If Trump Wins ...

What if Donald Trump is re-elected as president? As unpleasant as it may be to contemplate, it’s an increasingly likely possibility that would be a disaster for higher education. Trump leads Biden, according to recent polling. And yet the sector’s response, so far, has been to sleepwalk into the election. It’s time for us to wake up.

For well over a year now, a small army of think-tankers, consultants, congressional aides, and campaign staffers have been at work crafting higher-education policies in anticipation of a Trump restoration. These efforts, if enacted into law, would radically change higher education in this country. Even more worrisome, Republican politicians have recently shown their skill at calling attention to campus problems that resonate strongly with the public. A Trump presidency with a Republican legislative majority could remake higher education as we’ve known it.

Given the stakes, it is time to look more closely at what Trump’s re-election could mean, and to be clear-eyed about the weaknesses a second Trump administration would exploit. Put simply, changes in academic leadership style will be necessary if the sector is to defend itself effectively.

The December 5 congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses offers a preview of what’s to come. When we pull ourselves away from the partisan melee and the fallout, including the resignation of two Ivy League presidents, we can see the outlines of a thus far one-sided battle. The maladroit responses of the presidents provided the necessary pretext for advancing the Republicans’ attempt to punish parts of the academic enterprise they disdain and to redirect university efforts along the lines they champion. But the right’s interest goes well beyond anything discussed by the three university presidents who were grilled by Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Consider Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist behind Republican attacks on critical race theory and antiracism programs (and now a board member at New College of Florida). He sees universities as having succumbed to “race and sex narcissism” and as having turned their backs on the “pursuit of truth.” He dismisses the idea that universities can reform themselves: Administrators are too “weak,” he argues, and are thus prone to “emotional or social manipulation” by faculty activists. For Rufo, the way forward is to use state power to bring about what he sees as the necessary changes. Triumphant at the resignation of Claudine Gay as Harvard University’s president, he wasted no time in announcing a “plagiarism hunting” fund aimed at exposing “the rot in the Ivy League.” But that’s just the beginning of what Rufo has in mind.

In a panel discussion last May at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Rufo laid out his agenda: (1) mobilization of the Department of Justice to investigate elite universities for admissions procedures that violate the recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action; (2) penalties for universities where the department finds free expression to be curtailed by social-justice priorities; (3) the closing of certain departments, particularly ethnic and gender studies, where “ideological capture” is, he believes, most widespread; (4) new hiring procedures that emphasize the importance of a “multiplicity of perspectives”; and (5) termination of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices. His ideal for undergraduate education is a “classically liberal” curriculum, focused on great works.

Rufo has also made clear that new accountability mechanisms will be required to achieve these ends. The locus of authority will be the agencies of government, including not only the Departments of Education and Justice (purged of people sympathetic to the social concerns of universities, of course), but also reformed regional accreditors whose criteria for re-accreditation would reflect the new priorities. Universities are highly dependent on the federal government for research and financial-aid funding. The threat of defunding is therefore a powerful instrument in the hands of those like Rufo who have big-stick sanctions in mind. Accreditation has been a recurring target of the right. On the campaign trail last year, Ron DeSantis called accrediting agencies “cartels” and promised an alternative system that would say, “We will not accredit you if you do DEI.” Trump has promised to “fire” accreditors, telling supporters, “Our secret weapon will be the college-accreditation system.”

The current accreditation system is a frequent target of Republican plans, but it is not the only one. Proposals for increasing the tax on university endowments, eliminating diversity statements in hiring and admissions, restricting international collaborations, and reducing regulations on for-profit and online colleges are also circulating in Washington. Plans to reduce the size and cost of our higher-education system are widespread. The Cato Institute’s 2022 higher-education handbook for policymakers, for example, argues that “the federal presence in higher education is ultimately self-defeating, fueling huge price inflation and overconsumption. The solution is to avoid the superficial thinking that all ‘education’ is good and to let people freely decide what education they need and how they will pay for it.”

On January 20, 2025, a newly elected Trump administration would assume the presidency armed with policies produced by a network of think tanks and research centers, including the Heritage Foundation, the Goldwater Institute, and Chris Rufo’s home base, the Manhattan Institute. Heritage has been instrumental in providing agendas for Republican politicians for more than 40 years. Its “Project 2025” brings together a coalition of over 100 conservative groups, including Turning Point USA, the National Association of Scholars, and Hillsdale College, and it has already released a nearly 900-page document, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” detailing the operations of federal agencies with the goal of coalescing “an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.” Project 2025 is described as a “plan to unite the conservative movement and the American people against elite rule and woke culture warriors” and as the “last opportunity to save our republic.” The precise details for how exactly to deconstruct higher education are murky, but they will almost certainly parallel those that are already circulating in the public domain.

These proposals are tied together by the now-familiar populist narrative that pits “unaccountable elites” against “ordinary Americans.” As Project 2025 explains, “Today, nearly every top-tier U.S. university president or Wall Street hedge-fund manager has more in common with a socialist, European head of state than with the parents at a high-school football game in Waco, Tex. Many elites’ entire identity, it seems, is wrapped up in their sense of superiority over those people.”

In a manner consistent with this framing, conservatives are determined to point their pitchforks at the most prestigious universities first, perhaps on the assumption that the rest of higher education will fall in line once the giants are humbled. As U.S. Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, a member of the Republican Study Committee, put it in a recorded call with business leaders, the hearing with the university presidents was just the first prong of attack. “The second step is the investigation, the subpoenas, gathering all of the documents and the records from these universities to prove the point,” Banks reportedly said. “That they’re not just allowing this behavior to occur, they’re fostering it and creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students on their campus because of it.” His third step? “Defund these universities by cracking down on not backing their student loans, taxing their endowments, and forcing the administration to actually conduct civil-rights investigations.” Rufo has spoken of directing the Departments of Justice and Education to “relentlessly degrade the status and prestige” of elite institutions. House investigations of several Ivy League universities are already underway.

In addition to the think-tank populists, Republicans in Congress will also have a say. Judging from the “College Cost Reduction Act,” introduced in January by Rep. Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who leads the House education committee, the congressional push will be directed toward three goals: capping the maximum loan amounts students can obtain, providing additional aid for low-income students who make consistent progress toward their degrees, and reforming accreditation by prioritizing student achievement and post-college employment measures. The anticipated additions to Pell Grants would be offset by penalizing colleges whose students fail to make timely loan repayments. The bill includes provisions that would incentivize colleges to close programs whose students are encumbered by loans they cannot repay and to expand programs whose students tend to fare well in the labor market in the years after graduation. In other words, the Foxx bill would place a heavy hand on the balance sheets against the arts, humanities, and softer social sciences.

And, of course, Trump will have his own ideas about what should be done. We can predict many of the priorities from those expressed in his last budget proposal to Congress. His administration called for a 7.8-percent cut from the Department of Education budget, with sharp reductions for public-service loan forgiveness. The National Institutes of Health budget was slated for a 7-percent cut; the National Science Foundation faced a 6-percent cut. Trump also attempted to eliminate all funding for the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, something he repeatedly attempted — and was unable to achieve.

More recently, candidate Trump has offered two concrete, if far-fetched, policy proposals. The first is for an entirely new system of accreditation heavily weighted toward evaluating colleges on the basis of job placement, evidence of student learning, and curricula that focus on “the American tradition and Western civilization.” The second is for a federally funded tuition-free, open-access online university. He has christened this leviathan the “American Academy.” It would be funded primarily by taxes on existing universities’ endowments, with the focus, naturally, on the largest endowments.

Of course, not everything Republicans hope to achieve will be achievable. It will be a heavy lift to bring the regional accreditors into the Republican policy orbit, given that any national-level policy changes would require revision and reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, an endeavor that would not move quickly (if at all). And if Trump is re-elected, his American Academy seems doomed from the start — not only by its prohibitive cost but by how closely it resembles the late, unlamented Trump University, which closed its doors in 2010 and was forced to pay out $25 million to students it defrauded.

A second Trump administration would begin by distinguishing policy goals that could be enacted through executive orders from those that require congressional or state legislation. On the congressional side, it would not be difficult to find ambitious lawmakers eager to push legislation. Judging from their public statements, J.D. Vance, Tom Cotton, Dan Crenshaw, Elise Stefanik, and Virginia Foxx are already champing at the bit. White House and foundation policy shops will produce and distribute talking points. If history is any guide, these talking points will include cherry-picked data to provide a thin veneer of rationality. Those talking points will then be rehearsed doggedly in committee meetings and floor debates. Democrats would of course take to friendly airwaves to denounce the legislation, and rallies would be held on college campuses in opposition. But, in the end, if Republicans have the votes, some of the new policies would prevail.

Higher education has a playbook for self-defense, as we saw during the first Trump administration. And yet as the criticisms of higher education have mounted, the weaknesses of that playbook have become evident. The weaknesses include university presidents — particularly their reflexive reliance on policies and processes unconnected to deeply held values, their evasiveness in the face of tough questioning, and their failure to understand and respond to the demands of political theater. All of these attributes were on stark display during the December 5 antisemitism hearing. The transcript shows that Claudine Gay referenced Harvard policies and processes nearly 30 times while largely ignoring the results of these policies. She evaded answering pointed questions over a dozen times. Missing were compelling examples supporting her many references to her university’s “robust” disciplinary policies or illustrating how a vibrant culture of open expression actually exists on the Harvard campus. Instead, she relied on terse statements about her “deep commitment to free expression” and the importance of “preserving the security of our community.”

These bloodless responses made for a stark contrast to the emotionally charged language of her inquisitors. The hearing began with a short video showing hate-filled chanting and acts of intimidation. Representatives vividly described antisemitic actions on campus, including Jewish students being pushed, spat upon, and punched. Republicans passionately condemned the “moral rot” at the heart of the academic enterprise and the “poison fruits” of institutional culture. There were also many accusations of or references to murder, barbarism, and mania.

The message was clear: Republicans have learned to capitalize on dramatic events as a springboard to more far-reaching policy changes. Universities have been a punching bag on the right for decades, but rarely have so many cameras and notepads been present to record such a perfect representation of the Republican narrative.

Those who advance to top positions in universities are generally expert managers. Many also have the capacity to charm donors. They are less likely to be practiced politicians or to be deeply immersed in the intellectual life of their institutions. In part this is because of the division of labor between outward-facing presidents and inward-facing provosts and deans. It also results from the development of separate administrative tracks where the high-stakes issues are finance and budgeting, regulatory bodies, conflict abatement, reputation management, and enrollment management — not the research and teaching mission.

It would be a mistake to call most of today’s university presidents academic leaders. They are managers of complex organizations whose product lines range from athletics to zoology. They are subject to pressure from state legislatures, donors, regulatory bodies, professional associations, faculty interest groups, parents, and prospective students. Given the complexity of the role, university boards have over time concluded that outstanding scholars rarely make outstanding university managers. When I examined the careers of university presidents several years ago as part of research for a book (Two Cheers for Higher Education), I found that only about half of the top 50 research universities and a sprinkling of liberal-arts colleges recruited presidents who had excelled as scientists and scholars. The rest hired candidates with modest academic careers, candidates who had worked their way up through the administrative bureaucracy without ever professing, or candidates whose careers had been spent in political life or business.

At the nation’s largest and most-selective universities there is a playbook for how to handle nearly every situation a president encounters, including data breaches, athletics scandals, and student suicides. Because of the many units a president presides over, and the diversity of the constituency for each, such playbooks are necessary. Presidents learn to speak publicly only about the recognitions their faculties and students obtain. Prizes, graduations, and record-breaking fund-raising campaigns deserve speeches. Everything else is not for public consumption. When controversies arise, presidents put together task forces. They consult legal counsel before acting; they defer to counsel when resources or reputations may be at risk. They learn what is expected at ceremonial occasions and how to perform these duties. They are briefed on how to interact with legislators and how to deflect uncomfortable questions. They learn to promise to look into matters without necessarily intending to do so. They have speechwriters to write their speeches, assistants to troubleshoot and mollify, and deans and department chairs to interact with the faculty and students. Most of the time this managerial approach works. But when it comes to combating a well-organized political party determined to degrade academic institutions, managerialism invites disaster. If the presidential playbook isn’t thoroughly revised, higher education will face a diminished future should Trump and Republicans regain power in 2025.

What, then, can be done to avoid this unhappy outcome?

First, universities will need to decide which of the policies that are currently under attack should be preserved or strengthened and which may require reform — or abandonment. Republicans have attacked university endowments, science funding, the teaching of critical race theory, diversity policies, and academic-freedom protections. Some of these commitments will be easy to defend. How can the U.S. compete effectively without robust academic R&D? Congress has so far agreed, but the case must continue to be made effectively.

Other policies will require better defenses than have been offered thus far. Diversity policies are at the top of this list. The idea that the civic mission of universities centers on the racial and gender diversity of faculty and student bodies is relatively new. It became a fixture of liberal thinking only two decades ago when the first diversity statements were required and as DEI offices began to catch on. The decline of Republican support for higher education shares this timeline. Diversity, equity, and inclusion caught on with campus leaders after affirmative action was hamstrung by the courts. On some campuses, it has proved to be a poor substitute because it is forced into the pretense that all diversity matters even when university practices belie the claim. The Israel-Hamas conflict and the December 5 congressional hearings exposed the subterfuge.

As an antidote to the attacks on DEI, presidents can begin to extol again the broader civic mission of universities. That broader vision includes research that provides far-seeing insight into the world we inhabit; studies that help solve a wide range of community problems; the development of new technologies to bring jobs and new wealth to states and regions; lectures and performances that bring cultural enrichment to local communities; and the cultivation of future leaders from among the undergraduate and graduate student bodies.

DEI policies are part of this package, but only part. And because they are controversial, they should be defended with concrete evidence of their effectiveness. Do DEI offices have measurable effects on the sense of belonging or the level of achievement of students from underrepresented groups? Have they helped to retain diverse faculty? If so, how large are these effects? And what costs, if any, have the offices incurred in terms of campus free speech? It is surprising that studies like this are in such short supply.

It is tempting to think that elite institutions should begin to focus again on recruiting distinguished scholars and scientists for leadership roles (as opposed to those who have lesser academic records but lengthier management experience). After all, excellent scholars might be more likely to speak with knowledge and conviction about the intellectual and educational accomplishments of their institutions, having contributed to those accomplishments themselves.

But what is more essential for presidents is the ability to recognize when they are actors in a political arena and to have the presence of mind to meet such moments. If a member of Congress asks for the percentage of conservative faculty members at Harvard, the right answer should come naturally. The right answer is not the one Claudine Gay gave: “I do not have that statistic. We don’t collect that data.” The right answer challenges the premise and is conveyed openly rather than at arm’s length: Academically talented conservatives usually prefer to go into business, legal, or medical careers, and Harvard would welcome qualified conservatives who wish to give up the higher salaries in those fields for the opportunity to research and teach at a world-class university.

Harvard is looking for a new president. One of the criteria should be the capacity to provide the public with straight talk and with concrete examples illustrating why their institutions make a difference and are worthy of public support. In the current environment, and given the stakes, the tight-lipped and evasive answers of today’s academic managers just won’t cut it.