The beatings will continue

Academia is in very serious trouble

The big story in academia over the last two months (or so) is that the Trump administration is taking a sledgehammer to academic funding. The first and (so far) most impactful blow was cutting “indirect” funding in grants for scientific research. This is the funding that doesn’t go to cover the direct costs of the study being done, but various costs associated with keeping a lab up and running. Defenders of indirect costs say that these are essential funding. “Keeping the lights on in the building” is not a reasonable line item when you’re talking about the costs associated with running rats through a maze, but you can’t run many rats through a maze if there are no lights on in the building. Opponents of indirect costs point out that money is fungible and accuse the revenue from these indirect costs of being just a big slush fund that universities can pull from. I think both sides raise perfectly legitimate points here. There are real costs associated with running a lab that are just a kind of overhead that needs to be covered nonetheless. But the fact that several universities are now shutting down PhD admissions for all subjects, not just the sciences, in response to the indirect funding cuts shows that the funding for indirect costs was subsidizing lots of other university operations. Still, both sides to this debate agree: these cuts were deep. They are making a real difference.

Nor is this the only attack on university funding that we’re likely to see over the next four years. Trump has been in power for 2 months, and we have another 46 to go. They’ve identified and strangled off one source of funding for university funding by the federal government. There are others. And any reasonable observer will have to view any such funding streams as under dire threat. The cuts to university funding that we’re seeing right now are just Round 1. The beatings will continue.

I cannot help but indulge an “I told you so.” I argued in 2023 that a future Republican administration was going to attack academia for partisan political reasons. Academia has dedicated itself explicitly to advancing left-wing political projects, and yet they still expected to receive funding from conservative governments for those ends. That was always an unrealistic and untenable expectation, as we are now seeing. I think everything in that post holds up perfectly. My only regret is that I didn’t publish it much sooner, since the thoughts I expressed there had been bouncing around in my head since around the end of the first Trump administration. Not that it would have done much good, of course. A few people read this blog now (thank you to everyone who takes the time), but I don’t pretend to have any real influence.

Still, with what little voice I have, I must shout. Because things are going to get worse. Over the next couple years, the Trump administration will come after university funding from angle they can. The beatings will continue.

Perhaps the situation is not so grave. We may all hope that the Republicans lose resoundingly in 2028, and the Democrats come back to office. At that point, they will restore university funding, and all will be well again. We have but to weather the storm.

This is optimistic in three ways. First, the GOP attacks on American democracy are real. I am not an alarmist; I do think there will be free and fair elections in 2028. But the odds of democratic backsliding are higher under Trump than they have ever been before. And even if American democracy is as strong as ever in 2028, the Republicans could just win again. Either through democratic or undemocratic means, there’s a good chance that the Democrats do not meaningfully come back into power any time soon.

Second, when the Democrats do come back to power, there is no big reset button they can push that will cause things to go back to the way they were. For one thing, restarting the funding streams that the Republicans are attacking now will be a substantive undertaking. The debt continues to zoom upward, and pressure will be increasingly placed on Medicaid, and even Medicare and Social Security. Shoring up entitlements will take higher priority for the Democrats than restoring indirect funding on NIH grants. And even if funding is fully restored, people will have been laid off, departments will have closed, admissions pipelines shut off. The institutional damage from those cuts will be real and lasting. Rebuilding will take time and effort.

And third, and most importantly, we will be very lucky if we are given the time to rebuild because academia is now a political football. The Democrats are academics’ political patrons, and the Republicans our political foes. Assume the rosiest outcome to all of the above worries: The Democrats take unified control of the government in 2029, they restore funding, and universities busily get to work rebuilding the institutional capacity that was kneecapped by the Republicans under Trump. All of those efforts will be undone next time Republicans take power. Funding will be zero’d out again. The beatings will continue.

Here is the bottom line. Simple, incontestable fact: ACADEMIA CANNOT CONTINUE TO FUNCTION WITH ANYTHING LIKE ITS CURRENT FUNDING MODEL AS LONG AS IT REMAINS A PARTISAN POLITICAL INSTITUTION. And a corollary: ACADEMIA WILL NOT RECEIVE THE KIND OF SUPPORT THAT IT HAS ENJOYED SINCE THE GI BILL UNLESS IT REFORMS TO BECOME THE KIND OF INSTITUTION THAT REPUBLICANS CAN HAPPILY SUPPORT. As with my previous post on the subject, I hasten to add that this does not mean that I think that any of this is good. I’m not saying what should happen. I’m saying what will happen.

And as a result, I think it’s important to think seriously about what it will take to make academia the kind of institution that Republicans can happily support. Part of this is eliminating the obvious ideological slant of much university work, from both the administration and the faculty. This means both closing down many (although not necessarily all) institutions committed to advancing left-wing political projects, and also establishing some institutions committed to advancing right-wing political projects so that some measure of parity between left-wing and right-wing political projects is established. Some measure. I’m not arguing for total parity between right and left. But the conservative tokenism of the recent past won’t cut it.

This will also involve a more or less explicit push for pro-conservative hiring. There needs to be a landslide of job ads for professors with specialization in various areas of conservative thought. This will go some way towards balancing out the vicious partisan slant of the current university faculty. For every job ad that was posted last year that advertised a position that specialized in de-colonial studies, we need to have a post next year that advertises a position specializing in western religious traditions. One year of conservative hiring won’t cancel out the influence of decades of progressive hiring, but it would be a start. And half-measures won’t do.

So long as I’m putting my hand directly on the stove, let’s talk about what kinds of scholarship are done in universities. For a long time, commentators on the right have lambasted the scholarship produced by various “studies” departments as being not only overtly partisan, but intellectually thin to the point of self-parody. The term “authoethnography” has become something of a punch line on the right. And I know for a fact that many academics outside of the critical humanities agree wholeheartedly that those areas are a joke. They’ve just been happy to go along to get along. “Their hearts are in the right place,” “who am I to criticize a field that I am not an expert in,” “I’ll just do my work over here.”

But now we see the cost. The work that biologists are doing is intricately enmeshed with the work that critical studies scholars are doing because the indirect funds that biologists request as part of their grants are keeping the lights on in the critical studies departments as well as in the biology lab. Biologists cannot continue to do their work in peace if the GOP is willing to cut biology funding to land a blow on critical studies. If, as a biologist, you sincerely believe in the value of the critical humanities, then maintain solidarity and show your support. But if you think it’s all hogwash, now is the time to force the issue.

If we want to regain the support of Republicans, we need a complete reorientation of academia to the political center. Not a fresh coat of paint on the old structures, not new job titles for everyone in the DEI department which has been renamed the “Department of Inclusive Excellence,” fooling no one. Cut off the left wing, and build up the right wing. Now. Aggressively. Academia doesn’t need to be a center-right or even purely centrist-institution. But it cannot be at the vanguard of the progressive left. It honestly can’t even be close to that vanguard. There must be a clean break, or else we will not regain the support of Republicans.

Is any of this realistic? Of course not. What I’m suggesting is not only a complete reshaping of how much of academia sees itself. I’m suggesting that that reshaping be done in response to the force wielded by the Trump administration which is trying to force this particular outcome (or else the complete destruction of academia, whatever is easier). Academics will resist out of a pure sense of defiance. And I sympathize with that sense of defiance. While I think many of the reforms I’m gesturing at are good on the merits, I vastly prefer that they be implemented by the academic community themselves, as a result of rational deliberation about the nature of the university and our roles as teachers and researchers. It is odious in the extreme that these reforms are being forced down our throats by, of all people, Donald Fucking Trump. And as distasteful as I find this, those who are unsympathetic to these reforms will find it entirely inconceivable.

I’ve tried to stick to the descriptive rather than the normative here. While I support reform, I do so on the basis of my confident predictions about what is coming. So let me conclude with one final prediction: Serious reform will not happen. Academia will continue to make itself unacceptable to the Republican party.

The beatings will continue.

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Edit note: This is inspiring a bit of discussion, so I want to make a few points clear by dropping the rhetorical flourishes:

The reforms mentioned here are, in my estimation, the only way to restore a policy of bipartisan funding for academia.

I am absolutely committed to academic freedom. This must be a faculty-led initiative.

If faculty find this all too bitter a pill to swallow, particularly because it is being forced on us by odious people, they will choose principled opposition. This is precisely what I predict will happen, and honestly, I sympathize.

Consequently, our funding will be indefinitely ruined, to the great detriment of both the academy and society in general. I see no way to avoid ruin.