The Higher Ed Frontline

What's now called for in every classroom.

Detail from The Epic of American Civilization, a mural at Dartmouth College by José Clemente Orozco. Colleagues, let’s not be these guys.

The biggest news this weekend may be the wonkiest: The National Institutes of Health has capped the “indirect costs” portion of research grants, which average 50%—a grant for $1 million would include $500,000 to the research institution to keep the lights on—at 15%. Elon Musk posting gravestone emojis with the names of agencies he’s going to destroy this isn’t. But the wonk’s scalpel—this plan comes from the pages of Project 2025—is just as destructive as the DOGE wrecking ball.

Alondra Nelson, former head of the White House Office on Science and Technology, says this “amounts to a generational restructuring of the US research and development ecosystem.” It’s not just for future research; the cuts are effective immediately.

And it’s not just scientists. Morgan Polikoff, an education scholar at University of Southern California, describes it as “a nuclear bomb on university budgets.” This isn’t rocket science: slash a major source of university funding, and the whole university suffers—along with the communities built around them. Again, we don’t need to turn to Musk’s X posts to understand that’s happening: this is part of a long-planned assault on higher education as such. Tune in to the work not just of rightwing ranters but of the movement’s intellectuals, and you’ll hear them complaining not only about “Marxist” professors—by which they mean nearly all of us, including those of us who’ve never read Marx—but about the very concept of college. Some restrict that complaint to “elitism”; others veer into ideas about authority and God. Most (not all!) hold out space for a different idea of “college,” modeled on far right institutions as Hillsdale College—the president of which laid the foundation for Trump’s “Patriotic Education” executive order.

Which is all to say that this is now the business of every educator, no matter how far removed from the politics of the movement we may see our field. I’m re-posting here a thread I wrote on Bluesky, calling for fellow professors to recognize that there’s no sitting this one out, along with some responses from some higher ed colleagues who are stepping up. I’d love to hear from more.

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With the NIH cuts, there’s no longer any excuse for any professor, in any discipline, to not address the moment in their classes. You don’t even have to be “political” if that’s how you roll; this changes everything. You need only observe reality. 1/

It’s imperative that professors discuss the moment in class, because as one who does I can tell you that due to many factors—another thread—most students don’t know about huge changes that will effect their lives, studies, & even course materials. 2/

It’s academically irresponsible to leave our students in the dark when the moment directly touches our classrooms. You’re not making a “safe space” by focusing only on yr topic. You’re not even covering your topic, because the moment has become part of it. 3/

Some examples: the Patriotic Education EO threatens to fundamentally remake what we think of as knowledge in history, American Studies, Black Studies, Native American Studies, and disciplines such a sociology, anthropology, and others. 4/

Multiple EOs, obviously, threaten to remake knowledge in not just Women’s Studies but any discipline in which gender is a central concern. Which, considering the, uh, ubiquity of gender in humanity, is a lot of them. 5/

Note that I’m saying “threaten to remake knowledge.” I’m not saying professors must denounce Trump—fwiw, I have & have had & am glad to have conservative students. I’m saying we’re intellectually responsible for accounting for the tidal shift in the circumstances of our classrooms. 6/

[Here a few radical heroes intervened to denounce me for not denouncing Trump—readers of this Substack know I denounce Trump, a lot—and to damn any professor who won’t. But insisting that professors at red state public schools sacrifice their jobs for a symbolic display of defiance is not, in fact, a radical position. “That would 100% get me fired,” wrote one professor, and I’ve heard in the past eight years from those who have been. Celebrating their suffering isn’t fighting fascism. I think of such gestures as Red Dawn romanticism, grand displays that might make for a cool scene in a movie but which are disconnected from that which comes before or after. The struggle continues. I want red state public school profs to stay in it. The radicalism I’m for begins with solidarity, which begins with care.]

The NIH cuts have made this bluntly obvious across not just bio-medical sciences but natural sciences in general, which will all suffer because of the cuts. Funding isn’t just background noise; it’s part of how we build knowledge & thus what we know. 7/

I’ve heard from some very smart professors, politically engaged, who argue that as much as the moment concerns them, there’s no way to incorporate discussion into the focus of their classroom. How about the fact that they may not have a classroom soon? 8/

Is it not relevant to the classroom and what happens there when the world shifts such that armed men may “legally” enter and remove some students, & arrest any others they deem as interfering for as yet unspecified charges? Should that be noted? Does that shadow affect learning? 9/

I teach creative writing. Arguably a topic with really no organic connection to the moment. Some students think so. But isn’t the erasure of swathes of words from current use in vast sections of life touched by Feds an issue for writers? It is, of course. Language always is. 9/

I teach creative nonfiction, of which literary journalism is a part and to all of which journalism is a cousin. When whole territories of the past are erased from museums & archives & libraries, the nature of our creative work changes. We must think about how. /10

I’m very aware of how dangerous this can be for any professor in any discipline at a public school, especially in a “red” or “purple” state. That’s why I’m framing it not as activism—which I don’t do in my classroom even as I respect many who do—but, frankly, empiricism. What is. 11/

Just as some in public higher ed feel they can’t address the moment, some at rich private schools think they don’t have to. They tell themselves it’s sad but it won’t touch them. It will, it has, & they should know that it’s specifically rich privates that the administration has ID as the enemy. 12/

“They say in Harlan County / there are no neutrals there.” —“Which Side Are You On?” 1931. We’re professors in classrooms, not workers facing gun thugs. It’s erasure and restriction of knowledge and inquiry vs. those of us for whom inquiry is our calling. Also, our jobs. Let’s just do our jobs. 13/13

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I realized after I posted this that I’d focused mostly on humanities, my field, and natural sciences targeted by the NIH cap. But of course social sciences are under direct assault, too. Not just sociology and anthropology above, but two of the powerhouses of “elite” institutions, political science and economics. Shouldn’t be hard for such scholars to find the connection to their classrooms. And you don’t need to be a leftist to do so. Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at the college at which I teach, points out that even some conservative scholars understand what’s at stake:

(If you’re on Bluesky, you should follow Nyhan, who isn’t conservative. Nor is he part of our campus’s leftist culture. He writes for The New York Times, he’s worked in Washington, he’s not a burn-it-all-down guy. So when he’s alarmed… And he is very alarmed.)

A few other professors in the mentions who are doing their jobs:

Last but not least among the immediate responses is Thomas Lecaque, a medieval historian who I also recommend following, for his running examination of contemporary fascism’s misappropriations of the past and for what he says here:

I’d love to hear from other educators how they’re addressing the moment in their classrooms. Those for whom it’s already part of their topic, those for whom the assault on higher education has made itself part of their topic. Those who are feel called to polemicize, those who risk their jobs just through simple statements of facts. Those with classrooms full of future revolutionaries, those who are trying to teach nursing or accounting or simply how to dissect a frog to students whose sympathies may drift toward Trumpism. You can comment below, or if you’d prefer to keep it quieter, you can email me at jeff.sharlet@dartmouth.edu.