Academia vs Trump is a high stakes ideology war

The administration is seeking to weaponise grants and funds to force universities to align with its thinking

The former US secretary of State and national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, is said to have remarked that “the reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small”. As the gloves come off in a monumental face-off between the administration of US President Donald Trump and American universities over sensitive political issues such as anti-Semitism, racism, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) rights and identity, the stakes are actually high and the ramifications go beyond academic squabbles within the ivory tower. This tussle is a marker of an ideological war in a polarised era and a litmus test of balance in knowledge production.

Harvard, the richest university on earth with its own independent endowment of more than $50 billion, might resist in spite of the sudden loss of $2.2 billion in federal grants, but not every US university can afford to lose government funds (REUTERS)

That Trump would go after universities through massive funding cuts was obvious since his re-election campaign, when he slammed them as “Marxist maniacs and lunatics” spreading anti-Israel and anti-conservative views on college campuses. As most of the academe in the US tends to fall into the Left-liberal mould due to inherent inclinations of intellectuals toward progressive values and critical thinking, universities have frequently been attacked by Trump’s far-Right populists for perpetuating “liberal intolerance”, “anti-nationalistic bias” and “woke culture”.

Facts do bear out allegations from the Trump camp that US academia is a hotbed of liberalism. A survey conducted in the elite Harvard University in 2024 revealed that over 80% of faculty members proclaimed to be “liberal” or “very liberal”, while barely 1% of them said they were “conservative”. There may not be crude pressure on students to conform to professorial liberal biases, but it is noteworthy that the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that 40% of conservative students on US campuses said they had to self-censor themselves to avoid being cornered on hot button political topics, while only 16% of liberal students did so.

The Trump administration’s gripe that US universities like Harvard lack “viewpoint diversity” and are under “ideological capture” are debatable. But it is obvious why the Right-wing wants to fundamentally reorder the academe using the stick of government funding cuts. With an estimated annual research budget worth $60 billion pouring into universities from the federal government, Trump aims to tame the recipients by striking at their bottom lines.

Since one Ivy League biggie, Columbia University, has conceded to some of the Trump administration’s demands after facing a $400 million funding cut, the conservative war to reshape or rebalance American academia is likely to take heart and intensify further. Harvard, the richest university on earth with its own independent endowment of more than $50 billion, might resist in spite of the sudden loss of $2.2 billion in federal grants, but not every US university can afford to lose government funds that support a wide range of programmes and initiatives.

During a recent visit to the US, I found a palpable nervousness floating in the air in most campuses as to how Trump might punish them and what compromises they have to make to tide over the next four years. Despite quiet self-confidence in their innate abilities to somehow survive the Trump storm, university leaders are getting into huddles to pragmatically “work it out”.

While liberals have lambasted Trump’s ideologically intrusive and aggressive policies toward higher education as unprecedented assaults on academic freedom, it is worth recalling earlier eras when colleges came under intense scrutiny and encroachment from Right-wing quarters. During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the McCarthyist witch-hunt led to at least 100 professors being fired and blacklisted for communist leanings. University managements at that time investigated what was being taught in classrooms, and scholars were forced to redo their course curricula to avoid being drawn into the anti-communist dragnet.

The period of the George W Bush administration’s “war on terror” (2001 to 2008) also witnessed heightened scrutiny by intelligence agencies of university professors for dissenting views against the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and for participating in social movements that challenged the foreign policies of the government. Bush’s Patriot Act had a particularly chilling effect on Left-liberals, who feared that what they borrowed from libraries and what they said in classrooms could end up costing their jobs and their civil liberties.

Looking back at those moments of crisis and friction between political powers that be and the universities, it is clear that the latter were mauled and had to adjust to an extent, but they ultimately waded out of trouble. Even though Trump and his zealous enforcers are seeking a revolutionary overhaul of American academia, the checks and balances in the American polity ensure that there is no chance of a fascist-like outcome where the State bluntly crushes and remakes universities as per its preference. As with many other institutions that are currently in the line of fire in the US, American universities have ultimate recourse to courts and to private philanthropy, which is unlikely to dry up because the government is turning off the funding tap.

This round of ideological jostling is not necessarily a unique or game-changing one, especially if Trump is succeeded by a Democrat in 2029. Still, the universities have been bruised and Trump could take credit for at least denting, if not reversing, the one-sided liberal trajectory that has been the hallmark of US academia for decades.

Sreeram Chaulia is dean, Jindal School of International Affairs. The views expressed are personal