The graduate school that I attended in the late 60s has come out with a new motto: “Unafraid Since 1866.” I like to think that these words are a bulwark against the efforts of the Trump administration to control the policies and curricula of colleges and universities. However, the motto probably surfaced as a result of a review of the school’s eight historical marks of courage since its founding in 1866.
Some of the actions identified include: enrolled women during the heart of suffrage in 1895, opposed Japanese internment in 1942, protested the Vietnam war in 1969, founded the center for LGBTQ and gender studies in religion in 2000, and renewed commitment to an emerging generation of students of color in 2021. These actions could be listed under the rubric of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which the Trump administration chooses to demonize. My alma mater chooses to continue its policy actions, unafraid.
However, the threat from the Trump administration is real. If I was enrolling in college today, the withholding of government grant money from colleges with DEI policies would mean that the financial aid grant I received in 1968 would be problematic today.
The Trump administration is implementing two new qualifiers that colleges and universities must meet in order to be eligible for government grant money. One is an earnings test. If a degree program cannot prepare a graduate to earn more than the median salary for working adults aged 25 to 34, then the college should abandon the program. For example, David Klein, the chief operating officer of the New York Film Academy wrote, “A high school graduate entering welding will almost certainly out-earn a film school-trained director or a Juilliard-trained violinist in year two; however, the director’s and violinist’s contributions to our economy and society are no less vital.”
Jordan Matsudaira, the chief economist at the Education Department under the Biden administration has said, “there are a lot of programs that are producing value that just don’t show up in people’s paychecks.” Focusing on the primacy of earnings potential is subordinate to the higher purpose of a college education — that is to gain knowledge, think, evaluate and make informed decisions.
The other policy change is the proposal to strip private schools of their tax-exempt status “if they provide targeted help to students based on their race.” It’s the latest attempt by the Trump administration to pressure schools and colleges to weed out diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Trump officials have used Civil Rights-era laws to unwind the policies, saying they discriminate against white and Asian American students.
The problem is the Trump administration misunderstands schools’ policy of DEI. The goal of diversity is an attempt to include as many voices as possible in the education process. Equity is an effort to level the playing field among the diversity of students that includes those disadvantaged, for example, because of skin color, ethnicity or poverty. Providing extra help for the disadvantaged is not favoritism, it is creating fairness among the advantaged and the disadvantaged.
In May, Yale’s Committee on Trust in Higher Education acknowledged that actions within its academic standards and admission policies have badly eroded public trust. In July, in response to the presidents of Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis, a committee of leading scholars documented the politicization of the humanities and humanistic social sciences, according to a letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
Colleges and universities are not to be extensions of policies of the government. They are places set aside from the busyness of daily life where one can take time to read, attend lectures and discuss with other students. It is a time to gain information, ponder, imagine, debate, learn from the past, prepare for the future. Studies in science, philosophy, humanities or engineering are platforms for new and innovative ideas, discoveries and actions. Education institutions are places where students, faculty and administration may consider and test the most bazaar and the most mundane viewpoints, unafraid.
Government policies are not to be leverage for change in the mission and action of colleges and universities. They are only ideas to be examined and considered among the great diversity of thought on the college campus. If there is fear to be had, it is that the Trump administration’s points of view may be exposed as examined, tried and found wanting by the disciplines of good scholarship.
John Buttrick writes from his Vermont Folk Rocker in his Concord home, Minds Crossing.