ATTACKING ACADEMY

When politicians try to muzzle universities by ousting their leaders, interfering with their research and teaching, and cutting off their funds, the writing is on the wall - and not only for once-great academic institutions

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The resignation of University of Virginia President James E. Ryan under political pressure from US President Donald Trump’s minions and the Virginia state government is the latest shocking turn in the administration’s all-out attack on American higher education.

Officials from Trump's Justice Department and members of the University’s Board of Visitors — several of whom were appointed by Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin - accused Ryan of moving too slowly to dismantle the university's diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. By the end of June, Ryan had announced his departure.

It is highly unusual for politicians to call the shots at major universities in the US. But such interference is common in failing democracies. Power-hungry presidents and prime ministers replace university leaders with partisan loyalists. They defund or dismantle universities - often the most elite ones. Trump’s assault on the University of Virginia — as well as on Harvard, Columbia, and many others —is following this playbook and should be understood as a measure of ‘America's slide into autocracy.

Trump's rationale for the crackdown is that many of the top US universities are bastions of “woke” culture and have become dominated, as he put it in 2023, by “Marxist maniacs and lunatics.” The universities can’t be trusted, the argument goes, to protect students from biased treatment and harassment. The administration’s ostensible aim is to make these institutions more “viewpoint neutral.”