The Administration's War on Universities
Withholding funds for alleged wrongs goes both ways
No newsletter on Friday. I’m heading to Arlington, VA for the annual meeting of the Religion News Association early tomorrow. I’ll write an update next week.
Higher Education is one of the key targets of the second Trump Administration. This has followed at least four strategies: eliminating grant funding, attacking imagined DEI initiatives, weakening the major accrediting bodies, and punishing institutions for alleged antisemitism. That’s not even counting the uncertainty created by talk of dismantling the Department of Education or rewriting American history.
The elimination (or delay) in grant funding has major consequences. Staffing supported by those grants will be eliminated. Long-term research agendas will be disrupted. Grad admissions will be severely curtailed. Most significantly, the loss of the research — much of which supports the kinds of basic science that solves real-life problems — means that beneficiaries of the research outcomes will be harmed.
The attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion continues a large-scale misunderstanding of those programs. The administration sees them as set-aside programs that favor non-white, non-male populations. There has been a massive overreach with regard to the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admission decision. Where that decision had to do with admission criteria, the administration’s cheerleaders have turned this into a blanket ban on all diversity programs (which I should note, many states have done).
The attack on the major accrediting agencies (Higher Learning, Middle States, New England, Northwest, Western, and Southern) is based on assumptions that the agencies have not held institutions accountable, are too prescriptive, and force institutions into the DEI space. As I’ve written before, I have been a peer reviewer in three of the accreditation bodies. None of these claims reflect what actually happens in an accreditation review.
It is the fourth line of attack that I want to spend some time on today. Inside Higher Ed reported today on the makeup on the administration’s Antisemitism Task Force.
Neither the Justice nor Education Departments have explicitly said who is serving on the task force, but news releases, letters and lawsuits offer some hints. Beyond Trump’s cabinet members, Inside Higher Ed has identified five members of the group. Their experience in college and university oversight is limited, and only some have direct personal ties to Judaism and antisemitic discrimination, a review of their backgrounds shows.
In addition to the Attorney General and the Secretaries of Education and HHS, the initial membership includes counsels for Civil Rights and HHS and the acting head of the General Services Administration. Others will be added over time.
They are charged with discovering antisemitism claims related to the campus protests at major universities following the beginning of the Gazan War. Columbia has already complied with requests that they sacrifice $400 Million, expel some students (who may not be there any longer), and put a department in “recievership”. These actions followed a four-day review of life at Columbia. It is noteworthy that Columbia was a key focus of Republican congressional ire during the previous congress. Certainly, schools like Columbia could have done a better job balancing first amendment rights with the safety of individuals. This focus from Republicans has run Columbia through two presidents.
There are others on the watch list. The story recounts:
In its first two months, the multi-agency conglomerate has pulled millions in federal funding from Columbia University. Additionally, the group is planning to visit 10 college campuses and four cities accused of permitting antisemitism; filed a statement of interest on a lawsuit led by Jewish students against the University of California, Los Angeles; and launched other investigations into the University of California system and Harvard University.
Clearly, harassment is wrong regardless of the passion behind it. Instances where students were harmed because they were treated badly should be dealt with through existing institutional processes. If those fail, criminal charges are legitimate; as Columbia demonstrated with those who broke into a building.
Add to this the $150 Million clawback for the University of Pennsylvania because one transgender swimmer competed on their team three years ago. There will be similar claims against San Diego State (volleyball).
In all of these cases, the Trump administration is not focused on systems and structures going forward to make sure Jewish students are safe or that womens’ sports follow their guidelines. Even that would be an unwarranted intrusion into university life, presuming guilt as a first move (which the administration has done in other contexts).
I can’t help but notice that what this administration is doing to “elite” or “visible” universities is exactly what I’ve heard as a dominant fear within Christian universities. There has been a whole cottage industry over the last fifteen or twenty years arguing that the Federal Government (under Democratic administrations) was going to force mission-driven Christian Universities to change their policies on LGBTQ+ hiring or admission. Failure to do that, the critics claimed, would allow the government to withhold their Title IV (financial federal aid) funds, which would cause all of them to go out of business.
Of course, institutions like Columbia or Harvard or the University of California have sufficient resources in endowment and annual giving to be able to absorb the loss of funding the administration is demanding. Christian universities don’t have that kind of money.
The Trump administration has created the mechanisms through which a government could demand adherence to its priorities. Conservatives may be celebrating the current problems created for the big-name institutions for now. But we now have a proof of concept for how this can be done. That’s not good news for smaller Christian universities.
Right to notice the comparable fear that had been emanating from conservative Christians for awhile (indeed, many liberal voices were recently claiming that institutions like my own Christian college, in the news for multiple LGBTQ debacles, should be denied any 'federal funds,' even those used by students to pay tuition, e.g. Pell grants or loans). However there are a few crucial differences between that concern and the direct action being taken against Columbia, Penn, Harvard, etc. (which I find horrific, btw). First is that Trump's leverage here is largely at the level of federal research grants, especially those in medicine and the sciences... and most small Christian colleges do not depend on those (and when he soon tries to tax or control their huge endowments, same result: most Christian colleges only have small ones). Second, American freedom of religion laws should guarantee that federal (or even state) oversight cannot encroach on religious non-profits, including colleges. And third, those same freedom of religion laws arguably extend to a student's right to use federal aid to attend a religious college if they choose it: most courts would view a federal restriction on not using such aid at religious colleges as a way of punishing or marginalizing those who might desire a religious education.
(Sidebar: it should be clear that what Trump is doing now is straight out of the fascist playbook: you intimidate the elite intellectual centers, universities, and especially the powerful and prestigious ones, in order to control them and silence the critics at each because you know they lean progressive... but they also teach students to think for themselves. And you'd do it -- in classic propagandistic style -- in the name of free speech when your real aim is to stifle such speech. To the extent that left-leaning politicians usually do not have such fascist goals, doing such looks unlikely when it comes to Christian colleges. Nevertheless the proof of concept thought should be disturbing.)
For a state, their universities, public/private/religious/secular are all important resources for training young people, creating wealth and creating an educated workforce. For the federal government, universities are not viewed inherently as assets, but as political footballs. You are right to expect more of this from both sides. I teach at a Christian university and have been accused of being woke by someone who knew nothing about my university, and wondered what kind of diversity training (which they viewed as indoctrination) I had experienced.