Write an article about Universities in the crosshairs | FMT .Organize the content with appropriate headings and subheadings (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6), Retain any existing tags from
US president Donald Trump’s campaign against America’s elite universities has reached its apotheosis with his attacks on Harvard. While other universities have scrambled to negotiate with the administration behind the scenes, Harvard has taken a more principled stand, resisting Trump’s attempts to undermine academic freedom – though it has recently restarted talks with the government.
The plan to target America’s leading universities can be traced back to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s second presidency. It accuses universities of engaging in left-wing indoctrination and advancing “woke” ideology through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes. Its goal is to reshape higher education by eliminating these influences.
Of course, this is not the first time American universities have found themselves in politicians’ crosshairs. In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a crusade against academic institutions, accusing them of being sympathetic to socialist or communist ideologies and harbouring anti-American faculty.
McCarthy subpoenaed professors from both private and public universities – including Harvard, Columbia, and the University of California – to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
He also pressured universities to fire or deny tenure to academics with past Communist Party affiliations and those who, when questioned, invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Some institutions quickly capitulated, pre-emptively laying off staff to avoid scrutiny. The University of California went even further, adopting a “loyalty oath” and firing dozens of professors who did not sign it.
By contrast, Columbia refused to dismiss faculty solely for invoking the Fifth Amendment, declined to provide names to HUAC, and maintained its academic independence.
In other countries, attacks on universities have come from the political left. During China’s Cultural Revolution, professors, researchers, and administrators were denounced, humiliated, imprisoned, and even killed. Academic curricula were re-engineered to reflect Maoist ideology, and “bourgeois” or “foreign-influenced” research was purged.
Institutions like Peking University and Tsinghua University suspended classes for years, and all research universities were shut down until 1970. Entrance exams were abolished, and student admissions were based on class background and political loyalty rather than merit.
Historically, forcing academic institutions into submission has been an effective way to prevent them from challenging the legitimacy of a leader or political movement. In sixteenth-century Oxford, supporters of Catholic Queen Mary I burned Protestant bishops at the stake for refusing to sign loyalty oaths.
Nazi Germany purged Jewish and “disloyal” academics. More recently, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has overseen the dismissal of thousands of academics accused of supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or being affiliated with the late cleric Fethullah Gülen.
Leading research universities are particularly vulnerable to such attacks because they amass considerable resources while others are struggling. This has made them targets of initiatives like Project 2025, which proposes capping university resources and taxing endowments – measures that could limit their ability to produce cutting-edge research.
Moreover, universities attract foreigners, with leading academic institutions competing for top talent from around the world. That makes universities convenient targets when governments want to curb immigration.
For example, the British government has proposed a 6% levy on the income that universities receive from international students, estimating it would reduce their numbers by 14,000 in the short term and by 7,000 annually thereafter.
The problem is that attacking leading universities could have far-reaching economic consequences. In the UK, research-intensive universities support hundreds of thousands of jobs and deliver more than 8.50 pounds (US$11.70) in value for every pound of public funding. More broadly, the higher-education sector generates roughly 265 billion pounds per year in economic activity.
These benefits are hardly unique to the UK. A study covering 78 countries has found that a 10% increase in the number of universities in a given region will on average boost its gross domestic product per capita by 0.4%. Empirical studies also link universities to increased innovation and patent registrations. It’s easy to see why China invested US$247 billion in its universities in 2023.
Elite universities are also accused of perpetuating privilege. Harvard economist Raj Chetty has shown that top US universities heavily favour applicants from wealthy families.
Between 2009 and 2014, for example, 43% of white students admitted to Harvard University were recruited athletes, legacy admissions, children of faculty and staff, or applicants on the dean’s interest list – typically those whose parents or relatives donated to the university.
By contrast, just 16% of Black, Latino, and Asian-American students entered through these channels. This disparity is overlooked by those attacking DEI policies.
Even admissions processes at universities committed to selecting the most capable students are often distorted by wealthy families’ efforts to secure their children’s acceptance. “Operation Varsity Blues,” for example, uncovered extensive bribery and fraud in US college admissions.
In China, authorities frequently crack down on cheating in university-entrance exams. And in France, the rise of private preparatory schools (prépas) has undermined Charles de Gaulle’s vision of enabling students from all backgrounds to enter public service through the École nationale d’administration (ENA).
In an effort to revive that project, President Emmanuel Macron shut down the institution in 2021, replacing it with the Institut national du service public.
The UK offers a more encouraging example. Oxford and Cambridge have adopted contextualised admissions processes that evaluate applicants’ achievements relative to their educational and socioeconomic backgrounds.
As a result, both universities have identified many high-potential candidates who did not attend private schools and come from historically underrepresented groups.
The Trump administration’s primary justification for targeting American universities is their alleged failure to curb anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias. But another agenda appears to be at play, at least among some of Trump’s advisers, with many historical precedents: using academic institutions to legitimise reactionary ideas through coercion and repression.
Throughout history, universities have faced challenges by politicians and have found ways to withstand them and emerge stronger – becoming more inclusive, more globally connected, more focussed on their public mission.
The challenge today is not simply to resist such pressures, but to demonstrate clearly why open, global universities matter: to help us hold governments accountable, create space for disagreement, bring evidence into public debate, and equip people to tackle complex problems.
Ngaire Woods is dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
and integrate them seamlessly into the new content without adding new tags. Include conclusion section and FAQs section at the end. do not include the title. it must return only article i dont want any extra information or introductory text with article e.g: ” Here is rewritten article:” or “Here is the rewritten content:”