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First They Came for the English Majors
Inside Trump’s plan to defund liberal arts, privatize education, and silence the disciplines that teach us to think.
Donald Trump once said, “I love the poorly educated.” He meant it as a compliment. Or a kink. Hard to tell with such a self-described “stable genius.” But it wasn’t just a throwaway line. It was a blueprint.
As always, Trump is up to his old division tricks. He’s poking at the soft white underbelly of the ongoing cultural wars. But this time it’s between the academics and the working class.
And education is losing.
In the last decade, Americans have lost faith in higher education. A 2024 Gallup Poll found that 68% of Americans felt higher education was headed in the wrong direction.
And it’s no surprise that Republicans have lost the most faith. In 2015, 11% of Republicans had “little or no confidence” in higher education. Today, that number has risen to 50%.
Recently, Trump had a solution. He plans to redirect 3 billion in Harvard grants to trade schools.
But it’s not about replacing Shakespeare with shop class or Aristotle with auto repair. His end game is far more sinister.
