The Trump administration’s recent threats to Harvard and many other U.S. universities — putatively an attempt to call out and quash antisemitism on campus — are little more than a cynical attempt to control American universities in order to advance autocracy and oligarchy in the United States.
I teach German and European studies at the University of Illinois, and I am deeply disturbed by the White House’s exploitation of antisemitism as an excuse to suppress free speech, free inquiry, lifesaving research and the exchange of different ideas. The casual use of the term “antisemitism” to justify terrorizing threats, such as detentions and deportations, is immoral and demonstrates absolute indifference toward the real needs of the minoritized and the vulnerable.
And some states are going along.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine recently signed Senate Bill 1 into law, which ended diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and offices at public universities in Ohio. But Senate Bill 1 (primary sponsor State Senator Jerry C. Cirino, R-Kirtland) also includes a number of subpoints addressing the teaching of and research into controversial beliefs or policies, which covers climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage or abortion. Specifically, the bill requires faculty and staff to “allow and encourage students to reach their own conclusions about all controversial beliefs and policies.” This restatement of seemingly obvious principles for teaching and researching nearly any subject seems perplexingly unnecessary, unless you subscribe to the fear that “liberal indoctrination” is happening at universities and colleges.
Gov. DeWine signed the bill the same week that President Donald Trump signed an executive order entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Like the accusations of antisemitism, woke-ism, and liberal indoctrination, and like the Ohio bill, this decree invents a threat—in this case, the threat of “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history.” The decree asserts that race is “a biological reality” and promises to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian. Not only does the decree invent a threat and turn terms into their opposites, but it perpetuates the same dangerous zero-sum thinking that characterizes nearly all utterances this administration makes about higher education.
These attacks ultimately will hurt all Americans.
Vice President JD Vance insisted as early as 2021 that professors and universities are “the enemy” and demanded that the government “honestly and aggressively attack the universities.” Vance uses sweeping generalizations to pit supposed intellectual “elites” against everyone else, a tired zero-sum game that does not reflect the reality of higher education in the United States.
U.S. campuses are not bizarre sites of indoctrination. They are places of professional preparation as well as places to learn about and how to live life with an open mind—open to experiences as opposed to driven by a desire to shape every experience into a particular political slot. But thinking about collective benefits doesn’t work with the zero-sum games that originate from Vance’s signature playbook—one in which conservative white men have “ideas” and everyone else has “identities.” Vance uses this playbook to discredit—and eventually dismantle—communities and institutions that threaten his (and the administration’s) simplistic and unrealistic worldview.
Although Vance campaigned heavily in 2024 on identity politics himself, consistently depicting white men as victimized and in need of empowerment, he nevertheless assumes Americans will fall for the vapid, divisive, racist assertion that there actually is some kind of battle between transcendental, ahistorical ideas and marginalized identities.
But there is no conflict between identity and ideas. They always dance in unison.
For instance, in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that university admissions decisions could no longer be made “on the basis of race.” But university admissions decisions have never been made on the basis of race; race was always only a factor. It was a factor that contributed to improved access and to diversity on college campuses. Improved access and diversity have proven advantages for everyone, not just for the underrepresented.
In Vance’s home state of Ohio, The Ohio State University applies approximately $695 million in federal funding each year toward research in fields including agriculture, artificial intelligence and cancer research. An aggressive attack on this “enemy” unquestionably will weaken Ohio, and ultimately the United States. The bill Gov. DeWine signed in late March may create difficulties for universities trying to hire competitive faculty and students, perhaps resembling consequences already seen in Texas after its governor signed a similar bill in 2023.
We must resist the warping of our language, and the lure of easy zero-sum thinking. We must continue to reward talent, which means continuing to provide support and access to a wide variety of students, including our much-needed international students. We must remember that higher education in America leads the world because of its huge diversity – not only the diversity of the people who study, teach and research there, but the diversity of the institutions themselves.
From community colleges to regional state institutions to public land-grants to private universities, these institutions power local and state economies, bringing greater prosperity to all those who live there—not only those who work for the colleges. These institutions promote lifesaving critical thinking, medical innovations and agricultural progress.
If universities band together, we have hope of supporting the continuation of American excellence in research and teaching, and of supporting the local economies that depend on strong and stable universities in their areas.
Broadside, inaccurate, attacks on higher education persecute our young people and therefore our future. Instead of continuing to waste our time attacking one another, we should focus on helping our amazing young people realize and amplify their unique talents. The Trump administration needs to stop ginning up divisions and let universities do what we do best: Help America and the world via truly free and often difficult research and teaching.