Why Is Fascism Attacking Higher Education?

Report from the National Public Education Committee of the

League of Revolutionaries for a New America

October 2025

Trump’s attacks on universities reveal how fascism operates with open criminality which is then furthered and facilitated by the politics of compromise. He uses illegal “Executive Orders” to threaten universities as well as government agencies and force them to rescind what was legally established at every level of government.

Trump has been systematically implementing the fascist agenda proposed in Project 2025. The same outfit has also published Project Esther, a set of policies to impose on universities:

“The U.S. education system fosters antisemitism under the guise of “pro-Palestinian,” anti-Israel, anti-Zionist narratives across universities, high schools, and elementary schools, often under the umbrella or within the rubric of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and similar Marxist ideology.”¹

We are witnessing a fascist attempt to establish “patriotic education” by prohibiting public schools at all levels from even discussing Palestine, Black History and history of all marginalized communities. Valiant student opposition to such policies has defined the last two years. The fascists used state action, legal threats and massive propaganda to attack universities, staff, history students and teachers.

Trump implies that if Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is destroyed, whites who are being denied access to decent education and living conditions will then gain access to those resources. While whites are being impoverished along with everyone else now, they offer only the “impression” of white supremacy, since most whites won’t be able to afford higher ed or other “privileges”. Attacking equity and inclusion means that treating all people equally is formally rejected.

The New School Year Begins

The Fall semester is now beginning. Students have been key to daily ICE protests and resistance around the country. Fascists have suddenly seized on the Charlie Kirk assassination, claiming that those who “celebrate this murder” should be fired. At this writing, corporations and universities have fired or suspended some 3 dozen people. Thinking people recognize that mourning someone’s death does not mean we must honor their life. But universities are accepting this instead of challenging it. There can be no collaborating with the criminalization of free speech.

Trump announced in July that the campus had violated federal civil rights laws in its handling of antisemitism during last year’s campus protests.

One hundred and sixty Jewish professors from the University of California write:

“Let us be clear: the University of California is not being targeted because of antisemitism on our campuses. The UC is a powerhouse of independent thought, research, truth, dissent, and innovation in the public interest; it is under assault because it poses a considerable obstacle to authoritarianism…

… We urge you, the Regents of the world’s premier public university system, to recognize where the real risk of this moment lies. The University of California will survive federal funding cuts if it must. It will not survive the sacrifice of our institutional autonomy, academic freedom, or civil rights on the altar of a specious claim to be “combatting antisemitism.” Let there be no concessions, compromises, bargains, or capitulation. Not in our name.”²

For a year, the Trump regime has used false distortions of antisemitism to attack any university that permits open discussions of genocide and Palestinian rights. One tactic is the withdrawal of federal scientific research money from universities. The universities, with a long history of collaborating with the McCarthy-driven “Red Scare” in the 1950s, have totally capitulated. Columbia gave the Trump Administration $225 million to restore $400 million in funding and Brown is paying $50 million to workplace development programs to get $500 million back. Extortion is the use of power and threats to gain control of wealth by actions that are not legal.

Now Trump extends the attack to public universities, UCLA and UCSF and university medical centers as well. He demands $1.5 billion from UCLA, which is funded by tax-payers as a public school. Trump alleges that the universities permit an atmosphere where individual Jewish students “don’t feel comfortable”.

A Line Has Been Crossed

In early September, the UC Administration turned over some 160 names from UC Berkeley or investigation in response to the Trump regime demands. They collaborate like this even as they report that all the schools in the UC system, the largest public higher ed system in the world, are under investigation. Beyond the fines, the Department of Justice seeks to drastically overhaul campus practices on hiring, admissions, sports, scholarships, discrimination and gender identity.

At precisely this same moment, the California State Assembly passed the Israeli-inspired AB 715 Bill that virtually criminalizes anyone in public education, from kindergarten thru grad school, who advocates for Palestinian rights or discusses the realities of genocide we see every day in media. The governor has to sign the bill by October 12.

AB 715 adopts backdoor censorship by failing to explicitly define antisemitism, while supporting the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,³ a document from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) conflation of constitutionally-protected criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The Jerusalem Declaration⁴ correctly defines the problem and stands in direct opposition to the Zionist position. It is signed by 370 scholars in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies.

While students across the country, as well as Israeli students, and the world protest Israeli genocide, official “leaders” for the most part refuse to challenge this ridiculous notion.

Will ICE now begin arresting teachers and students in their classrooms? Does this mean the Black History Month, as well as Latin American History and Indigenous History months. will also be abolished? We already see how fascism aggressively keeps expanding its reach. It’s not about legality and traditional government practices; it’s about the seizure of political power.

The people’s response to that attack is still gestating at this time; we are in a defining moment of transition from the politics of resistance and protest, to the politics of building the political power to defeat fascism and the power of corporations. This requires embracing Frederick Douglass’s famous1857 statement rather than collaboration and conciliation:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

The abundant history of US genocide is being resurrected: the slaughter of Native Americans, the chain gangs, the urban massacres in Oklahoma, Florida and so many others. Likewise, the broad US history of working-class uprisings, slave rebellions and the day-to-day sabotage and resistance of individual slaves and workers in the past points the way forward.

The real history of the United States (something that is on the chopping block) bares the lessons of how to seize the narrative instead of acquiescing to the open lies of fascism. JD Vance has stated “culture war is class warfare”.⁵Class warfare is what fascism is organizing. These are issues of political power.

Attacking science in higher education, to advance corporate profit

Fascism always attacks science because it deals with truth. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been central to the rise of US science for 70 years. More than 80% of the NIH’s $48 billion budget supports academic research. Trump proposes to cut this by 18%. His budget calls for “massive cuts” to spending on medical and scientific research, public health and disease-prevention programs, and health insurance for low-income Americans and their children. RFK Jr, new head of HSS (Health and Human Services), has terminated 22 grants for mRNA research. This is the research that rapidly developed the successful vaccinations against COVID. The list goes on and on. This is a qualitative step beyond the privatization of public research that has been going on for decades.

Fascism historically has always been hostile to any social institution that encourages the open discussion of ideas, critical thinking and scientific perspectives. Fascism’s engine runs on lies, simplistic solutions and mystical visions to weaponize the fear, anger and scapegoating that is its stock in trade.

Fascism is also always about making profit through privatization. Now that Ai is in the hands of private corporations, it is being used to replace knowledge workers. This process is proceeding far more rapidly than robots replaced manufacturing workers in industry.

In July, Ford CEO Jim Farley warned that Ai will wipe out half of white-collar jobs. The 200,000+ federal workers that DOGE has fired are all knowledge workers – scientists, lawyers, accountants etc. Silicon Valley has laid off over 100,000 knowledge workers since 2020. They are being replaced by low-skilled workers and Ai⁶.

In this environment, university research, as it has been structured, is an impediment to the rapid evolution and application of Ai, not to mention the free flow of capital, always the imperative. Universities do not have the supply chains to put Ai into production; their funding infrastructure is simply too slow to push the technology forward. Technical progress now requires rapid experimentation and innovation, then scaling-up new products rapidly by commercialization. Ai companies must have economies of scale to produce for the market. Universities cannot supply this. So the Tech Bros want R&D money to go directly to them.

The vast majority of strong Ai models are now developed by industry, not academia. Industry produced fewer than 20% of notable AI models before 2006, but 60% of them in 2023 and nearly 90% in 2024. Since 2004, the number of Ai PhD graduates moving to corporations jumped from 21% to 70%. Science requires the open sharing of information; but corporations no longer share their research at scientific conferences. Private researchers do not have the ability to discuss their research freely, which is vital for collaboration, because they are forced to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Media corporations, legal firms and universities, not to mention the Corporate Democratic leadership, offer little serious opposition. They continue to bend the knee, capitulate to fascism and collaborate with it, paying tens of millions to stop Trump lawsuits, which are legally recognized as bogus. This is understandable. The leadership of these institutions themselves are members of the same class as MAGA leaders, the corporations and Silicon Valley techno-fascists. They all agree that the era of bourgeois democracy is over.

Attacking universities and public education works against developing science, research, human talent and ultimately the development of technology, whether for better or worse. Education is key for developing our thinking and knowledge power, all of which is necessary to improve the welfare of the public. The human mind – all of our human minds – is our greatest resource if we nurture it and provide quality education to all. This requires a society that welcomes every body’s contribution to our collective general welfare. And this requires supporting and meeting every single person’s basic human needs.

Can anyone imagine accomplishing these crucial tasks while science, technology, knowledge, and the resources of the planet are in private, corporate hands?

References

(1) https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2024-10/Project%20Esther.pdf

(2) https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRjKAJZgyzBCBT-E797gTVqGlIZs56rY9aXneQFTaQ_4SlunOiz2SUF0VvEz_udv7F16VM9eTJiw_8p/pub?urp=gmail_link&fbclid=IwZnRzaAM3_7VleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHm2LSj8dqxGRtMbpgtTnngay6aUagfxlvHkI_MActdbXQkWBuW1eIjJI0K-5_aem_1rvkaH2R5h-qXc77-qA14Q

(3) https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/U.S.-National-Strategy-to-Counter-Antisemitism.pdfhttps:/

(4) https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/

(5) https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/01/04/jd-vance-hillbilly-elegy-radicalization/

(6) https://abc7news.com/post/ai-driven-layoffs-are-rise-could-silicon-valley-tech-expert-explains-what-know/17726874/

Report from the National Public Education Committee of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America October 2025

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