American Higher Education is not the enemy

Classic authoritarian scapegoat

It’s hard to be in higher education these days. If you read the news, it’s easy to see why. The American higher education system, an envy of the world since WW II that has attracted the best and the brightest from around the globe, has become a scapegoat in the press. Though the assault on higher education is new to the American experience, much of the anti-academic rhetoric cascading through the news ecosystem is an all-too predictable symptom of authoritarian thinking that we have seen countless times in other countries.

For authoritarians, any institution that does not serve the leader or the party is a threat that must be silenced or brought to heal. It explains why the Trump administration is trying to defund and defang public media, as we discussed with Victor Pickard. Vice President JD Vance, whose own higher education journey – like so many others – helped him climb the ladder to success, stated it plainly when he said that the governance he had in mind could not be accomplished if these free-thinking institutions were allowed to continue unchecked. Endorsing the effective targeting of free democratic inquiry in higher education by the authoritarian leader Viktor Orban in Hungary, he stated, “We have to aggressively attack the Universities in this country. Professors are the enemy.”

Authoritarians, by definition, use political power to define what is true and their power is threatened by the role universities play as engines of knowledge and democratic pluralism. Whether by Orban, Putin, Mao or Mussolini, universities have been a favorite target of would-be strongmen. And make no mistake, attacking and weakening institutions that promote free thinking is part of the plan. Like a free press, institutions of Higher Education are crucial for liberal democracy, so naturally authoritarians see both as enemies. And, as Vance suggested, the Trump administration is showing a commitment to being “really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power.”

Globally valued

There is nothing about attacking American universities that makes America great. If you wanted to diminish American influence in the world, you couldn’t pick a better target. America has around 70% of the top 25 universities global universities. American universities have spurred innovation and scientific discovery, creating untold economic growth and social progress around the world. That’s why higher education is one of our best exports, bringing in some 44 billion dollars a year from international students. For those who come here to study and take what they learn back home, the return on investment is worth it. In this way, American universities have helped spread the principle of free democratic inquiry that goes hand in hand with American higher education throughout the world. Yet never in American life have we experienced this kind of wholesale assault on our higher education system.

The attack on American universities

Since March, the Trump administration has been squeezing universities, illegally impounding billions of dollars already allocated for basic ongoing research, most apolitical knowledge like cancer research which serves the public good. It has flooded the news media ecosystem with bad faith messaging to justify its assault on a vibrant system of colleges and universities that since the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower has partnered with the federal government to spur knowledge and economic growth. Eisenhower knew that investment in the higher education system was crucial for national success. Yet we are now abandoning that national commitment to higher education, one that for the last 70 years has built a more inclusive society, allowed students like JD Vance to rise out of poverty, and made America the envy of the world.

The Trump administration first began by attacking the Ivy League institutions, which were easy political targets that appealed to the anti-elitism of his populist fans. They set the media agenda by flooding the zone with propaganda to frame their anti-democratic actions as strong leadership, a tendency we discussed with Gil Duran earlier this season. Trump falsely claimed Harvard fostered antisemitism and was run by “leftists and dopes” who teach “Hate and Stupidity.” Right Wing media and news influencers amplified these claims and frames. Much of the administration’s rhetoric echoed language that has been deployed in the disinformation campaign against American higher education frame. In episode 308, The Campus Free Speech Panic: Who’s Fueling the Misinformation Machine?, we talked with Brad Vivian about this ongoing assault on higher education in the news.

On April 11, the administration threatened to withhold funding to university unless they promised to stop researching and teaching topics that the administration disliked. It framed this attack against free inquiry at Harvard and other institutions of higher education in the media as a defense of “free speech” from the undefined specter of “woke.” Why? Because universities have actively promoted diversity, inclusivity and equality as core values, even while welcoming dissent. And for good reason.

Commitment to academic freedom

We at Penn State, like other university communities, are committed to research and teaching that draws from the vast range of experiences in our society in the service of solving the problems we face as a democracy. We think this serves the public good. Harvard thinks so too and sued the administration for violating its First Amendment rights, because the American Constitution does not allow the government to dictate what counts as knowledge and what teachers can teach.

On May 22, after the administration revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, Harvard sued again, because this “arbitrary, irrational, and unilateral executive action” action by the government would infringe on its First Amendment rights exceed its authority. A judge blocked the administration with a restraining order. The administration responded with more coercive threats, including the threat to end its tax-exempt status. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested that the department could weaponize the student-visa system against other colleges if they did not follow the administration’s agenda. “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”

Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently went on CNBC to justify the administration using financial coercion to force institutions of higher education to toe the line, stating “Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they’re abiding by the laws and in synch with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish.” Yet what McMahon is describing here is a system of education whose priorities would be dictated of coercion, which is diametrically opposed to the freedom of inquiry that makes our vibrant higher education system work. McMahon, who made her millions as CEO of a professional wrestling media monopoly – the WWE – known for creating fake spectacle that harmed children by promoting violence and modeling toxic behavior is a strange choice to run the Department of Education. Thus far, her actions have seemed very much like sabotage by design and her spin about why the Trump administration is attacking higher education is as fake as professional wrestling.

At the end of May, after Harvard University declared that it would once again fight the Trump administration in defense of academic freedom, the administration announced its intentions to defy the courts and ruthlessly use its power to block the world’s best and brightest from coming to study at American universities. The regime has been using its power to punish universities through its international students since March, using any dissenting speech it found on social media as a pretext for invalidating visas. Hundreds of students were deported. Ruymeysa Öztürk, a Turkish a student at Tufts who had come to pursue a PhD in Child Study and Human Development, was literally abducted and imprisoned for co-writing an op-ed in the student newspaper. The administration never said what law she had violated and the ACLU worked with her lawyers to free her after six weeks in jail because her detention had been illegal. Yet, even though the truth is that all legal residents are guaranteed habeas corpus and due process under the law, the regime has decided to use its visa power over foreign students as coercive leverage over institutions of higher education.

Excessive use of authority with brutal ramifications

As you are reading this, the regime has paused all interviews for student and scholar visas to prepare for aggressive social-media surveillance to screen out those whose views the regime disapproves of, a chilling development for those who believe in free speech. On May 29, the regime announced it was targeting Chinese students, the second largest group of international students. Little justification for any of this has been given and the financial impact to the American higher education system will be pointlessly brutal. Harvard has, once again, sued the Trump regime for failing to follow proper regulatory processes, exceeding its authority, and violating the university’s First Amendment rights. As courts across the country have intervened to stop the regime from overstepping its authority, the court agreed that the administration’s actions were illegal; but the fiscal coercion now threatens to impact the thousands of institutions in the American Higher Education system that do not have a 50-billion-dollar endowment to fight back. The result will job losses and the weakening of a one of America’s greatest assets. It is utterly senseless sabotage.

Right now, there are more than 1.1 million international students in America. Without international students, one study suggests that undergraduate enrollment in American higher education could shrink by 5 million over the next 15 years. In Pennsylvania, over 50 thousand international students study at our colleges and universities. At Penn State alone, around 9 thousand of international students come to learn from some of the best scholars and scientists in the world. Through no fault of their own, their future is now unclear.

Potential for a “brain drain”

Ironically, American higher education is now in danger of experiencing the inverse of the dynamic that caused the brain drain away from the German higher education system to our favor in the 1930s. As European academics escaped Fascism in search of academic freedom in America, our universities profited mightily. Now, if the authoritarian assault on higher education remains a feature of Trump’s cultural revolution moment, we may be in danger of reversing things irreparably. There only clear rationale for this is consolidation of power, or Gleichschaltung. As journalist Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes said in his brave commencement address at Wake Forest University last week, “Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power. First, make the truth-seekers live in fear.” As we discuss with Brad Vivian, because the Trump administration’s sabotage of Higher Education makes little sense in service of the public good, it is being justified through a bad faith misinformation campaign in the news.

Defending our values

We here at the News Literacy Initiative believe that academic freedom – like freedom of the press - serves the public good, and that there cannot be freedom when coercion and fear dictate what and how we research and teach. We will continue to exercise our freedom of speech to defend those values.