Joseph Stalin

Targeting higher education is an essential tool in the autocratic playbook. Across the world, authoritarian leaders are targeting universities and professors to silence critical thinking and crush academic freedom.Threats to higher education in the U.S. resemble free speech and academic freedom challenges faced by universities in autocracies globally.

We are witnessing an unprecedented effort to target, intimidate, and exert greater control over U.S. higher education institutions. The Republican Trump administration has been using federal money as leverage to force its agenda on colleges. Project 2025 and a growing number of conservatives believe they must use the government to rein in the radicalization and corruption of the “woke elites” distributed in civil society, and all levels of government. American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Frederick Hess’s suggestion in National Review: “Institutions that apply ideological litmus tests—such as mandatory DEI statements for admission, hiring, or academic promotion—should be stripped of state subsidies and rendered ineligible for taxpayer-funded financial aid or student loans.”

The Republican Trump administration is using the government’s power to compel compliance with its views. Can a president determine what universities teach, whom they employ, how they admit people and what government largess they deserve as a result?

Harvard University

President Donald Trump acted to strip billions of dollars in government funding for Harvard’s education programs .The White House says it wants to send a message. It cites concerns from Jews on campus who said they were harassed during protests over the Gaza war. It says Harvard’s hiring and admissions discriminate against conservatives, especially white men with traditional views about gender. It says it wants to protect civil rights and free speech. The administration demanded extensive information about international students, staff payroll and protests. Then it tried to block nearly all foreign students from entering the country to attend Harvard. The Justice Department opened an investigation into the student-run Harvard Law Review.

Funding cuts and freezes
The administration cut $2.2 billion in multiyear research grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard, mostly from the National Institutes of Health.
It froze roughly 500 N.I.H. grants for Harvard-affiliated institutions, such as Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
It disqualified Harvard from future federal grants.
The administration terminated grants worth $450 million from eight federal agencies, saying the school was a “breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination.” It did not identify the agencies involved.

Columbia University

The Republican Trump Administration canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University, HHS alleged that Columbia violated Title VI, which prohibits those receiving federal financial assistance from discriminating in its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, or national origin — including discrimination against individuals based on their actual or perceived Israeli or Jewish identity or ancestry. It comes after recent executive orders barring diversity, equity and inclusion programs at all educational institutions that receive federal funds.

University of California

The Justice Dept. opened an inquiry into University of California hiring practices. The Trump administration has targeted the state system as part of its broad effort to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and programs.

Duke University

The Republican Trump administration froze $108 million dollars in funds to Duke University. The university was accused of racial discrimination in its health care system, the latest high-profile school targeted and stripped of federal funding. Duke University is the latest high-profile school, from Columbia University to Harvard, that the Trump administration has targeted and stripped of a large amount of federal funding, based on vague accusations that the university abets antisemitism or supports diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The move comes amid a wider pressure campaign from the Trump administration to shift the ideological tilt of American higher education.

University of California LA

The Republican Trump Administration is freezing over $300 Million for UCLA. They accuse the university of adhering to “illegal affirmative action” policies, failing to do enough to combat antisemitism on campus and discriminating against women by allowing the participation of transgender athletes.

University of Virginia

The president of the University of Virginia, James E. Ryan, resigned in June, chased out by the Trump administration and a conservative alumni group known as the Jefferson Council, which has board connections.

George Mason University

The president of George Mason University, Gregory N. Washington, is facing an attack from the Trump administration and the university’s highly partisan board, appointed by the Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin.

Other Targeted Universities

The government suspended about $175 million in federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania over a transgender swimmer who previously competed for the school. The Education Department investigated University of Pennsylvania as part of the administration’s broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls and women’s sports.

It halted dozens of research grants at Princeton. It froze more than $1 billion of Cornell University’s federal funding as it investigated allegations of civil rights violations. Northwestern University saw a halt of $790 million.

Trump has said colleges that don’t get in line with his administration’s priorities, like eliminating research related to being transgender or having diversity and inclusion programs may also lose federal funding. On Friday, his administration announced investigations into 50 universities as part of this DEI crackdown. The majority of those colleges, which include schools like the University of Kansas and the University of Utah – they partnered with a small nonprofit called The PhD Project that helps students from underrepresented groups earn doctoral degrees in business. The Education Department alleges the program limits eligibility based on race, and so colleges involved are engaging in, quote, “race-exclusionary practices.”

The Small Print of the Recent Settlements

Both Columbia and Brown promised to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle claims of violations of federal anti-discrimination laws, including accusations that they had tolerated antisemitism. As part of the settlements struck with two Ivy League universities in recent weeks, the Trump administration will gain access to the standardized test scores and grade point averages of all applicants, including information about their race, a measure that could profoundly alter competitive college admissions.

The release of such data has been on the wish list of conservatives who are searching for evidence that universities are dodging a 2023 Supreme Court decision barring the consideration of race in college admissions, and will probably be sought in the future from many more of them.

But college officials and experts who support using factors beyond test scores worry that the government — or private groups or individuals — will use the data to file new discrimination charges against universities and threaten their federal funding. The additional scrutiny is likely to resonate in admissions offices nationwide. It could cause some universities to reconsider techniques like recruitment efforts focused on high schools whose students are predominantly people of color, or accepting students who have outstanding qualifications in some areas but subpar test scores, even if they believe such actions are legal. Lastly, Trumps deals with top colleges may give rich applicants a bigger edge.

The Effect of The Cuts

Despite huge endowments Northwestern, Stanford, Columbia, Boston University, USC, Harvard and Brown are anticipating cuts this fall.

The Trump administration’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development hit Johns Hopkins University with $800 million in canceled funding, prompting the Baltimore-based institution to shut down numerous international programs and lay off 2,222 employees earlier this year.

There were hundreds of buyouts at Duke University. Duke officials announced the buyouts before the Trump administration froze $108 million in federal grants and contracts and opened investigations into alleged racial discrimination, accusing the university of emphasizing diversity over merit in hiring, admissions and other practices.

Legal Responses to date

Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Barring Harvard’s International Students

Harvard files lawsuit against Trump Administration.

Eighteen research colleges are seeking to formally support Harvard University’s legal challenge against the Trump administration for cutting or freezing roughly $2.8 billion of the institution’s grants and contracts.

The American Association of University Professors and others argue in a new lawsuit that the executive orders violate the Constitution.

Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda

The Trump administration’s sweeping policy changes have been resisted with a wave of lawsuits. Hundreds have been filed by state attorneys and media organizations, physicians and nonprofits, migrants, international students, law firms and unions. Read about them here.

What You Can Do

My original post Determined to be free will link you to the various organizations you can join or support, in addition to contacting your Congressional and Senate representatives. Register for your college alumni association to see what your university is facing and what you can do to help.

Join Blue Sky, a social media platform designed as an alternative to X . You can follow your representatives and numerous organizations including Indivisible. They just posted a letter you can send to Harvard as an alumni, employee or public citizen.

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