Free Speech

Sarah McLaughlin | 9.12.2025 8:01 AM

My book Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech was in its final edits and in the post-writing stage when Donald Trump was inaugurated into office for a second time. If I were still writing it today, I would need to dedicate new chapters to detailing another malignant censorship threat on American campuses: not the impositions by foreign powers, but the conduct of our own federal government.

In a post earlier this week I cited some of the illiberal and, in some cases, unconstitutional incursions by the Trump administration onto the First Amendment in the past few months. Some of the most disturbing violations, though, have targeted our institutions of higher education.

One of the most high-profile attacks has come in the form of the broadside against Harvard University. Thanks to Harvard's willingness to stand up for itself, however, this campaign against universities, despite widespread pusillanimity on the part of campus leaders, is finally starting to show some cracks.

Earlier this month, a Massachusetts federal district court found that the Trump administration violated Harvard's First Amendment rights, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, when it revoked billions in funding in a transparent effort to punish the university for its, and its community members', political views under the guise of combatting antisemitism. The government does not receive a........

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