How Universities Can Respond to Trump's Assault on Higher Education

(Edited for expanded content Feb 17, 2025 10:30AM)

The Trump administration, just weeks into office, has already made significant moves threatening universities. It has banned Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, which many universities have heavily invested in, and launched investigations into alleged antisemitism in response to pro-Palestinian protests. More importantly, it has reduced funding for elite research institutions by halting grant reviews and cutting federal indirect costs for NIH grants to 15%--a level far below the cost of receiving a grant.

These actions are consistent with the goals outlined in Project 2025. Trump's admiration for authoritarian leaders who challenge academic institutions, such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary, suggests that universities could face even more severe attacks on their sovereignty.

Trump has explicitly targeted universities as hubs of free speech, intellectual inquiry, and liberal values. Project 2025 hints at further measures like cutting financial aid for low-income students. Faculty members who criticize the Trump administration or its policies could face harassment or threats of physical violence.

Fortunately, Trump’s methods are somewhat predictable, and a proactive strategy can help universities defend their autonomy. Claudia Sheinbaum's approach—mobilizing all available resources, defining non-negotiable issues, and engaging in tough negotiations—offers a potential path forward.

The Rule-of-Law Crisis

Before addressing specific responses, we must recognize the broader rule-of-law crisis. Vice President Vance has suggested that the government may ignore judicial rulings, which raises concerns about the enforcement of court decisions. The Trump administration has already defied at least one court ruling, and it is unclear who would enforce contempt rulings, given the administration's control over many law enforcement agencies.

The Democratic Party's focus on legal action against Trump may simply be ignored. Universities must therefore not rely solely on the courts but instead actively shape public perception to secure institutional stability. They must also recognize that their very existence is a fiction that can be re-written--whether monetary, legal, or even a physical university with real assets, institutions are social constructs. TikTok was a real company with real assets that was dissolved by the judiciary and then saved (even if temporarily) by the executive branch.

Conventional Tactics

Mexico’s response to tariff threats offers a valuable lesson in negotiation tactics, particularly in combining a fearsome response to an admission that things can be done better. To respond effectively, universities should:

?Strengthen Coalitions and Interdisciplinary Teams

Universities should form alliances with legal experts, political strategists, and peer institutions to create a unified front. A coalition approach makes it more difficult to single out any one institution for political attacks while also enabling resource-sharing and coordinated messaging. Given the potential erosion of the rule of law, relying solely on judicial remedies seems unwise. It makes sense for a leading university like Harvard or Columbia to play a leadership role and for others to sign on.

?Develop a Clear and Repetitive Rhetorical Response

Public opinion will play a decisive role in shaping the fate of universities. Recognizing that such institutions are constructs helps us understand how to strengthen these constructs. While academic freedom and free speech remain strong rhetorical tools, more effective framing is needed.

For example, Trump’s team has weaponized the concept of "cancel culture" while actively engaging in similar tactics against dissenters, including Republicans critical of the administration. Universities could highlight this hypocrisy and others to shift public discourse, turning cancel culture back on the administration.

When it comes to single complex issues like indirect funding, tying abstract concepts to tangible benefits (such as research on cancer treatments) will help make the stakes more relatable to the broader public. We don't have to call it indirect funding. We can call it cancer funding. Enlightenment does not preclude rhetoric.

?Turn Rhetorical Responses into Public Campaigns

Universities should invest in professional public relations strategies, treating their response as a comprehensive communications campaign rather than a series of isolated statements. Engaging advertising firms alongside legal teams will enhance their ability to shape public narratives.

? Foster Institutional Resilience

Anticipating potential crises and preparing preemptive responses will help universities deflect rhetorical and political attacks. By equipping administrators, faculty, and students with clear guidelines for responding to challenges, institutions can maintain stability and credibility under pressure.

? Mobilizing Key Demographics and Stakeholders

Universities should leverage their existing communities to build support. Platforms like TikTok are particularly effective for mobilizing younger audiences, while faculty are good at organizing, and alumni can be valuable advocates. Trustees and regents also hold considerable influence and should be engaged in offensive efforts. All hands must be on deck.

? Target Swing Voters and Strategic Audiences

Targeting swing voters through well-crafted public campaigns will be crucial in shaping the broader political landscape. Universities must tailor their messaging for different audiences, using the most effective platforms for each demographic (Instagram for Millennials, Facebook for Xers). Going for the swing voters has the direct benefit of disempowering the administration and the indirect benefit of increasing negotiating strength.

? Make Administrative Efficiency an Emergency

Administrative overhead has taken a toll on university budgets and faculty morale. Confronted with training requirements, certifications, reporting requirements, increasingly difficult Institutional Review Board evaluations (geared toward institutional legal protections rather than research participant protections), and burdensome expense reimbursement procedures, faculty are increasingly dissatisfied with their jobs. University admin has responded with initiatives to change the culture around meetings (shorter, less frequent), committee work, and other tangential burdens. But less work has been done across universities, which fund huge redundancies in grant administration, IT development (think cloud services), institutional review boards, and even committee work.

The private sector already offers cheap solutions to some of these problems (e.g., Western IRB). There would certainly offer more if there were signals that universities wished to outsource.

Unfortunately, a big driver of these costs has come from increasing federal requirements. The Trump administration has chosen to reduce personnel while leaving the administrative burden in place, creating an emergency situation.

Meanwhile, workflow automation software developed for universities (think SAP) has increased, rather than decreased, the administrative burden for the highest cost employees--faculty. This is because these firms do not have expertise in user experience and do not have the resources to develop sophisticated back end systems.

However, if universities work together, it may be possible to build better software solutions by leaning into higher value developers and standardizing the back end systems. A billion dollar contract for a single solution is likely to spark more competition and innovation than one thousand $1 million contracts for bespoke products. Universities would, of course, need to adjust their own rules to the norm rather than require bespoke software.

Certain tasks (grant administration, reimbursement, procurement) are similar across universities and common tasks can be centralized across all universities.

By making emergency moves toward increasing operational efficiency, it will be possible to free resources for other priorities.

? View Threats as Opportunities If a professor comes under attack by the right, particularly if the professor has received threats of violence, every effort must be made to defend and provide security for that faculty member. This spend must be made public and fed into a coherent rhetoric of defending America against political violence. This is just one example of how universities might turn existential threats into opportunities.

Unconventional Responses

The Trump administration has studied populist governance strategies, so universities must think beyond conventional tactics. Understanding the administration's ideological influences and vulnerabilities will be key to mounting an effective response.

? Publicly Appease, Substantively Resist

Universities can reduce direct confrontation with the administration by making calculated public concessions while quietly advancing legal and institutional challenges. Elevating conservative voices within academia can serve as both a genuine commitment to ideological diversity and a protective strategy against political attacks. Admitting that administrative efficiency is needed is a great way to provide the administration with fodder needed to declare victory after negotiations are done.

? Strategically Accept Mutually Beneficial Solutions

Some policy changes, such as profit-sharing grant models forwarded by the Heritage Foundation, could be leveraged to align university interests with shifting funding priorities. For instance, if federally funded research leads to government cost savings (e.g., through improved healthcare efficiency), universities could negotiate a share of those financial benefits.

This potentially lucrative idea was forwarded by Heritage, suggesting it may be possible to achieve concessions or divide opinion on the right while also generating revenue. These types of ideas can also serve as concessions during negotiations with the administration.

As a word of caution, however, this was the strategy used by Obama to introduce the Affordable Care Act, which passed only with Democratic votes. Obama might have been better served by simply quickly expanding Medicaid before any of his senators died. Still, openness to conservative ideas will be important for deflecting attacks.

? Build Academic Empires

At present, founders and inventors are best advised to circumvent university support of their enterprise. Intellectual property is best managed by extramural private capital, which is more administratively efficient, affords more autonomy, and much better returns. University endowments often include alternative investments in funds that support engineering, biotechnology, and information technology startups. These endowments should consider running their own venture capital funds--staffed with experienced investors--that are focused on faculty intellectual property as part of their investment portfolio.

? Exploring International Relocation

In an extreme scenario, universities could negotiate with foreign governments to move their official headquarters abroad while maintaining U.S. campuses. While this might seem drastic, it would serve as a powerful signal to policymakers and the public. Many universities already have international campuses, extensive foreign investments, and a globally mobile faculty. Many countries already host branches of American universities, and these could serve as new headquarters. As with all of the other solutions, coordinated efforts across universities would be best.