In recent weeks, the Trump administration has put the American university system on notice.It has pressed for changes, opened investigations — and in some cases withheld critical funds.Alan Blinder, who covers education in America, explains how schools are responding to the pressure and what it might mean for the future of higher education.Guest: Alan Blinder, a national correspondent for The New York Times, writing about education in America.Background reading: Columbia University promised changes to its protest policies, its security practices and its Middle Eastern studies department after the Trump administration moved to cut off $400 million in funding.President Trump’s battles with colleges could change American culture for a generation.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
What is the Trump administration's stance on higher education?
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams. This is The Daily. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has put the American university system on notice. It's pressed for changes, launched investigations, and in some cases, it's even withheld critical funds.
Today, my colleague Ellen Blinder on how schools are responding to all of this pressure and what it might mean for the future of higher education. It's Monday, March 24th. Ellen, thank you so much for being with us. I am not surprised given the news cycle recently and how much we've been hearing about universities that you're working on a Sunday.
My pleasure.
It really feels like we cannot go more than a few days without hearing about this escalating conflict between the Trump administration and the country's colleges and universities. And you, Alan, have been covering higher education for a really long time. So we thought you'd be the right person to sit down with so that you could kind of break all of this down for us. But.
I think the first thing I want to do is just get a sense from you of whether you've ever seen anything like this showdown that we are currently seeing between the higher education in this country and the White House.
I haven't seen anything like it, but more to the point, a lot of the sources I talk to, a lot of presidents and chancellors and provosts, people who have been in and around higher education for decades, haven't seen anything like it either. They're almost shell-shocked about what's happening. It's been this wave of... campaigns against higher education.
It's been this wave of complicating factors that may or may not have to do with universities themselves. And in the end, you've got this real mess for higher education at this point that has left a lot of the country's most elite universities, but also schools that are less prominent on defense.
And within all of that, it feels like your reporting has really focused on Columbia University for good reason. Columbia has been a poster child for a lot of this conflict and a little bit of a case study, right?
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, look, it's been a very long year and a half or so for a lot of higher education. But you will not find many universities in this country that have had a longer year and a half. than Columbia. It has absolutely morphed into being a poster child for crackdowns and protests and really bitter disputes about what a university can and should be.
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