Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance at a rally || Photo credit: Getty Images
On the morning of November 6, the United States woke up to find that Donald Trump would be the 47th president of the country. The news was not entirely a surprise. The night before, as polls began closing around the country, it was clear that the results were leaning red. Since the official announcement, universities nationwide began bracing and preparing for the second Trump administration and what it would mean for higher education and academic freedom in the United States.
Higher education in the US saw several assaults from the first Trump administration. As president, Trump issued new Title IX rules in May 2020 that supposedly bolstered due process protections for those accused of assault. Victims’ rights advocates strongly criticized the new regulations, arguing that they made it more difficult to report cases of harassment. They also argued that the new procedures made the victims vulnerable, retraumatizing them in the process. Trump also appointed conservative justices to the US Supreme Court, enabling the court to strike down affirmative action. The removal of affirmative action in college admissions in the United States has led to noticeable changes in student demographics at many institutions, significantly impacting diversity and inclusivity. At institutions like MIT and Amherst College, the number of Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous students in the incoming class dropped sharply following the Supreme Court’s decision. For instance, Black students at MIT fell from 15% to 5%, while Amherst saw an 8-percentage-point decline in Black students and a 4-point drop for Latinx students.
The president-elect has also reiterated his campaign pledge to eliminate the Department of Education, which has gained support from several Republican state officials. This plan, laid out in Project 2025, the far-right blueprint for reorganizing American governance, has been tied to the Trump campaign. Trump has picked Linda McMahon, a business executive and a major Republican donor, to lead the Department of Education. Best known for being the chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which she co-founded with her husband, McMahon has had no experience working in education. Critics have argued that Trump’s choice of McMahon is based entirely on her fierce loyalty to him and not her qualifications. This appointment comes at a time when education in the US has faced significant challenges, with many colleges and universities either shrinking or closing. School districts across the country are dealing with budget shortfalls, and struggling to catch up after the setbacks caused by the pandemic.
Leading up to the election, Trump and his choice for Vice President JD Vance have made concerning speeches, attacking universities and professors. Trump has repeatedly said that American universities are run and staffed by “Marxist maniacs” who threaten free speech. He threatened to punish universities that don’t crack down on pro-Palestinian speech and deport international students who engage in campus protests threatening academic freedom on university campuses. Vance once stated in a speech, “If any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities.” He has also called professors “the enemy.”
There are also concerns that Trump would overturn President Biden’s Title IX rules, which were only finalized this past April and went into effect in August. These new rules ended the live hearing requirement in sexual harassment cases and added several new protections, including clarifications on the protection of LGBTQ+ and protecting pregnant and parenting students from discrimination. The new rules also introduced protection for transgender students, which included allowing individuals to use bathrooms that match their gender identity, which sparked the most backlash from Republicans. Trump vowed, at a rally in New York, days before the election, to get “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.”
One of the major concerns for universities has been the potential dangers this administration poses for international students and professors. Trump has pledged to enact the largest deportation operation in history, using the military and promises mass deportations of the undocumented as well as foreign citizens who are in the US legally, including students from Muslim-majority nations and possibly other foreign nationals. Trump has repeatedly stated that he will crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, and would expel student demonstrators from the United States. There is also the possibility that there will be renewed efforts to end DACA, a program for undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children, which Trump tried to eliminate in his first term. There is also the fear that Federal officials might deport international students and possibly university and college faculty and staff who are foreign nationals on H-1B visas. During his first administration, Trump banned nationals of several predominantly Muslim nations, as well as North Korea and Venezuela, from visiting the US. During his first presidency, he also proposed some limitations on student visas. Since his electoral win, universities in the US have been emailing international students and staff advising them to return to campus before Trump takes office on January 20, amid concerns over his plans for mass deportations.
These apprehensions have come at a time when there are increasing concerns about academic freedom in the US. A recent Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research report found that over 90 percent of faculty strongly or somewhat agree that academic freedom is under threat. The survey, undertaken shortly before the elections, had roughly 1100 respondents–professors at 739 public and 376 private nonprofit colleges and universities. Nearly half of the respondents somewhat or strongly agreed that they were refraining from extramural speech due to the situation on their own campus and/or the broader political environment. More than a third said they weren’t communicating with students in or out of class about things they previously might have. And 15 percent said they are not researching or publishing on topics they otherwise would have.
Endangered Scholars Worldwide (ESW) will continue to monitor the state of academic freedom in the United States as it transitions to the Trump-Vance administration. ESW condemns the statements made by the President-elect and Vice President-elect, and the ongoing wave of administrative investigations that have been directed at faculty members and students for expressing pro-Palestinian views. We further condemn the political pressure placed on higher education institutions. We call on the global community dedicated to upholding human rights to join our call.
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