The Point: Higher Ed Under Attack and Fighting Back!
1/290/2026
The week’s edition was written by The Point committee. As always, The Point represents the views of the authors and is not the official position of the FSU.
Quick Note: The PSU (Professional Staff Union) has now been bargaining for a grueling 19 months. The Administration refuses to finalize an agreement, insisting that a portion of the (insufficient) cost-of-living raises be distributed in the form of merit. Over 1000 PSU members from the Amherst and Boston campuses met, discussed this, and are holding the line – insisting the Administration come to an agreement and distribute the (long overdue) state mandated raises that all PSU members deserve. PSU also decided to escalate their campaign. Please join them for a rally on Wednesday, February 4th, from 11:45 to 1:15 on the Campus Center Plaza. A strong showing of faculty support is welcomed and needed!
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Since coming into office a year ago, the Trump administration has made it clear that to change the country—to transform it the United States into the Christian white supremacist nation it envisions in its MAGA fever dreams—it will need to not only transform but in fact actively destroy our system of higher education as well. So on the offensive they went. In some ways the new administration simply broadened and deepened the attacks on universities that had been developed by the previous administration—particularly its brutal assault on the encampments denouncing genocide in Palestine, which in turn paved the way for a fuller-scale silencing of campus protest, free speech, and academic freedom under Trump.
Obviously, the Trump administration has accelerated the attacks on higher education. When they weren’t taking academics off the streets for writing an op-ed, they were suspending grant funding and conducting “investigations” to force university capitulation on DEI, campus protest, academic freedom, immigration (i.e. foreign students), and hiring protocols. Although the Trump/federal attacks have largely focused on elite universities, conservative state governments quickly followed the lead – targeting the very universities where most students are educated. As Trump’s second administration gained steam, the Florida Board of Governors revamped curricula across the state’s public institutions, removing courses that addressed issues of race and gender. Other states – as diverse as Texas, Alabama, Ohio, Indiana, and Utah – quickly limited diversity programs and restricted academic freedom for faculty. Likewise, the University of North Carolina system forced the elimination of DEI programs and positions and have required that course syllabi be made publicly available (making it easier for right-wing trolls to target “radical” faculty; stay tuned for a future issue of the Point that will make clear how this tactic reached our own faculty.) This was accompanied, in some states, by wholesale leadership changes, either removing Chancellors/Presidents or transforming Board of Trustees/Governors. And then followed the rash of firings associated with the Charlie Kirk assassination (including more than 50 faculty and untold numbers of K-12 teachers).
Nor has the Trumpian assault stopped. Recently, the University of Arkansas couldn’t find its spine when right-wing politicians pressured the university to rescind an offer to a law school Dean after discovering she signed an amicus brief in support of transgender athletes. And even more recently the Trump administration announced that the next target of its “overhaul” would be the college accreditation system (one can only imagine how destructive this will be).
It hasn’t been all doom and gloom, however. There has also been considerable resistance, some of which now seems to be producing results. Some states provided significant resistance to federal pressure to curtail academic freedom and/or dismantle DEI initiatives. And, as recently reported in Politico, the faculty firings following the Kirk assassination are “unraveling” as a number of faculty are winning court cases and returning to work. Likewise, three of the “Fired Four” faculty members who were terminated at CUNY for expressing their political views about the genocide in Palestine have been reinstated.
Even still…….Trump and his various demonic advisors and feckless lackeys continue to put higher education in the crosshairs. As we have seen in recent days in Minneapolis, it seems more and more likely that the tide of public opinion is turning robustly against the cruel politics of division that characterize this administration. And union power—teachers, nurses, graduate student workers, service industry stalwarts, and many, many more—will have to be at the heart of this people’s revolt. So: welcome back to campus for spring semester, and stay tuned for much more from us about how we can all participate in the reconstruction of higher education—not to mention the basic functions of democratic life—in this fraught moment of fascist destruction.
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The committee for this year’s The Point currently includes Jessica Holden, Healey Library; Nick Juravich, History; Jeff Melnick, American Studies; and Steve Striffler, Labor Studies. If you want to write an edition of The Point, or if you just have an idea, please write us at fsu@umb.edu.