From the Editor: Saving Higher Ed from Tyranny

Patricia McGuire, in her contribution to the online edition of this issue, succinctly describes the stakes of the second Trump administration’s intertwined attacks on higher education and democracy: “Saving ourselves is an important first thing, but making it our business to save America is everything.” Our first Academe issue under Trump 2.0 arrives amid rapidly escalating assaults on fundamental rights and freedoms. Each week brings news of more universities threatened with defunding, more noncitizens targeted for deportation, and more agencies and programs facing debilitating cuts. The onslaught is designed to overwhelm, but the articles at the center of this issue—about the fight for the future of higher education that is also a fight for democracy—cut through the chaos.

The issue is introduced by a pair of articles by national AAUP and AFT leaders. The AAUP, as Todd Wolfson and Mia McIver write, is at the forefront of efforts both to mobilize a mass response to Donald Trump’s attacks and to articulate “an affirmative vision” of higher education as a public good. Randi Weingarten, in the article that follows, underscores the essential role of unions in defending academic freedom—and the importance of the AAUP’s affiliation with the AFT—at a time when too many administrations are capitulating to the government’s demands.

Executive orders have been Trump’s weapon of choice in his assault on our institutions. In a special series organized for this issue by Jonathan Feingold and Veena Dubal, legal scholars break down the implications of key orders affecting federal grants; transgender students; noncitizens; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and campus protest. Together, Trump’s actions reveal an administration fixated on higher education—and ready to use the thinnest of pretexts to justify targeting universities. As Feingold and Dubal put it, the executive orders “bind a common project: to eliminate the institutions and individuals best positioned to resist Trump’s claim to be king.”

This assault on higher education has been decades in the making, of course. Isaac Kamola, in a deeply researched piece tracing the development of “culture-war vernaculars” from the attacks on “political correctness” to current efforts to cast student protest as antisemitic, exposes the Right’s long campaign to discredit higher education. Viewed in this context, the second Trump administration is merely the latest phase in a war that, as Karma R. Chávez shows, has proceeded on many fronts and has already done severe damage in Texas and other red states.

Our spring issue concludes with articles by Gregory F. Scholtz and Michael Mauer marking the publication of the twelfth edition of the AAUP’s Policy Documents and Reports. In a season of unrelenting bad news, the publication of a new edition of the Redbook is a welcome reminder of the continuing value of AAUP policies, especially in times of crisis.

The pace of the attacks on higher education all but guarantees that much of this issue will quickly become outdated. Nevertheless, we hope the articles collected here offer insights and inspiration for the struggle ahead. Visit https://www.aaup.org/issues/political-attacks-higher-education for the latest resources from the AAUP, and follow Academe’s new Bluesky account @academemagazine.bsky.social.