President Donald Trump’s attack on Harvard and other liberal-run universities reflects the deep split within the U.S. ruling class—but also the need for all U.S. bosses to move toward open fascism and direct control of their institutions, from their legal system to the media. Higher education in particular stands at a crossroads. Amid an international crisis of capitalism, the decline of U.S. imperialism is playing out on campuses across the country, especially at the elite institutions that help to shape the rulers’ policies and groom their future leaders.
Seizing on cultural backlash, the Trump administration is leveraging its immense financial influence to attempt to remake universities in unprecedented ways. The result is more than a crackdown on anti-Zionist protest, diversity programs, and international students. It’s a structural move to realign the purpose of higher education with the goals of the isolationist, America First, gutter racist wing of U.S. capitalism. Fronted by Trump, they’re the faction that makes most of their money from homegrown fossil fuels and other domestic sources. They’re also leading the charge to resegregation, white nationalism, and a predominantly white U.S. military.
Finance capital, notably the big banks and multinational oil and gas companies that control the Democratic Party, is on the defensive. At the same time, the liberal main wing bosses are using the Trump attacks to give cover to their own need to build racism and fascism on the road to World War Three. In this fight between two gangs of parasites and mass murderers, there are no lesser evils. Only communist revolution will stop fascism. Only communism can build a society where education will serve the needs of our class.
Universities, engines of empire
Universities have long functioned as engines of U.S. empire. Their research creates ever more deadly technologies for war; their economic gurus justify capitalist exploitation; their elitism fosters individualism and division among workers; their graduates become state managers, bankers, lawyers, and media executives. For much of the 20th century, the university was an efficient tool for the bosses. But of late it’s become less useful. Masses of students have embraced liberal identity politics, which now runs counter to the bosses’ need for heightened nationalism and patriotism. Campus protests against Israeli apartheid and genocide are a flat rejection of imperialist values, with international repercussions.
The Trump administration’s strategy centers around one powerful truth: Most U.S. universities depend on nearly $60 billion in annual federal grants for research, infrastructure, and student financial aid. For many institutions, this funding represents up to 20 percent of their operating budgets (National Science Foundation, 2024). In an era of falling enrollments, tuition dependency, hypercompetition and the rising cost of student services, this money isn’t optional—it’s essential.
But the government cash was always conditional. It assumed that colleges would continue to align with the state’s core objectives: scientific innovation for the inter-imperialist arms race, cultural hegemony for empire, and workforce development to keep the capitalist gears in motion.
Today, as Trump threatens to withhold federal grants from institutions that support “illegal” DEI programs or allow “anti-Semitic” protests, the State’s power to dictate university policy is fully exposed (New York Times, 4/18). It’s a chilling but clarifying moment. Federal funding was never about helping students. Its aim was to erode class consciousness and sustain the bosses’ system.
Liberal bosses: lying opportunists
Beneath the surface of partisan division in the U.S. Congress, the liberal main wing bosses see a huge opportunity in the assault on the university. There’s a reason that so many colleges—alongside top law firms and media companies—are caving to many of Trump’s demands. Though the bosses’ two factions have real strategic differences, they share a growing consensus that the likes of Harvard must be disciplined and restructured.
The response of college students to Israel’s atrocities has been nothing short of heroic. It has inspired millions around the world and sent a powerful message to workers in Gaza that they are not alone. But in a period where all capitalist bosses must condition workers and students to accept rising fascism, encampments and walkouts can no longer be tolerated. Peaceful protestors have been met with violent arrests, surveillance, and racist threats tied to immigration status. The repression began before Trump took office, when Joe Biden slammed the campus anti-genocide movement as “chaos” and “antisemitic” (AP, 5/2/24). Colleges across the country took his cue and established fascist bans meant to stomp out the growing demonstrations (NYT, 9/12). Liberal mayors in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles unleashed their vicious cops. The liberal trustees who run Harvard, Columbia, and Penn all pushed out their presidents pre-Trump, signaling a new willingness among elites to sacrifice institutional figureheads—to conform and capitulate.
The move to resegregation
In the 1960s and ‘70s, the bosses installed programs for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) as a response to the rebellions led by Black workers and students. The rulers’ goal was to gain control and pacify the fight against racism. Once celebrated as progressive reform victories, these programs are now being purged at companies and universities alike. Dozens of colleges have seen billions of federal aid frozen, pending their agreement to halt diversity efforts in admissions, financial aid, and hiring (npr.com, 2/19). Based on mostly bogus charges of “antisemitism” by the nazi-loving Trump administration, Columbia was threatened with a federal consent decree. If put in force, it would hand the government direct control over curriculum and campus protest policies (ACLU, 4/24).
What’s important to note is that many university presidents and trustees have long desired more control over campus dissent. Their commitment to DEI was shallow from the start, often couched in sanitized language about “first-generation” or “low-income” students that skirted the issue of racism and the segregated reality of U.S. public education. Trump’s assault has simply given them permission to roll back policies they never much liked in the first place.
While today’s attacks on DEI are real and dangerous, they should not lure us into defending it uncritically. We must instead call for a revolutionary alternative—one that builds real solidarity among working-class students and staff, that leads with anti-imperialism and class struggle, and that refuses the lie that the university can be reformed to serve our liberation.
Forward to revolution!