What's behind Trump's crackdown on universities — and why it matters
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The Trump administration has thrown so many curveballs at colleges and universities, it can be hard to keep track. To start, they've already cut more than $10 billion in research grants.

That could affect the future of everything from medicine to personal tech, says NYU Business School professor Sabrina Howell. We would not have iPhones if universities like MIT that are federally government funded hadn't worked on lasers. Then there are the arrests of international students. Federal agents have locked up student activists and revoked their visas.

Even those who have not been targeted say they're living in fear. Like T, a graduate student at Columbia. She asked that we only use her first initial because she's worried about being detained. Every time I leave my house, I'm

I'm like emotionally and mentally preparing myself for detention. So any man on the street or any like white or black van sparks some sort of panic within me. The administration has also made sweeping demands like requiring government oversight of certain college departments. Ted Mitchell is president of the American Council on Education, which represents most colleges in the U.S. With

Without the independence to be able to create and produce a wide-ranging academic program, we lose academic freedom. And just this week, the administration said it intends to severely restrict some foreign students from enrolling. We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools. They can't get in.

because we have foreign students there. But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country. Harvard is one of the schools pushing back against the White House. University President Alan Garber recently told NPR it's hard to see the logic in the government's actions. The research funding is not a gift. The research funding

is given to universities and other research institutions to carry out work that the federal government designates as high priority work. It is work that they want done. Shutting off that work does not help the country, even as it punishes Harvard. Consider this. What's actually driving the federal government's crackdown on universities? And what does it mean for the future of higher education?

From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.

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It's Consider This from NPR. The Trump administration's multi-pronged assault on colleges and universities is part of an overarching strategy. Two of our correspondents are here to explain what the administration hopes to accomplish and what that means for those institutions. NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben and NPR education correspondent Alyssa Nadwerny. Good to have you both here. Thanks for having us. Thanks. Thanks.

Thanks. Alyssa, the Trump administration's moves have affected lots of schools of all sizes, but elite universities, especially Ivy League schools, are a particular focus. What have these new policies meant for the institutions the White House is targeting? Well, I have spent this semester talking with college presidents, administrators, students,

And it has made life on campus extremely chaotic. I mean, people have told me that they have not experienced anything like this in higher ed since the McCarthy era. You know, students, especially international students, their lives are in limbo. And leaders, you know, are having to make really big decisions about what the finances at an institution looks like. I mean,

Take Northwestern, for example. They had almost a billion dollars in research grants cuts. These are things like cancer research, diabetes treatment, even things related to national security and weaponry technology.

So, Danielle, what reason does the White House give for this broad assault? Well, they've given a couple of stated reasons. One is anti-Semitism. In the wake of those October 7th attacks on Israel, there were a lot of pro-Palestinian protests at universities, especially as Israel continued its harsh attacks and blockades on Gaza.

So with all of that protesting came angry rhetoric towards Israel, and in some cases, some Jewish students on campuses were harassed. And that helped spark this focus on anti-Semitism within the administration.

There's also this broad fight against wokeness. Trump has regularly complained, especially on the campaign trail last year, about these colleges being where people learn things like what he calls critical race theory and gender ideology. Here's Trump at an event in Florida in 2023. We are going to choke off the money to schools that aid the Marxist assault on our American heritage and on Western civilization itself.

The days of subsidizing communist indoctrination in our colleges will soon be over. Now, those who take the side of the universities often argue that some of this, for example, the fight against anti-Semitism is pretext that the administration just wanted reasons to crack down on colleges. And indeed, many of the results of this that Alyssa was talking about, like hurting medical research, have nothing to do with wokeness or anti-Semitism.

And if those are what you described as the stated reasons, what are the unstated reasons? To me, I put this into three pretty broad buckets. One is there's been this longstanding backdrop of anger at colleges and universities among the conservative movement for a long time. I mean, think back to the anti-war protests dating back to the Vietnam War, also the Iraq War in the early 2000s.

Furthermore, there were free speech fears about speech being chilled on college campuses. And all of that that I just talked about is reinforced by demographics. Trump's base and increasingly the Republican base is Americans without a four-year degree. Democrats are the opposite. So that is one bucket. Another is that experts in authoritarianism often point out that other authoritarian leaders beyond Trump...

often come down hard on universities. The goal is to limit free thinking, to limit opposition to authority, and not to mention just to limit the information environment. The one other thing I would add is that there's populist resentment here because of real issues like legacy admissions and the cost of these elite schools, plus rhetoric around affirmative action. A lot of people just perceive these schools as unfair.

Alyssa, this is all playing out in the public sphere and in actual courts and legal battles. What's going on behind the scenes between these schools and the administration? Well, behind the scenes, universities are in dialogue with the government to figure out how they can be in line with these current laws, like the ban on affirmative action, among other things. I mean, they...

The threat of or the leverage of federal funding to implement policy isn't new, Ari. You know, Harvard, for example, has acknowledged that they can and will do more to combat anti-Semitism.

A lot of college leaders have told me that even in the last few weeks, they've made multiple trips to D.C. to meet with officials from the Education Department and in Congress. Columbia and Harvard say they have been involved in this process of negotiation, but they say the grant freezings are undermining those talks and the process that is supposed to unfold.

Danielle, what can you tell us about why this has become so central to Donald Trump's political project? Well, I think that like so many topics right now, this is about identity politics, specifically the identity of being a MAGA voter. If I am a voter who loves Donald Trump, this is about not only whether I did or didn't go to college, but do I think colleges are elitist or not? Or do I think gender study majors are bad?

Beyond that, it's also about do I want to punish people who are on the opposite side of me on those issues? That willingness to punish is also central to Trumpism. We see that in his attacks on law firms, groups of immigrants and press outlets like how he comes after the AP.

And speaking of identity, I think this particular fight against elite universities also fits with the common man appeal that Trump really tries to maintain. Trump and his staffers often say some variation on the idea that, you know, we in the U.S. need people in trade schools, not elite universities. But if Trump and his allies are framing this as a kind of head-to-head decision, elite colleges versus vocational schools or community colleges...

Alyssa, is it a binary choice for the federal government? Does cutting a grant for Harvard mean a small school somewhere else will get more money? No. I mean, that's not how government funding works. These two things actually aren't at odds with each other in the sense that money for cancer research is allocated by Congress.

It's not money that would have otherwise be spent on community college. You know, one thing, Ari, that's worth mentioning is that very few people actually go to these elite universities, less than 1% of all U.S. college students go.

Most Americans are at community colleges and regional four-year public universities, which educate students on the trades. So the idea that more federal dollars are going to elite schools instead of these institutions means that money isn't actually flowing to where the majority of the students are. And so Trump's idea to fund trade schools is perhaps an idea that people across the aisle could actually agree on.

What could the long-term impact be for the students and universities and also for Trump? There are huge stakes for students and institutions. I mean, think of the research that has been paused in terms of advances in health and technology. And then when it comes to students, I mean, international students alone contribute about $43 billion to the U.S. economy every year. We're already seeing applications for international students down. You know, they're choosing to go elsewhere. Yeah.

Now, as for Trump, the impact is harder to see, at least directly. It won't be votes because he can't run again, even if he likes to talk about it. I would say this is about fueling that powerful MAGA movement he built. And that MAGA movement is the GOP now. So the MAGA ideals around higher education, they're likely to stick around. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben and Alyssa Nadworny. Thank you. Thank you. You bet.

This episode was produced by Michelle Aslam with audio engineering by Ted Meebane. It was edited by Sarah Handel, Lauren Magaki, and Kelsey Snell. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. Thanks to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors. Learn more at plus.npr.org. ♪

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.

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