What would a force hostile to the United States—a nation whose power has been the envy of the world for more than seven decades—do if it were able to set up an influential pipeline for policy ideas directly to the White House? Or, better yet, if it could somehow burrow into the mind of its president?
With so many points of U.S. strength, it is hard to know where to begin. One might start by fanning a backlash against the long-standing, if halting, trend in U.S. society toward inclusiveness, which has gradually sought to bring disfavored groups into the fold of the country’s prosperity. This might include waging a war against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—one that, in its most Orwellian dimension, would extend to policing the use of words such as “bias,” “privilege,” and “equality” in government agencies.
What would a force hostile to the United States—a nation whose power has been the envy of the world for more than seven decades—do if it were able to set up an influential pipeline for policy ideas directly to the White House? Or, better yet, if it could somehow burrow into the mind of its president?
With so many points of U.S. strength, it is hard to know where to begin. One might start by fanning a backlash against the long-standing, if halting, trend in U.S. society toward inclusiveness, which has gradually sought to bring disfavored groups into the fold of the country’s prosperity. This might include waging a war against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—one that, in its most Orwellian dimension, would extend to policing the use of words such as “bias,” “privilege,” and “equality” in government agencies.
One might pull the rug out from under a country sitting on the doorstop of Washington’s long-standing European allies, which has suffered invasion and continued assault from a revanchist autocracy bent on expansion. For instance, one might shy away from identifying Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine and sometimes blame the latter for the conflict, all while conceding major Russian war aims even before the start of peace negotiations.
One might criticize European democracies such as Germany for not providing more space to extreme-right political parties that have openly flirted with ideology reminiscent of the Nazis. Or one might disparage longtime friends and democratic allies, from Canada to Japan, saying that they are cheating the United States, imposing high tariffs on them, and demanding that they pay for the security protection they get from Washington.
One might ravage the staff and budget of the Internal Revenue Service, the body that collects the taxes that fund the government, while passing budget resolutions that will provide large tax breaks to the wealthy—all but ensuring massive increases in future budget deficits. While doing so, one might insinuate that Social Security—a pillar of the U.S. political compact since the Great Depression—is being fleeced by millions of phantom super-centenarians, whose relatives cheat the system by collecting benefit checks long after their deaths.
One might withdraw from United Nations bodies such as the Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization, thus ceding influence to countries that make no pretense of respecting human dignity and freedom, and ending U.S. leadership in combatting diseases that threaten people worldwide.
One might try to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides technical assistance and funding to much poorer countries to boost their economic development while also bolstering U.S. soft power.
One might liquidate the country’s international broadcasting capacity, ending the delivery of relatively objective news to hundreds of millions of people who live under dictatorships, including in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.
One might seek to hinder the development of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind while pushing the acceleration of fossil fuel production, not only ensuring huge environmental damage, but also ceding U.S. leadership in a sector that is vital to future wealth and competition.
Why stop there, though? One could move to weaken a body such as the National Institutes of Health, which has long been a major force in the United States’ world-leading medical research, or even take a swipe at one its biggest recent triumphs: the breakneck development of the mRNA vaccine technology that helped the United States become a global leader in limiting the death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are so many ideas for how to sap Washington’s strength that one could imagine fatigue setting in among those charged with manning the pipeline to the president imagined at the outset of this column. But it turns out that U.S. President Donald Trump does not even need such a unit. And there is little sign of his administration slowing down its efforts to sap the country’s vitality. His team’s other ideas involve hindering nuclear safety and research for nuclear energy and weapons, degrading the country’s ability to monitor or even discuss global warming, and defunding weather forecasts. There are many more.
With a list as prodigious as this, it has taken me too long to get to perhaps the brightest, and most insidious, idea of all for bringing the United States down to the status of an average power: pursuing a campaign of destruction against the country’s world-leading universities. The Trump administration is already carrying this out on several fronts, with little sign that most Americans are concerned about or even aware of what is happening.
This campaign was signaled in advance by hostile rhetoric from conservatives such as Vice President J.D. Vance. Even before he was elected, Vance, himself a product of elite education, spoke of U.S. higher education as “the enemy.” Since Trump returned to office, his government has acted accordingly. It has moved to undercut federal support for university-based research, tightened visa access for international students, and made U.S. campuses a priority area in its war against diversity. Potentially most damaging of all, it has weaponized the idea of antisemitism as a tool to extend the government’s political control into university departments and classrooms.
Full disclosure: I have been a professor at Columbia University—ground zero for much of this campaign—for nearly two decades. Protests on my campus over Israel’s offensive tactics in Gaza have been the pretext for much of this; now, the Trump administration practically equates criticism of Israel with legally punishable antisemitism.
I lived and taught through the period of campus protests, and it is my sense that they were overwhelmingly peaceful, but I would never rule out the possibility that Jewish students were sometimes made to feel uncomfortable by the signs, slogans, or even taunts of some individual protestors. However, this should not be used to justify restricting one of the most vital U.S. freedoms and the essence of the country’s culture of excellence in higher education: free speech.
By arresting and seeking to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and legal permanent resident of the United States, for participating in these protests, the administration has revealed its hand and shown that its war on education and war on speech are fundamentally intertwined. Not only has Khalil never been charged with a crime, but in interviews, Department of Homeland Security officials have been unable to clearly explain his alleged offense.
The punishments and supposed remedies run together. The Trump administration has canceled $400 million in government funding to Columbia unless the university fulfills a series of wildly unreasonable demands. This includes the requirement that Columbia’s department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies be placed under “receivership,” which would remove oversight of the department from its faculty.
“We’re in the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. It’s been coming and coming, and not everybody is prepared to read it that way,” Lee Bollinger, Columbia’s longtime former president, said last week. “Our problem in part is a failure of imagination. We cannot get ourselves to see how this is going to unfold in its most frightening versions. You neutralize the branches of government; you neutralize the media; you neutralize the universities, and you’re on your way.”
Although routinely unacknowledged as such, the country’s universities are the crown jewel in its entire democratic system. Some, such as Harvard University, are considerably older than the nation itself. But more than that, the United States’ sense of itself—of law, of science, of the humanities—flows from its campuses and their great tradition of academic freedom, including free speech. This is also true of the United States’ economic, technological, and military prowess.
Universities have been able to buttress U.S. leadership largely because of their pull on ambitious people from all over the world, many of whom have fervently embraced U.S. ideals, becoming naturalized as citizens or spreading democratic values overseas. The powerful force that attracts them is built on more than individual hopes of wealth, or even of personal achievement. It is built on freedom, and once that ultimate value—practically an American brand—is destroyed, it may never be restored.
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