UMass Amherst journalism historian Kathy Roberts Forde says the news media has helped both entrench and erode authoritarianism in the U.S. in the past and should lean into its pro-democracy history now.

The Trump administration’s moves against colleges are part of its broader antidemocratic campaign against independent institutions and sources of power. Liberals must defend universities to defend democracy.

How is Trump changing our sense of who we are? We asked eminent Yale historian David W. Blight to round up some colleagues to consider the question. Here’s what they had to say.

Yes, they’re under pressure. But maybe a lot of these leaders kinda like what Trump’s doing. Just remember: Trump was defeated once before.

The press acts as if “higher education” = Harvard. But a more interesting and gutsier stand is being taken in the heartland by schools that have a lot more going for them than football.

The university continues to cede control to Donald Trump.

Harvard has quietly deleted the websites for centers serving minority and women student groups.

Ryan had not fought Trump on DEI and other matters. His forced ouster proves that no capitulation is enough.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is an extinction-level event for higher education that would annihilate the country’s intellectual potential.

Columbia University gave Donald Trump everything he wanted. He’s attacking them anyway.

Linda McMahon is going to great lengths to defend Trump’s push for “viewpoint diversity” in schools.

Donald Trump is trying to target one of Harvard’s main sources of income: international students.

At a small university in the city of Grenoble, an accusation of Islamophobia set off a wild kerfuffle and a media frenzy. Sound familiar?

If the GOP really cared about meritocracy, they wouldn’t gut programs that help low-income students—especially those who also have a job or care for a child—earn a college degree.

The administration is using immigration enforcement as a guise to mask its plans to decimate vital research and academic freedom.

Trump is offering American Jews a kind of devil’s bargain: throw in with us against the antisemitic universities and campus rabble-rousers, but pay no attention as we dismantle the traditions and institutions that Jews value.

Donald Trump claimed protests broke out in Harlem, New York, to support his crackdown on Harvard.

The administration’s assault on colleges and universities is a key part of a larger right-wing project to reassert control over gatekeeping institutions.

The university’s last “finest hour” was more than 200 years ago.

Some on the scientific and medical research side might consider that giving in never buys you enduring calm. It just invites the next shakedown.