Universities Must Become More Political — Not Less

The academy is under attack.

On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump won not only the Electoral College but also the popular vote. His second term will likely bring the anti-intellectualism which has battered Harvard all year — by the likes of Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-N.Y.), Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), and Christopher F. Rufo — to the White House.

We must reckon with the popular mandate of this anti-intellectual movement or we may well see its most dangerous proposals become reality.

Trump has claimed he will fire university accreditors and replace them with his ideological allies. He has proposed the creation of a virtual, federally funded university free of “wokeness.”

Trump’s running mate, Vice President-elect JD Vance, is no better: In 2021, Vance delivered a speech titled “The Universities Are the Enemy,” in which he argued we must “aggressively attack” higher education. Vance has also lauded Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Victor Orbán, for kneecapping the nation’s universities.

Colleges and universities are inextricably intertwined with the fabric of a democratic society. Not only are they funded by federal tax dollars — when they enter into public discourse through research and their other vital activities, they play an important role in framing and informing conversations on issues of national importance.

These attacks should worry all of us. For those who already believe in the importance of higher education, it is tempting to dismiss this movement out of hand. But the popular mandate for anti-intellectualism should force us to ask how the academy must change to become the kind of institution this country needs.

Reckoning with this mandate for anti-intellectualism puts the university on the defensive. The academy must transform how it approaches its work to defend itself and its role in democratic society.

As they defend their role in public life, it will be tempting for universities to highlight the less political aspects of their work. Touting developments in the natural and physical sciences or the discovery of new technologies is an easy way to demonstrate how society writ large benefits from the existence of the ivory tower.

But universities must not shy away from the more pressing questions society asks of them. The academy’s more overtly political work is equally important to society, even if that importance is harder for some to see.

This new approach must involve theorizing the alternative to the liberalism that half of America has disregarded. Trump’s election is but one instance of the fall of liberal democracy to right-wing populism. In Germany, the far-right is gaining power, posing an existential threat to the system of liberal democracy which succeeded fascism in 1945. Twenty-four years ago in Russia, post-1989 democracy gave way to Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime. Hungarian democracy is currently in the stranglehold of the aforementioned strongman, Orbán. Time and again, the world has watched liberalism fail to fight off right-wing populism.

This is not to discount the value of liberalism. It offers ideals that are in many ways noble and just. But before we can realize dreams of justice, we must be in a place to enact it.

The university has theorized a liberalism that continues to fail, but it has yet to generate a viable alternative. This is not, though, a reason to give up on the project of higher learning altogether. Rather, it is a reason for universities to embrace the challenge of theorizing a new political alternative that responds to the country’s call for fundamental change while avoiding the xenophobia, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and so on of the far right.

Project 2025 proposes an end to federal funding of “area studies” programs because they produce research “counter to [American] interests.” If the right gets its way, universities would do away with their more controversial — yet equally essential — fields of research. At Harvard, this would likely mean saying goodbye to departments like African and African American Studies, East Asian Studies, and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality — precisely the kind of work that is needed to theorize a more just future.

Anti-intellectuals cannot have their way. Universities must continue to fund humanistic and social-scientific research, especially in cases where this scholarship is overtly political. It is time for a new era of thought that can fight back against the far right. Now more than ever, scholars must be vocal and relentless advocates for their most political ideas.

The answer to Trump’s inevitable attacks on higher education is not to become less political but more so. The academy must embark on a new mission: to demonstrate why its ideas should guide us. Researchers in area studies and theories of race and gender, among others, must find new ways to show why the work they do matters. Scholars of political thought must theorize new ways to bring us to a place where theories of justice can not only be thought but realized.

Yes, this new approach will change the nature of the thought the academy produces, but for the better. The academy must defend itself, and the best defense is a strong offense.

​​Allison P. Farrell ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Leverett House.