The recent offensive of the government of Donald Trump against Harvardblocking their ability to enroll international students and freezing billions in federal funds, reveals much more than a bureaucratic dispute: it is a frontal attack on university autonomy and a key episode of the ideological crusade that the US president seeks to impose on the educational system.
The measure, justified by alleged failures in the delivery of student data and accusations of anti -Semitism, was described by Harvard as A “clear retaliation” for not folding to Trump’s demands in terms of curriculum and ideology. Although federal judge Allison Burroughs granted a temporary suspension of the sanction and momentarily shielded the university, the ruling does not constitute a real guarantee against Trump’s political will to suffocate Harvard. What is at stake is not only the future of thousands of foreign students – 27% of the current enrollment – but The claim to transform universities into obedient showcases of a unique thought. From the threat of removing its tax status to the use of rhetorics that associate diversity with terrorism, Trump seems determined to discipline the cloisters or see them disappear.
Harvard must give a decisive legal battle against Trump’s government cuts. And his defense is based on a clear principle: the attempt to condition federal financing to an ideological alignment violates the first amendment. According to Noah Feldman, Professor of Law at the same University, The administration is imposing “unconstitutional conditions” by demanding external audits of “diversity of thought”. These demands, far from being merely technical, seek to mold academic discourse from the Executive Power: what is at stake is not only Harvard’s budget, but the freedom of thought of the entire university system.
Cultural battle
Donald Trump’s second presidency advances as an ideological ram against the key institutions of the American democratic system. In its first hundred days, it has deployed an unprecedented offensive to submit to universities, media, legal signatures and even federal cuts, to a logic of total obedience. Its strategy is meticulous: isolate a white, blackmail it with sanctions, and demand ideological reforms – whether in curricula, hiring or internal policies – under threat of economic punishments. Harvard, who publicly rejected his impositions, even at the risk of losing up to 9,000 million in funds, is one of the few exceptions that still resist.
Columbia, for example, tried to placate him with concessions, but Trump redoubled the bet by demanding direct judicial intervention in his academic governance. That is why today, As happened in the twentieth century with other authoritarian regimesmany universities are beginning to self-censure, modify their structures of diversity and warn their international students to avoid leaving the country.
What emerges is the profile of is an insatiable leader, determined to impose its worldview on the entire civic apparatus: it did the same with great legal firms, forcing them to provide free services for causes of interest. Logic is totalitable: nothing is out of control. Trump has eroded rules, demoralized to elites and sown a precedent that, as Professor Jack Balkin warns, could be replicated by future administrations. Even if academic resistance grows, fear has already taken roots. Trump does not seek to reform: seeks to bend or destroy. “Free of the law, immune to shame, the Trump administration has unleashed all the force of the Executive Power on civil society institutions“Professor Robert Post wrote. And as Thomas Edsall concludes: “Trump is insatiable”.
Rematch
Donald Trump’s onslaught against Harvard is not an isolated episodebut the most radical twist in a long conservative crusade against the American university system. From the “cleaning” that Ronald Reagan promised to do in Berkeley in the 60s to the macartism that persecuted suspected professors of communism, universities have been the favorite white of those who seek to domesticate critical thinking.
But what Trump leads today goes much further: “We are seeing something worse than McCarthy,” warns historian Lauren Lassabe Shepherd. Now no individual teachers are pursued: whole departments are intended to dismantle, close diversity programs, revoke visas and mold the entire academic system according to the official agenda.
What was previously symbolic pressure, today is direct coercion. Demand that universities such as Harvard pay ideological accounts, or condition their funds to politically audit teachers and students. It is equivalent to colonizing knowledge. “They are trying to undermine, destabilize and, ultimately, control higher education,” says Todd Wolfson, president of the Association of University Teachers.
It is the model that Viktor Orbán applied in Hungaryand that Trump admires and rehearses on American soil. And if Harvard, shielded by its history and resources, can barely resist, what can be expected from the rest? The US president is willing to redefine the role of the State against free thinking, transformed to universities into obedient ideological showcases. And the risk, as Steven Pinker warns, is that “the opposition to its policies becomes impossible,” and the final rematch is consumed.
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