President Trump is trying to free America’s colleges of domination by radical leftists promoting wokeness, DEI considerations, and political correctness in faculty hiring, classroom teaching, and academic research. But through his demands and tactics, he may be trying to impose an equally pernicious form of thought control and political correctness. Everyone concerned with the welfare and future of America’s institutions of higher learning should hope that the assaults on our colleges and universities will lead to more color-blind, gender-neutral, and merit-based hiring, as well as more freedom of thought in teaching and research. We should not substitute one type of intellectual tyranny for another.
It is common in conservative and right-wing circles to claim that America’s colleges and universities are hotbeds for radical leftism, where affirmative action and DEI considerations lead to “reverse discrimination” against white males in hiring, and where professors and students who express any ideas contrary to the views of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are branded as pariahs and denied opportunities available to those who toe the leftist line.
Personally, I’ve always considered these charges to be exaggerated. As an undergraduate, I found that the most outspoken leftist history and political science faculty were also the most helpful and candid in directing students to sources of respectable conservative thought as well. When I applied for tenure and promotion at Tarleton my political science colleagues—all liberal Democrats—said they wanted me, a conservative Republican, to succeed and remain on the faculty for the sake of promoting intellectual diversity. And when I was my department’s head and hiring manager I felt no pressure to recruit anyone other than the best-qualified applicants for particular positions.
Yet while merit-based employment and open-mindedness in classroom teaching and academic research may be more common than President Trump believes, he does have a point about non-merit-based hiring practices and leftist bias at many American schools and especially at some of our elitist Ivy League universities. One need only recall the disgraceful responses of the Presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and other schools to the poisonous anti-Semitism expressed on American college campuses following Hamas’s unprovoked terrorist attack on Israel in October, 2023. And as Richard Hanania, founder and president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology has written in the May 24th edition of The Economist, too many schools have, in fact, used race and sex preferences in hiring and admissions. Fortunately, the U. S. Supreme Court’s ruling, in a case brought against Harvard and the University of North Carolina by Asian and Asian American students claiming anti-Asian bias in admissions, has begun to limit the pernicious effects of DEI student recruitment efforts.
Given that President Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who supported this anti-DEI decision, he deserves a major share of the credit for the fact that justice was done, not only for Asian and Asian-American students, but for everyone who believes in merit-based admissions programs.
But as Hanania also writes, President Trump may be going too far in his efforts to drive DEI and wokeness initiatives off college campuses. For example, He wants to put limits on foreign students and impose ideological tests as criteria for admission. One can rationally argue that ideological tests imposed by the right are as unfair and unjustified as those imposed by the left. Besides, foreign students may develop a greater appreciation for American values. Consider, for example, the roughly 275,000 Chinese students studying here. As the 5/31/25 edition of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Report notes, many may well be communist spies. But others could well develop an appreciation for American values and decide to stay here and lend their efforts to the continuing betterment of the United States. Or if they decide to return to China, they might someday be able to work to mitigate Chinese despotism at home.
Another bad idea discussed by Hanania is linking federal aid to the ideological composition of college and university faculties, with aid being limited to those schools whose faculties are more conservative, or at least moderate, than those of liberal/progressive-dominated schools. But there is no legal requirement that school faculties have any sort of ideologically balanced faculty to receive federal aid and no practical means of promoting more moderate or conservative faculty anyway. Most professors in my own two academic disciplines, political science and history, tend to be liberal Democrats; younger conservatives are more likely to pursue careers in business instead. At any rate, President Trump’s efforts to force colleges and universities to hire more conservative faculty will only end in failure and prove nothing other than ideological authoritarianism can be practiced by anyone on the political spectrum.
President Trump can best meet the needs of America for quality higher education by directing the Departments of Education and Justice to continue to work for gender-neutral, colorblind, and merit-based employment and admissions policies, and linking the availability of federal aid to schools to their promotion of such policies. But to replace the perceived authoritarianism of the left with the authoritarianism of the right will only perpetuate ideological domination of institutions, where in reality, the development of the free play of the mind should be their most important goal.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018 and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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