Trump is launching America’s version of the Cultural Revolution

There is no area in which the United States’ global dominance is more total than higher education. With about 4 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of its gross domestic product, America has 72 percent of the world’s 25 top universities by one ranking and 64 percent by another. But this crucial U.S. competitive advantage is being undermined by the Trump administration’s war on colleges. Hat tip to the New York Times’s Michelle Goldberg for raising this issue as well.

“We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country. … The professors are the enemy,” said JD Vance during a speech to the National Conservatism Conference in 2021. The administration has put those words into action. The most dramatic assault has been financial: a freezing or massive reduction in research grants and loans from the federal government. Some of these efforts are under court review, but the cumulative impact could be billions of dollars in cuts to basic research, much of it disrupting ongoing projects and programs.

To read the full article, please click here.