Across the country, academia is under siege. Universities are no longer merely caught in the crossfire of partisan culture wars — they are the targets of a coordinated political campaign to silence dissent and reshape public discourse.
Entire academic departments are under fire for presenting perspectives that diverge from the current administration’s agenda, with some now facing demands of academic receivership. The federal government has begun withholding funds from universities that refuse to fall in line for a range of issues: $175 million from the University of Pennsylvania over its support of transgender athletes; $400 million from Columbia University in retaliation for the campus protests in response to the war in Gaza. The hold in grants from these universities has been coupled with general spending slashes from sweeping executive orders and proposed budget cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency.
This is not politics as usual. It is an attempt to undermine the very foundations of higher education, and it follows a historical pattern that should alarm us all. Fascist regimes have always gone after the intellectual class first. From Franco’s Spain to Pinochet’s Chile, universities were viewed as breeding grounds for subversion, and the response was swift: professors purged, students imprisoned, critical thought crushed. While we are not yet facing firing squads, the signs are disturbingly familiar — vilify the intelligentsia, criminalize dissent and use state power to enforce ideological conformity.
We are already seeing this unfold on U.S. campuses. International students attending Columbia, Georgetown, Cornell and Tufts have been detained and faced with deportation for their pro-Palestinian activism. This is a clear violation of free speech principles, justified only by the premise that noncitizens are entitled to fewer First Amendment protections than their domestically born counterparts.
These students are accused of posing foreign policy risks, sometimes under dubious pretenses. In one case, Yunseo Chung, a lawful permanent resident and Columbia student, faces the threat of ICE detention after participating in a campus protest and posting flyers accusing the university of complicity in genocide — actions that federal authorities claimed threatened national interests.
Faculty who question U.S. foreign policy or teach racial justice are harassed, doxxed and publicly branded as radicals. Even UNC’s Middle Eastern Studies Department was pressured by the first Trump administration to revise its curriculum following allegations that it failed to present certain religious groups in a sufficiently positive light. The classroom — intended to be a space for dialogue and critical engagement — has become a battleground in the administration’s broader effort to control culture through coercion.
This escalating climate of intimidation has instilled a pervasive culture of fear within academia, where scholars and students are increasingly cautious about engaging in controversial discourse. This atmosphere leads to self-censorship and a reluctance to explore contentious topics, undermining the structural principles of academic freedom.
Fortunately amid this escalating assault on academia, resistance is growing. Faculty and students across the country are mounting legal challenges against the Trump administration’s actions. In Manhattan, the Faculty Members' Union has filed a lawsuit protesting the withdrawal of $400 million in federal grants, arguing that they ignored legally mandated procedures for cutting institutional funding. Yunseo Chung’s attorneys filed a lawsuit last Monday attempting to halt the detention and the "pattern and practice of targeting individuals associated with protests for Palestinian rights for immigration enforcement.”
More lawsuits are expected to come, and they may represent one of the most potent tools of resistance available. What we are witnessing is not only a political crisis, but a constitutional one. In the face of erosion of our academic freedom and institutional independence we must form a united front — students, faculty, scholars and university leadership — against the further politicization of education. That means joint lawsuits, and when necessary, refusing to comply with directives that violate our ethical and constitutional obligations. If we don’t draw the line now, we risk forfeiting intellectual freedom and further descending into fascism.
