MAGA's remaking of universities could have dire consequences

Mint

a day ago

'THIS IS an economic revolution and we will win." Donald Trump's line on tariffs sounds like something from Robespierre or Engels. And as any revolutionary knows, to sweep away the old order it is not enough just to raise import duties. You also have to seize and refashion the institutions that control the culture. In America that means wresting control of Ivy League universities which play an outsize role in forming the elite (including Mr Trump's cabinet). The MAGA plan to remake the Ivies could have terrible consequences for higher education, for innovation, for economic growth and even for what sort of country America is. And it is only just beginning.
The target has been exquisitely chosen. Over the past decade elite universities have lost the bipartisan support they used to enjoy. This was partly their own fault. In too many cases they succumbed to faddish groupthink about oppression, became scared of their student-customers and turned away speakers in the name of safety. At the same time, American politics became more polarised by educational achievement. Kamala Harris lost the popular vote in the 2024 presidential election. But she won Americans with post-graduate degrees by 20 points. This combination left the academy vulnerable.
But the most substantive change has been within the Republican Party. Conservatives considered elite universities to be hostile territory even before William F. Buckley published 'God and Man at Yale" in 1951. Yet they also respected the basic compact that exists between universities and the federal government: that taxpayers fund scientific research and provide grants for students from poor families, and in return, universities do world-changing research.
Some of the researchers may have views that irk the White House of the day. Many are foreigners. But their work ends up benefiting America. That is why, in 1962, the government funded a particle accelerator, even though some people who would use it had long hair and hated American foreign policy. And why, later that decade, researchers at American universities invented the internet, with military funding.
This deal has been the source of military as well as economic power. It has contributed to almost every technological leap that has boosted output, from the internet to mRNA vaccines and GLP-1 agonists to artificial intelligence. It has made America a magnet for talented, ambitious people from around the world. It is this compact—not bringing car factories back to the rust belt—that is the key to America's prosperity. And now the Trump administration wants to tear it up.
His government has used federal grants to take revenge on universities: the presidents of Princeton and Cornell criticised the government and promptly had over $1bn in grants cancelled or frozen. It has arrested foreign students who have criticised the conduct of Israel's war in Gaza. It has threatened to increase the tax on endowments: J.D. Vance (Yale Law School) has proposed raising it on large endowments from 1.4% to 35%.
What it wants in return varies. Sometimes it is to eradicate the woke-mind virus. Sometimes it is to eradicate antisemitism. It always involves a double standard on free speech, according to which you can complain about cancel culture and then cheer on the deportation of a foreign student for publishing an op-ed in a college newspaper. This suggests that, as with any revolution, it is about who has power and control.
So far, universities have tried to lie flat and hope Mr Trump leaves them alone, just like many of the big law firms that the president has targeted. The Ivy presidents meet every month or so, but have yet to come up with a common approach. Meanwhile, Harvard is changing the leadership of its Middle East studies centre and Columbia is on its third president in a year. This strategy is unlikely to work. The MAGA vanguard cannot believe how quickly the Ivies have capitulated. The Ivies also underestimate the fervour of the revolutionaries they are up against. Some of them don't just want to tax Harvard—they want to burn it down.
Resisting the administration's assault requires courage. Harvard's endowment is about the same size as the sovereign-wealth fund of the oil-rich sultanate of Oman, which should buy some bravery. But that mooted tax could shrink it quickly. Harvard receives over $1bn in grants each year. Columbia's annual budget is $6bn; it receives $1.3bn in grants. Other elite universities are less fortunate. If even the Ivies cannot stand up to bullying, there is not much hope for elite public universities, which are just as dependent on research funding and do not have vast endowments to absorb government pressure.
How, then, should universities respond? Some things that their presidents want to do anyway, such as adopting codes protecting free speech on campus, cutting administrative staff, banning the use of 'diversity" statements in hiring and ensuring more diverse viewpoints among academics, accord with the views of many Republicans (and this newspaper). But the universities should draw a clear line: even if it means losing government funding, what they teach and research is for them to decide.
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This principle is one reason why America became the world's most innovative economy over the past 70 years, and why Russia and China did not. Yet even that undersells its value. Free inquiry is one of the cornerstones of American liberty, along with the freedom to criticise the president without fear of retribution. True conservatives have always known this. 'The free university", said Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell presidential address in 1961, has been 'the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery".
Eisenhower, who was president of Columbia before he was president of the United States, warned that when universities become dependent on government grants, the government can control scholarship. For a long time that warning seemed a bit hysterical. America never had a president willing to exert such authority over colleges. Now it does.
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