The impact of Trump's university crackdown

As the daily attacks continue hitting higher education in the U.S., it takes herculean effort to stay on top of the latest crisis. We have to be reminded that 4 years out of office, animated by the designs of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, allowed the time to put together the executive orders and loyalist appointees to impose Trump's agenda. We do not live in "normal times" when it comes to the state of the U.S. government.

The podcast "Why Trump's university crackdown is driving professors off U.S. campuses" provides excellent insight from a Yale professor who is leaving for Canada. Many of the statements in the podcast are deeply disturbing and the fact that they come from a professor who has already made the choice to leave the U.S. has to be acknowledged. However, the evidence even if only half warranted, is surely cause for concern.

One of the most shocking assertions is that the allegation of anti-Semitism in higher education is only a tool for taking control of higher education institutions. As the interviewee says, "The idea of protecting Jews is a pretext for abusing the rights of other people. Then, when people get infuriated that their rights are being abused their anger can be directed against the Jews who can then be skapegoated for the abuses of an abusive regime and there's nothing that this regime would relish more than watching that happen... we have to see that as a set-up."

The realization that "The administration is similarly using Jewish concerns to cloak more aggressive aims in its efforts to defund American universities" was noted in the April 4, 2025, Atlantic article by Yair Rosenberg. The article also quotes one of Trump's favorites, Stephen Miller, who very bluntly asserted at an October 2024 Trump rally,"America is for Americans and Americans only." V.P. Vance commented in 2021, prior to joining the MAGA movement, "I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country." The point of the Atlantic article was that American Jews are being used and many, if not most, are not going with it.