importance of free speech on campuses for students and faculty.Robert Groves, the interim president at Georgetown, said that as a Jesuit university, fostering interfaith dialogue and understanding was a key part of the school’s mission. He said the university has not experienced any encampments or physical violence since the Hamas attack in October 2023.“Given our Jesuit values, we expose students to different viewpoints on the Middle East,” Groves said. “In addition to speakers on Gaza, we’ve hosted IDF soldiers, families of Israelis and Palestinians who’ve lost their lives. US families of US hostages in Gaza. Georgetown is not perfect, and as events evolve, we’ve had to clarify rules of student behavior.”Lyons, as well, said his campus has “more work to do” to prevent antisemitism.“I am the first to say that we have more work to do. Berkeley, like our nation, has not been immune to the disturbing rise in antisemitism. And as a public university, we have a solemn obligation to protect our community from discrimination and harassment, while also upholding the first amendment right to free speech,” he said. More

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      Trump sent ‘explicit’ threat to cut funds from University of Virginia, senator says

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      The University of Virginia (UVA) received “explicit” notification from the Trump administration that the school would endure cuts to university jobs, research funding and student aid as well as visas if the institution’s president, Jim Ryan, did not resign, according to a US senator.During an interview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator for Virginia, defended Ryan – who had championed diversity policies that the president opposes – and predicted that Donald Trump will similarly target other universities.Warner said he understood that the former UVA president was told that if he “tried to fight back, hundreds of employees would lose jobs, researchers would lose funding, and hundreds of students could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld”.“There was indication that they received the letter that if he didn’t resign on a day last week, by 5 o’clock, all these cuts would take place,” Warner added. He also said he believes this to be the “most outrageous action” that the Trump administration has taken on education since it retook office in January.Ryan resigned from his position as UVA president on Friday. He was facing political pressure from Washington to step aside in order to resolve a justice department investigation into UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, the New York Times reported on the same day.“I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job,” Ryan said in his resignation message to the university community. He expressed an unwillingness to risk the employment of other staff, as well as cuts to funding and financial aid for students.Ryan had a reputation for trying to make the UVA campus more diverse and encouraging students to perform community service. He had served as the university’s president since 2018.Warner criticized the administration for what he said was its overreach in education. He said federal education and justice department officials “should get their nose out of [the] University of Virginia”.“They are doing damage to our flagship university,” he remarked. “And if they can do it here, they’ll do it elsewhere.”He referred to Trump’s ongoing battles with Harvard, the US’s oldest university, including the president’s signing a proclamation to restrict foreign student visas and continued threats to cut funding over its DEI policies.“They all want to make them like Harvard,” Warner said. “End of the day, this is going to hurt our universities, chase away that world-class talent.“And, frankly, if we don’t have some level of academic freedom, then what kind of country are we?” More

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      University of Virginia president resigns under pressure from White House over DEI programs

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      The president of the University of Virginia (UVA) has resigned from his position after coming under pressure from the Trump administration over diversity efforts.James Ryan was facing political pressure from Washington to step aside in order to resolve a justice department investigation into UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing three people briefed on the matter.Ryan had a reputation for trying to make the UVA campus more diverse and encouraging students to perform community service.“I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job,” Ryan said in a message to the university reviewed by the Guardian.He added: “To do so would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld.“This was an excruciatingly difficult decision, and I am heartbroken to be leaving this way.”The apparent campaign against a prominent public sector university in the US follows Donald Trump’s agenda since returning to the White House to cancel programs and policies aimed at greater diversity, equity and inclusion in government, workplaces, and various establishments and organizations across American society.In parallel, the US president set about attacking and taking funds from elite private sector universities, with Harvard at the forefront, in an assault on the academic and research independence of higher education more broadly.The New York Times first reported late on Thursday that the justice department had demanded that Ryan step down as part of an agreement to settle a civil rights investigation into the school’s diversity practices, as Trump further erodes the government agency’s distance from the White House by enlisting its investigative powers as part of his political agenda.Ryan said in a letter, briefed to the Times by a source, that he was going to step down next year but “given the circumstances and today’s conversations” he had decided “with deep sadness” to resign now.The justice department had reportedly told UVA that the government thought it was prioritizing race-based factors during its admissions process and other aspects of student life in a way that constitutes “widespread practices throughout every component and facet of the institution”.Ryan’s removal is another example of the Trump administration using “thuggery instead of rational discourse,” Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, which represents university presidents, told the Associated Press.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is a dark day for the University of Virginia, a dark day for higher education, and it promises more of the same,” Mitchell said. “It’s clear the administration is not done and will use every tool that it can make or invent to exert its will over higher education.”In a joint statement, Virginia’s Democratic senators said it was outrageous that the Trump administration would demand Ryan’s resignation over “‘culture war’ traps.” “This is a mistake that hurts Virginia’s future,” Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine said.UVA is located in Charlottesville, and found itself in the global headlines early on in the first Trump administration when, in August 2017, hundreds of far-right demonstrators wielding torches and shouting racist slogans marched on to the historic campus ahead of a so-called Unite the Right rally in the small city, crowding towards a smaller group of counterprotesters.The subsequent rally, to try to prevent the removal of Confederate statues from a park, was massive and became very violent as neo-Nazi groups gathered and attacked counterprotesters, then later a white supremacist drove a car into such a group and killed a woman.Trump sparked uproar by blaming both sides for the violence, on the one hand and, on the other, saying: “You had people that were very fine people on both sides.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      ‘No way to invest in a career here’: US academics flee overseas to avoid Trump crackdown

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      View image in fullscreenEric Schuster was over the moon when he landed a lab assistant position in a coral reef biology lab at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO). The 23-year-old had recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nanoengineering from the University of California, San Diego, into a fiercely competitive job market. He felt like he’d struck gold.But the relentless cuts to scientific research and attacks on higher education by the Trump administration have turned what felt like a promising academic future into unstable ground.“There are several labs, both at our institution and around the US, that have essentially just sent everyone home because they have no money,” Schuster said, expressing concern not just for oceanography but for all fields of scientific research. The multi-pronged attacks have “been seriously detrimental to just about everyone”, he said.Though Schuster is grateful for his position, he is in a constant state of worry about whether it will still exist tomorrow. UCSD, which SIO is a part of, told the Guardian that the Trump administration has ended or frozen roughly $90m in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Nearly 200 other grants are facing delays. SIO researchers have noted that the “vast majority” of their funding comes from the government.Schuster has decided he’s not going to stick around to see if he will lose his job.View image in fullscreenHe’ll be starting his graduate studies this fall in France with a European University Networks (EUN) program, a transnational alliance of higher education institutions. He plans to stay outside of the US after to continue his career.“It’s a grab bag that anyone you’re talking to has had decreased funding, or lost almost all of their funding, or is having trouble continuing their funding,” he says.“That, along with the pretty pervasive and growing anti-science establishment narrative … have been strong motivators to look elsewhere,” Schuster said.Schuster is one of many budding academics reflecting what could become a significant American brain drain, sending the brightest minds in the country to flee the US and take their scholarly endeavors elsewhere. Historically, the US has attracted top talent from around the world, but the moves by the Trump administration may have reversed these conditions in record time.Research institutions are feeling the strain from funding cuts from some of the biggest grant-making bodies in the world. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds about 25% of federally backed basic research at US universities, but Trump’s proposed budget would cut over $5bn, or 57%, from its budget, chopping it from roughly $9bn down to $3.9bn. The US National Institutes of Health would lose about 40% of its budget compared to last year.But those cuts aren’t the only cause for anxiety. Nerves throughout the scholarly community are also on edge given what is widely perceived as a historic attack on academic freedom through administration assaults against universities such Columbia and Harvard University under the guise of rooting out antisemitism and diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Dozens more universities are waiting for their turn.‘The situation is just too volatile’A recent Nature survey revealed that approximately 75% of US-based scientists are contemplating relocation, with early-career researchers and PhD students particularly inclined toward opportunities in Canada, Europe and Australia.Valerio Francioni is one of them. A 32-year-old Italian citizen who moved to the US after getting his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, Francioni is now a postdoctoral research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying neuroscience.International students have faced nonstop chaos in the past few months, from visa suspensions to the attempted deportations of several students who expressed support for Palestinians. Last month, the Trump administration ordered US embassies worldwide to immediately stop scheduling visa interviews for foreign students as it prepares to implement comprehensive “social media screenings” for all international applicants.View image in fullscreen“As an international, there’s just no way that you can invest safely into a career here right now, there’s just no way to plan ahead. The situation is just too volatile to feel that you’re making a safe investment by being here,” Francioni said.A recent report from the Economist suggests that international students (and some domestic) are losing interest in American PhD programs. Searches for US PhD programs on the website FindAPhD fell 40% year on year in April, while interest from students in Europe has fallen by 50%. Data from another website, Studyportals, shows a decrease in interest for domestic PhDs among Americans, and a rise in interest for international programs compared to the previous year.Though his own visa has not been affected yet, Francioni plans to leave the US once his run at MIT is finished. He had wanted to stay in Boston – it’s a great place for people in the neurotech field, he says, and his American partner is there. But his calculus has changed in the past few months.Kristina, originally from Sweden, is grappling with the same questions. A mathematics professor at a university in the north-east US, Kristina requested that only her first name be used and her institution not be named over concerns of retaliation by the Trump administration.“Right now, I think that everyone who’s not a citizen feels that we cannot express our opinions,” Kristina said.She’s been in the US for 25 years, but does not have US citizenship. She is now debating whether to stay or leave. To her, the question is a moral one, whether to leave for safety or stay to “fight for a more democratic future”.View image in fullscreenEmmanuel Guerisoli, a French and Italian academic with a PhD in sociology and history, moved to the US in 2010 to pursue a masters in sociology. He is now finishing a postdoc at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at the New School.Guerisoli is concerned about being targeted by Ice because of discussions he has led in class on the war in Gaza. He was offered a tenure-track position at a different institution, he said, but it was quickly rescinded, which he was told was due to the Trump administration’s funding cuts.He gave up on applying to academic jobs in the US and decided to move to Argentina this summer, where the dread of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents knocking down his door will not follow him every day.“It’s not just that you’re being questioned on your political beliefs, but any type of critical or academic engagement on certain topics that go beyond the realm of just politics are being targeted,” he said.“Even if the state department renews my visa, I would be concerned about teaching courses the way I have done it in the past,” he said.Filling the voidScholars at Risk, which assists academics facing political pressure, saw this coming.“The recent policies have created a tremendous amount of anxiety,” Robert Quinn, the group’s executive director, said. He worries the loss will have ripple effects far beyond campus.“When a big economic contributor gets disrupted, that’s going to begin to affect everybody relatively quickly in those communities,” Quinn said. “Beyond that is the effect on public health. If we look at the cutting of the research pipeline, that means fundamentally cutting off access to services and medicines and treatments that affect every American who happens to get sick.”Quinn says that Scholars at Risk is working on ways to support US academics exploring foreign opportunities.Several other countries are jumping in to fill the void, and have already begun courting American academics.The European Union has pledged €500m (around $556m) over the next two years to become a prime destination for displaced scientists. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, announced $113m for a national program to bring in American researchers, and Aix-Marseille University separately announced Safe Place for Science, a three-year, $16.8m program to attract 15 American scientists working in climate, health and astrophysics.A university spokesperson previously told the Guardian that more than 60 applications have been received, 30 of them coming within the first 24 hours.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, Denmark is fast-tracking 200 positions for American researchers. In a widely shared Instagram post, the head of the Danish chamber of commerce directly invited American scientists to consider Denmark, “a place where facts still matter”.Sweden’s education minister held a roundtable of university leaders to strategize on attracting frustrated US talent, and publicly called for American scientists to relocate.Canadian institutions are following a similar path. The University Health Network in Toronto and associated foundations are investing CA$30m ($21.5m) to bring in 100 early-career scientists from the US and beyond. Meanwhile, the University of British Columbia reopened graduate applications in April specifically to accommodate interested US students.Carter Freshour, a 22-year-old US citizen, had just begun his masters program in business at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona when Trump took office.As soon as the attacks on higher education began, he dropped out of the program out of fear of the direction the country is heading. He is now in the process of moving to Madrid, where he will finish his business degree, and then plans to move to Portugal.“I don’t want to live in a country that does not abide by the laws that they have set in stone,” Freshour said. “It has deeply troubled me, the direction that the United States is going.” More

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      Trump’s war on Harvard was decades in the making. This letter proves it | Bernard Harcourt

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      On the shelf in my library, I have an autographed copy of a book written by a former Republican congressman from New York, John LeBoutillier, titled Harvard Hates America: The Odyssey of a Born-Again American. It was published in 1978, two years before LeBoutillier was elected to Congress – and decades before the Trump administration’s assault on the institution. But its message is familiar in 2025.The book is a scathing criticism of Harvard University, in large part over its supposed left-leaning professors who allegedly indoctrinate their undergraduates. Its thrust is straightforward: Harvard is America’s problem.Today, the blueprint for Donald Trump’s attack on Harvard, Columbia and other liberal arts colleges and universities can be found in another text: Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, a guide to rightwing government reform published in April 2023 by the Heritage Foundation – over a year before any encampments went up on Columbia’s campus. But the Republican ambition to subjugate Harvard and Columbia traces further back, at least to the 1970s, when it became apparent that college-educated voters favored the Democratic party.My copy of Harvard Hates America is autographed and dedicated to two constituents. And I recently stumbled on something tucked into the fold: a letter that LeBoutillier enclosed to the recipients of his gift. On House of Representatives stationery, LeBoutillier wrote:
      Long after I had graduated from Harvard and was a freshman member of Congress, I realized just how terrible some of the people educating our young are; they are not only liberals, but they use their “power” over their students to preach an anti-American leftist point of view. And this is not confined to Harvard. Indeed, this is a disease spreading throughout the academic world.
      I believe that this politicalization of education threatens this country. And, coupled with a bias so obviously evident in the media, makes it difficult for we conservatives to get our message across.
      Well, I’m going to continue to fight for our point of view and our principles.
      Enjoy the book.
      LeBoutillier was not alone in these sentiments. In a taped conversation with Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig Jr in the Oval Office on 14 December 1972, President Richard Nixon attacked university professors, claiming they were the enemy. His rhetoric was characteristically colorful: “The professors are the enemy. Professors are the enemy. Write that on the blackboard 100 times and never forget it.”Conservatives like the journalist Irving Kristol, the philosopher Allan Bloom, and Ronald Reagan’s education secretary, William Bennett, would perpetuate the criticisms of supposedly left-leaning universities in the 1980s. And there is a straight line from those attacks in the 1970s and 80s to the Trump administration.View image in fullscreenIn a speech titled “The universities are the enemy” and delivered at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, on 2 November 2021, JD Vance declared: “I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” Vance would then add, quoting Nixon: “There is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40 to 50 years ago. He said, and I quote, ‘The professors are the enemy.’”The Heritage Foundation picked up the baton in a 43-page chapter on education in the Project 2025 text. Remarkably, the Trump administration’s continuing assault on Harvard, Columbia and other universities is unfolding line-by-line, chapter and verse, from that script.So, right after a federal judge in Boston blocked the Department of Homeland Security from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, announced that the administration intended to revoke the visas of Chinese students, especially those with ties to the Chinese Communist party. On page 355 of its Mandate for Leadership, Project 2025 calls for “Confronting the Chinese Communist Party’s Influence on Higher Education.”At a press conference in the Oval Office on 30 May 2025, Trump attacked Harvard and said he would redirect the school’s grants to vocational education. “I’d like to see the money go to trade schools,” Trump said. The remark, again, came straight out of the Project 2025 playbook, which states on pages 15-16 and 319 that the federal government should prioritize “trade schools” and “career schools” over the “woke-dominated system” of universities.The Trump administration demanded that Columbia’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies program be placed “under academic receivership”. Again, straight out of the playbook. Project 2025 calls on page 356 for “wind[ing] down so-called ‘area studies’ programs at universities”.Trump signed executive orders on inauguration day banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and “gender ideology” at institutions such as universities that receive federal funding. Again, textbook material. Project 2025 argued on page 322, regarding educational institutions, that “enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory”.In fact, the first line of the chapter on education in Project 2025 says it all: “The federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist behind the attack on critical race theory and gender studies, has openly described the Republican attack on universities as a “counter-revolution” planned well before the campus protests. The Republican offensive traces back at least to the rise of the Black Lives Matter and abolition movements in the wake of the police killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, George Floyd and others. “It’s a revolution against revolution,” Rufo admitted, adding: “I think that actually we are a counter-radical force in American life that, paradoxically, has to use what many see as radical techniques.”And what the Trump administration has accomplished with its ongoing assault on Harvard and Columbia is the “prototype” of that wider counter-revolution. Rufo is explicit about this. “If you take Columbia University as really the first trial of this strategy, we’ve seen an enormous payoff,” he said. “I’d like to see that prototype industrialized and applied to all of the universities as a sector.”Given this history tracing back to the 1970s, it is puzzling why people continue to believe that the Republicans are trying to reform the universities to address antisemitism. It should be clear that their actions are instead part of a decades-long effort to humble universities for political reasons, namely to counter the trend that college-educated people tend to vote Democratic. Nixon was frank about this. That’s what made professors the enemy.On top of that, of course, there is profit and political economy. At the press conference last week, Trump admitted why he wants to shift education funding to trade schools.Encouraged by billionaire Elon Musk at his side, Trump said: “I’d like to see trade schools set up, because you could take $5bn plus hundreds of billions more, which is what is spent [on research universities], and you could have the greatest trade school system anywhere in the world. And that’s what we need to build his rockets and robots and things that he’s doing” – pointing to Musk.Trump could not have been more explicit. “We probably found our pot of gold,” Trump adds, “and that is what has been wasted at places like Harvard.”The Trump administration has seen some successes in its counter-revolution against higher education. So far, the lower federal courts have run interference. But there have been major casualties already, especially in the funding of sciences and medical research, academic integrity and autonomy, and area studies. Faculty governance at some universities has also been diminished, at some universities decimated.Anyone who is genuinely interested in understanding what the Trump administration is up to and to anticipate its next moves should return to books like Harvard Hates America and then read Project 2025’s chapter on education. It clearly explains the past four months and predicts the future – one in which the federal government will sacrifice liberal arts colleges and universities to the benefit of trade schools, faith-based institutions and military academies.The path ahead also includes, in all likelihood, eliminating the American Bar Association as an accrediting system (page 359), as well as the other actors in the “federal accreditation cartel” (pages 320 and 355); terminating the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (page 354), phasing out income-driven repayment plans (page 337), and privatizing student loans (page 340); allocating at least 40% of federal funding of education “to international business programs that teach about free markets and economics” (page 356); and a host of other radical proposals.It is time now to be honest about the decades-long history of the Republican assault on higher education. Too many of the university leaders who are negotiating with the Trump administration about campus protest are naive at best and fail to grasp the stakes of the ongoing counterrevolution – or complicit at worst. In the process, they are undermining their universities and violating their fiduciary duties to their constituents – students, alumni, faculty and staff. By capitulating based on a pretext, a feint in military terms, those leaders have sacrificed the integrity of the research enterprise and the autonomy of the academy.Liberal arts colleges and universities are a gem in the US, envied by people around the world. Their strength lies in fostering critical thought, creativity and inventiveness throughout the humanities, social sciences, and natural and applied sciences. A liberal arts education, at its best, cultivates critical thinking that challenges society’s strengths and weaknesses, and asks how to make the world more just with more freedom for everyone. Those are the true aims of higher education.

      Bernard E Harcourt is a professor of law and political science at Columbia University in New York City and a directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author most recently of “A Modern Counterrevolution” in The Ideas Letter More

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      Stop bending the knee to Trump: it’s time for anticipatory noncompliance | David Kirp

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      During the first 100-plus days of his presidency, Donald Trump has done his damnedest to remake the US in his image. Fearing Hurricane Donald, a host of universities, law firms, newspapers, public schools and Fortune 500 companies have rushed to do his bidding, bowing before he even comes calling. Other institutions cower, in hopes that they will go unnoticed.But this behavior, which social scientists call “anticipatory compliance”, smoothes the way to autocracy because it gives the Trump regime unlimited power without his having to lift a finger. Halting autocracy in its tracks demands a counter-strategy – let’s call it anticipatory noncompliance.Examples of anticipatory compliance are legion.Goodbye, academic freedom: Trump means to impose his anti-intellectual ideology on higher education. He is using unproven allegations of antisemitism and claims of discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs as an excuse to punish top-ranked private universities – initially hapless Columbia, then other schools including Harvard, Princeton, Cornell and Northwestern – by withholding billions of dollars in federal grants. My own university, the University of California, Berkeley, anticipates that it will be added to this list when Trump turns his attention to nationally renowned public universities.“Be afraid” is the message for every university – threats to withhold funds from schools that use “woke” language have prompted some that aren’t even under the gun to censor themselves, excising words like “race”, “gender”, “class” and “equity” from course titles and curriculums.Anticipatory compliance also affects the actions of public schools. Worried that, because of their alleged “wokeness”, they will lose the federal dollars that deliver extra help to those who need it most, school systems have altered their curriculum to whitewash the historical record and restrict the literature available to students. Adieu, Toni Morrison and Rosa Parks.Goodbye, free press: Disney and Meta shelled out a combined $40m to settle baseless libel lawsuits brought by Trump, and Paramount is negotiating to make Trump’s spurious 60 Minutes lawsuit disappear.On the eve of the 2024 election, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and the owner of the Washington Post, pulled an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris, to stay in Trump’s good graces. So did the Los Angeles Times, whose owner is a billionaire businessman.Goodbye, legal representation: Nine leading law firms succumbed to blackmail to get rid of the president’s executive orders that punished a few firms for displeasing him. Collectively, they agreed to provide more than $1bn worth of pro bono legal work to causes of Trump’s choosing. Now they’re being asked to defend the coal industry and tariffs, which surely isn’t what they expected.What’s more, some top-drawer firms have stopped providing pro bono work on immigration lawsuits and other hot topic issues. Instead, they are putting their talent at Trump’s disposal, neutering themselves while the White House makes mincemeat of the rule of law.Hello, toadying: To curry favor and avoid ridicule in a Trump tweet, dozens of major companies, ranging from Amazon to Pepsi, are treating the president as if he were king, reducing or abandoning their DEI programs without being specifically threatened.Those who bend the knee rationalize their actions as simply a prudent survival strategy. But that’s delusory, for the historical record shows that anticipatory compliance paves the road to autocracy. Bullies like Trump always demand more from their supplicants – more money, more abandoning principles, more loyalty-oath behavior. Anticipatory compliance feeds the beast, showing authoritarians how much they can get away with.Here’s the good news – anticipatory noncompliance is on the rise. Challenges to Trump’s unconstitutional actions have emerged in higher and K-12 education, the legal profession and the corporate world. The citizenry is now making its voice heard.Spearheaded by Harvard’s defiant pose, a growing number of colleges and universities are pushing back against Trump’s outrageous demands. A recent statement from hundreds of college administrators declared that “we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education”. Faculty senates in the Big 10 Academic Alliance crafted a “mutual defense compact”; behind the scenes, the presidents of about 10 elite private universities are deciding what red lines they won’t cross.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRather than meekly comply with Trump’s monarchical demand that public schools eliminate DEI initiatives or risk losing federal funds, 19 states have gone to court, contesting the administration’s contorted reading of civil rights law.The CEOs that scaled back their companies’ diversity programs misread the market and have suffered the consequences. Diversity is a popular goal that many investors and consumers take into account in their decisions. When Target rolled back DEI, the company had to confront a consumer boycott and a 17% stock drop. Meanwhile, corporations like Costco and Apple, which have stood firm, are on buyers’ and investors’ good guy list.Several law firms refused to cave in the face of Trump’s blackmail tactics, instead taking the administration to court. Not only is that the right thing to do; it could turn out to be the profitable course. The judges are unequivocally on their side. And when Microsoft dropped a firm that surrendered to Trump, signing on with a firm that’s taking the administration to court, it signaled that virtue may be financially rewarded.After months of quiescence, with the populace overwhelmed by the tsunami of outrages, popular opposition is emerging. On May Day, tens of thousands of demonstrators participated in nearly 1,000 anti-Trump demonstrations.Restoring democracy is no easy task, for it is infinitely easier to destroy than rebuild. It will take a years-long fight that deploys an arsenal of tactics, ranging from mass demonstrations and consumer boycotts to litigation and political organizing. It’s grueling work, but if autocracy is to be defeated there’s no option. “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” observed James Baldwin, in a 1962 New York Times article. A half-century later, that message still rings true.What’s giving me hope nowCourts have stood firm in their defense of the rule of law, pushing back against Trump’s power-grab executive orders. Americans are participating in mass demonstrations nationwide and voting for Democratic candidates in local elections. What’s more, Americans are voting with their wallets – spurred by a consumer boycott, the value of Tesla shares has plunged by close to $700bn from its peak a year ago.

      David Kirp is professor emeritus at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley More

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      Judge blocks Trump’s ban on Harvard’s foreign students from entering the US

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      A district judge in Boston has blocked the Trump administration’s ban on Harvard’s international students from entering the United States after the Ivy League university argued the move was illegal.Harvard had asked the judge, Allison Burrough, to block the ban, pending further litigation, arguing Trump had violated federal law by failing to back up his claims that the students posed a threat to national security.“The Proclamation denies thousands of Harvard’s students the right to come to this country to pursue their education and follow their dreams, and it denies Harvard the right to teach them. Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the school said in a filing to the judge.The filing also argued that the national security argument was flawed as the ban did not stop the same people from entering the country, it only barred them from entering to attend Harvard.Harvard amended its earlier lawsuit, which it had filed amid a broader dispute with the Republican president, to challenge the ban, which Trump issued on Wednesday in a proclamation.White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson earlier called Harvard “a hotbed of anti-American, antisemitic, pro-terrorist agitators”, claims that the school has previously denied.“Harvard’s behavior has jeopardized the integrity of the entire US student and exchange visitor visa system and risks compromising national security. Now it must face the consequences of its actions,” Jackson said in a statement.The suspension was intended to be initially for six months but can be extended. Trump’s proclamation also directs the state department to consider revoking academic or exchange visas of any current Harvard students who meet his proclamation’s criteria.The Trump administration has launched a multifront attack on the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges.Harvard argues the administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.Trump’s directive came a week after Burroughs announced she would issue a broad injunction blocking the administration from revoking Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, who make up about a quarter of its student body.Harvard said in Thursday’s court filing that the proclamation was “a patent effort to do an end-run around this Court’s order”.The university sued after the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, announced on 22 May that her department was immediately revoking Harvard’s student and exchange visitor program certification, which allows it to enrol foreign students.Noem’s action was temporarily blocked almost immediately by Burroughs. On the eve of a hearing before her last week, the department changed course and said it would instead challenge Harvard’s certification through a lengthier administrative process.Wednesday’s two-page directive from Trump said Harvard had “demonstrated a history of concerning foreign ties and radicalism” and had “extensive entanglements with foreign adversaries”, including China.It said Harvard had seen a “drastic rise in crime in recent years while failing to discipline at least some categories of conduct violations on campus”, and had failed to provide sufficient information to the homeland security department about foreign students’ “known illegal or dangerous activities”.The school in Thursday’s court filing said those claims were unsubstantiated. More