A new playbook for controlling universities

Last month, a federal appeals court struck down Florida’s Stop WOKE Act as applied to colleges and universities. Meanwhile, an Ohio state senator introduced a bill that gives state-created civics centers sweeping authority over curriculum and faculty appointments.

These disputes illustrate a clear and present danger to academic freedom and institutional autonomy, as colleges and universities fight to retain control over the attributes that have made them internationally preeminent, including faculty hiring, research, curriculum and selection of undergraduate and graduate students.

PEN America notes that 2025 was a “year of catastrophe” for higher education. The Trump administration froze billions of dollars in research funding, pressured universities to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs, revoked at least 8000 international student visas, threatened universities’ tax-exempt status, and gutted the Department of Education. Red-state legislatures passed a spate of educational gag orders, restricting classroom discussion of race, gender and other supposedly divisive topics.

As courts struck down some of these measures, the administration and its red state allies acted aggressively, but quietly, to control teaching and research by revamping accreditation requirements, appointing partisans to governing boards, weaponizing compliance investigations, limiting tenure and the faculty role in governance, and leveraging federal control of financial aid and research funding.

More than ever, colleges and universities are divided over how to respond in what are likely to be no-win contests.

Florida defended the Stop WOKE Act’s authority over the workplace speech of faculty in public universities as a legitimate exercise of government authority over state employees. Judge Britt Grant, a Trump appointee, rejected that claim in an Eleventh Circuit........

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