Project 2025 laid out the battle plan pretty clearly: Get rid of the Department of Education, shut off federal funding, take control of the accreditation system, and take down diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. And, in the end, change what students are encouraged to study and what professors are allowed to teach.

So why is this happening? And is it working?

Michael Roth is the president of Wesleyan University and the author of several books about college, including Beyond the University and The Student: A Short History. He’s also one of higher education’s most vocal defenders, and one of the few prominent university presidents willing to take a moral and political stand against authoritarian overreach from the government, which he sees as an attack not just on colleges and universities, but on civil society itself.

I invited Roth onto The Gray Area to talk about the political backlash against universities and why it matters. We also discuss where American universities have gone wrong, what needs to change, and what he thinks college is actually for in the world of AI. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You said recently that the federal government is “trying to destroy civil society by undermining the legitimacy of colleges and universities.” That’s a pretty dramatic statement. What do you mean?

I think it’s extraordinarily clear that the Trump administration is hell-bent on destroying civil society — that arena of our culture and our polity that has sources of legitimacy independent of the ideology of the person in the White House. You see that in the attack on law firms. You see it in the attack on the press.

The war on universities is similar. They’re not really going after universities that have egregious issues of civil rights violations. They’re going after the high-profile, high-legitimacy institutions like Harvard, like UVA, like the other Ivy League schools, with the exception of Dartmouth. They’re doing that because these schools have a claim on our allegiance or our respect that is not founded in the ideology of those currently in the White House.

When you say “destroying,” what do you mean? What is the administration actually doing?

Well, they start with easy things, right? Trans women athletes. There are fewer than 10 trans athletes in the country in NCAA varsity sports. That’s a winning issue for a variety of reasons. The White House is going to determine who plays volleyball, and then they’re going to determine how to teach Mideast or near Eastern Studies. They’re going to say, If you don’t teach near Eastern Studies the way we want you to with appropriate respect for Israel, then you’re not going to get money for Alzheimer’s research.

What happens........

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