The article predictably enlists a cast of familiar right-wing voices to make the case for British universities to follow Trump’s lead.
US universities are under siege as Donald Trump and his allies escalate their attacks on the institutions they accuse of harbouring anti-Semitism and pushing ideological indoctrination.
And the crackdown hasn’t stopped at cultural grievances. It has extended into immigration, targeting foreign students by revoking their visas and legal status.
Critics argue these moves are less about addressing discrimination and more about advancing an authoritarian agenda. Many see these measures as part of a broader, longstanding conservative hostility toward higher education, fuelled by discomfort with liberal-leaning views of professors, progressive student activism, and the presence of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives on campuses.
Speaking to Channel 4 News, Harvard Law Professor Andrew Crespo warned of the deeper motivations behind the campaign against universities.
“This isn’t about anti-Semitism,” Crespo argued. “It’s about authoritarianism.”
“When Donald Trump ran for president, he said that he was going to try to break the backs of American universities because he didn’t like what they were teaching. He claimed that we were all Marxist leftists, and that he wanted to make sure that what was taught in American universities was what he wanted to be said, that his message would be the syllabus, that these universities would become ‘Trump University’ as opposed to Harvard University.”
Crespo pointed out that across history and geography, institutions like universities, the press, and the courts serve as bulwarks against authoritarianism, and that’s why they’re being targeted.
You might expect such an authoritarian assault on academic freedom would find little appeal in Britain. Not so, at least if coverage in the Daily Mail is anything to go by.
“Britain ‘needs to follow Donald Trump’s lead and launch a war on woke universities, rid classrooms of anti-British sentiment and protect students from teachers’ left-wing ideologies,” was a headline on April 20.
The article predictably enlists a cast of familiar right-wing voices to make the case for British universities to follow Trump’s lead.
Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, which is we known is known for its relentless opposition to ‘woke’ policies, told the MailOnline:
“Taxpayers will be looking overseas with envy. While American universities are being told to clamp down on costly and ineffective EDI personnel, British universities are still pouring millions into these virtue-signalling roles that do nothing to improve education.
“Britain could learn a few lessons from Trump’s hardline approach to cutting waste and focusing on real education rather than pointless non-jobs.”
Not to be outdone, Reem Ibrahim of the Institute of Economic Affairs (best known for its catastrophic economics that were adopted by Liz Truss), added:
“Schemes that prioritise ethnic minorities over white people are simply racist. Neither should governments dictate what private universities can teach, which students they admit, and which staff they hire.
“The solution is market-based reforms in higher education funding, promoting competition, individual choice, and reduced state involvement altogether.
“The UK government should ensure that such discriminatory schemes are rooted out too.”
He doesn’t seem to have noticed that ‘market reforms’ have been the stock and trade of the universities since the John Major government in the 1990s.
Reform MP Lee Anderson also predictably weighed in, warning of “woke ideology, unchecked DEI mandates, and the inclusion of anti-British sentiment in curricula.” British classrooms, he argued, should be “places of genuine learning, not political indoctrination.”
The Mail also drones on about the cost of EDI salaries at UK universities, which, apparently, has doubled in three years and is now costing the sector £28 million a year.
The University of Oxford, it claims, was the ‘worst offender,’ with 59 roles in 2023/24 costing £2.5million.
But, sigh, as so often with such aggressive reporting, what the report fails to mention is just as telling as what it does.
Of course, in all of this they are repeating an anti-university trope which has been around for fifty years since the late Sir Keith Joseph weighed into ‘Marxist sociology professors’ back in the 1970s. For the right it seems that the old tunes are always the best.
Fortunately, the only people listening are their fellow reactionaries and their media allies. Research from University College London, More in Common, and Oxford University shows that the British public is overwhelmingly supportive of EDI efforts. Britons are five times more likely to say these initiatives are welcome than not suggesting that despite the Mail’s attempts, public sentiment remains broadly progressive on the issue.
In both the US and UK, the real battleground may not be university budgets or the syllabus but the future role of academic institutions in democratic society. As Professor Crespo warns, it’s not just what universities teach that’s under fire, it’s what they represent.
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