Matthew Sheffield
🧵 Trump's looming war on universities
Trump’s second term has begun, and one thing is clear: a full-scale assault on higher education is coming. Here’s how it’s playing out—and why academia still doesn’t get it.
This thread is a summary of my latest "Theory of Change" episode. Click through or follow along in the fediverse... https://plus.flux.community/p/trumps-looming-attack-on-higher-education
Matthew Sheffield
Trump’s attack on education is just one front in a broader war on knowledge itself. Science, journalism, law, history—it’s all under siege. The goal isn’t just to suppress facts, but to make truth itself irrelevant.
Reactionaries have declared war on all of modernity. They will destroy everything if we let them. This is not an exaggeration. They have broken cognition: https://plus.flux.community/p/trump-supporters-are-almost-impossible
Matthew Sheffield
Their goal isn’t reform—it’s destruction.
We’ve seen this before. Germany in the 1930s had the best universities in the world. Then Hitler purged Jewish academics and crushed intellectual freedom. German universities 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 recovered.
The U.S. became the world's academic superpower in part by absorbing exiled German scholars. But what happens when our own universities are the ones being dismantled? Where do we rebuild when the wreckage is self-inflicted?
Matthew Sheffield
If you care about education, academic freedom, or even basic governance, this is a fight you must pay attention to. The destruction of the Department of Education is just the beginning.
That's the thread!
Please boost the very first post to help spread the word. There is no algorithm in the fediverse so I really need your help! Thanks so much! And if you could follow @discoverflux, that would be fab!
Here's the link again for reference: https://plus.flux.community/p/trumps-looming-attack-on-higher-education /end
Matthew Sheffield
Trump has officially announced his intent to abolish the Department of Education, claiming it will “restore power to the states.” But the real goal?
It’s about:
✅ Defunding public schools and redirecting money to religious institutions
✅ Erasing academic freedom
✅ Gutting civil rights protections in education
✅ Ensuring students only hear approved white Christian supremacist viewpoints
Matthew Sheffield
10/ If you’re an academic, journalist, or anyone who cares about knowledge, now is the time to wake up. The next four years won’t be about debating policy. They’ll be about whether free inquiry and intellectual freedom survive at all.
The destruction of universities isn’t a “culture war.” It’s a reactionary political project aimed at dismantling the foundations of an open society. The sooner people understand that, the better.
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