The curtain has fallen on the global anxiety about the long-awaited Presidential elections in the United States of America (U.S.). Donald Trump is set to become one of the only two American presidents to serve non-consecutive terms as the Republicans establish a majority in the Congress. Given the long history of the two-party system, elections in the U.S. have always intensely mobilised people towards the polarised camps of the centre-left Democrats and the centre-right Republicans. Their ideological positions seismically shape the discourses around key political issues including the higher education space — academic freedom, university curricula, access to education and diversity indices of educational institutions. For this term, his proposed changes include the elimination of the US Department of Education and retraction of Title IX (a 52-year-old law concerned with provisions for sexual assault in educational spaces) which the Biden government overhauled in July this year to extend protections to the LGBTQ community, among others. As a dominant global soft and structural power, the U.S.' academic policies under Trump are likely to have ripple effects on academic communities worldwide just as his rise to the presidency is itself part of a global political trend.
Strengthening the conservative claim to power and beginning with democratic backsliding in the early 2000s, people are increasingly voting on religious and communitarian lines. Trump's plans to tinker with the education system coincide with the global disregard for progressive politics usually attributed to the political left. Like in the Agenda 47 address, egalitarian policies and affirmative action, especially in educational institutions, worldwide are increasingly dismissed as ‘leftist jargon’ indoctrinating people into unnecessary activism. Trump associates have decidedly labelled their progressive opponents in academia as “Marxist maniacs” and universities as “enemies”. To further weaponise against the “enemy” territory nurturing this mania, the plan is to roll back Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) Programs, increase tax requirements for university endowments and withdraw protections for LGBTQ+ students. It follows a simple but tactful logic: by increasing university taxes and cutting federal funding, universities will be unable to push attractive financial aid programs aimed at students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. Sidelining affirmative action will invariably fortify education and minorities and marginalised communities will further be thrusted into invisibility, oppression and dispossession.
If he is to keep his promises, monopolising accreditation processes (certifications of a university’s quality of education) will render the university entirely spineless in the face of state control. Much like the rest of the world, Trump has openly advocated for making universities “non-political” vis-a-vis activism but “patriotic” about the state’s mandates. In other words, a spectre of neutrality is to push back against collective action in academic spaces except when it comes to favouring state policies. His plan to abolish the Department of Education – which will end State Funds to sponsor education in high-poverty areas and for disabled children — promotes a model of universal school choice under which parents will receive state funds to send their children to private schools instead of standard public schools. This ‘choice’ is paradoxically accompanied by a crackdown on curricula and school policies for remaking educational design in the U.S.
As a staunch critic of academic freedom and liberal educational spaces in general, ‘wokeness’ and progressive student politics have been his long-standing targets. In November last year, he slammed Harvard student protestors as “savages and jihadists” driven by the communist propaganda. The use of legal and academic instruments to curb student protests and penalise activists directly corresponds to the rise of authoritarian, diseased democratic governments worldwide. Global academic freedom is under severe threat with around 49.5% of the people living in countries where it is completely eroded. In India too, the latest data suggests that the rise of right-wing populist governments has led to a decrease in the academic freedom index with academics and students frequently subjected to intellectual and literary censorship. At Ashoka University, for example, narratives of critical thinking have existed alongside repeated efforts to depoliticise the student body and curb activism. Since 2016, several faculty members have resigned due to allegations of being “political liability[s]” to the University. Diluting or tempering their academic and personal political beliefs is increasingly portrayed as a prerequisite for tenure.
Interestingly, these targetted students and faculty are those who organise against social injustice and in the U.S., against racism, white privilege and homophobia. The same anti–racist, progressive ideas drive students protesting in anti-zionist solidarity against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, on campuses across North America. While it is primarily conservatives who oppose such movements, even during Biden’s centre-left presidency, over 70 congress members condemned presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for enabling antisemitic movements on campus; added pressure from donors and the university administration has already pushed the first two to resign. Pro–Palestine student protestors have repeatedly been subjected to stringent punitive measures, expulsions and suspensions. The point here is simple: beneath mere policies that may be supported or criticised, Trump’s ascendancy to power reflects a structural problem regarding an authoritarian infiltration of the scholarly pursuits and praxis of the academic world. It pictures the global rise of reactionary bodies of which Trump happens to be the most immediate example.
Trump 2.0 has, therefore, intensified the war against free thought and expression in educational institutions. Academia has turned into a flaccid, ailing body as academic freedom, accessibility and equity face a severe crisis. It is not very helpful to merely collate and regurgitate already available information, nor do I wish to build a case for the political left. It is, in fact, easy to reduce complex political ideas into popularly misunderstood jargon of the left and the right. Compartmentalising ideologies into hot buzzwords often disables informed discussions and encourages already polarised masses to pick their sides for convenience. Dismissing student bodies as “Marxist maniacs” hazardous to the future of America is a powerful tool to mobilise people against progressive, affirmative ideologies and a convenient method to participate in political discourses without bearing the brunt of long hours of reflection. It feels safe, reassuring and relieving to be offered ready-made political stances and ideological positions except that this time, it will close America’s doors to its self-proclaimed values of equality and liberty.
It is not only about electoral partisanship anymore, not another addition to the Trump vs. Harris debate. This has now become a question of state-sponsored injustice in the supposedly sacred spaces of academia. I would, in fact, be wary of referring to these threats in the future tense for they are closer to us than we would think. But will Trump’s presidency finally demolish the iron rods of academia? I say no, not yet; for in the face of a popularly elected leader, it is only collective action and a united resolve that can save a people.
(Edited by Srijana Siri)
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