With a stroke of its president’s pen, the United States of America began to formally dismantle its federal department of education on Thursday night. Even before that executive order, the department had shed half its staff since the inauguration of Donald Trump’s presidency two months ago even as the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, goes about teaching the US government about being frugal. The order is only the latest in a series of blunt blows that Mr Trump is dealing to American higher education and the values that brought hundreds of thousands of students from all over the world to its universities. An Indian postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University, Badar Khan Suri, and a Palestinian graduate from Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil, have both been arrested for their pro-Palestinian views. The state department is trying to deport them even though authorities are yet to spell out what law — if any — the two men have broken, except to exercise the freedom of speech guaranteed under the US Constitution and its famed First Amendment.
The treatment of Mr Suri and Mr Khalil represents the example Mr Trump wants to set for all those whose views he and his allies hold objectionable. Rising anti-Semitism is a real threat. However, instead of addressing that challenge, he has issued a series of executive orders that effectively equate pro-Palestinian sentiment and criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Soon after taking power, he and his administration had threatened to arrest and deport pro-Palestinian protesters, smearing them with the allegation that they are pro-Hamas, without offering evidence. They are now acting on that promise. Some, like an Indian PhD scholar, Ranjani Srinivasan, have had their visas cancelled and have chosen to leave the US.
Mr Trump has also begun to act on his threat to cut funding for universities that his administration decides are not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism. His administration has slashed $400 million in research funding for Columbia University, the epicentre of last year’s pro-Palestine protests, and has ordered it to accept a series of demands, including banning masks at protests and giving the federal government oversight of a department, to get the money. Hearteningly, American courts have stalled plans to deport Mr Suri and Mr Khalil and have barred Columbia from sharing student records with Mr Trump’s administration. The US Congress may stop Mr Trump from dismantling the department of education. But a deep chill has taken root in universities in the US. Freedom has been replaced by fear. Open debate, frank conversations and contestations of ideas — the building blocks of the concept of a university — have long been hallmarks of American campuses, inspiring students and universities around the world. Mr Trump’s actions may be replicated elsewhere. After all, universities, public and private ones, in India and other democracies are also facing growing pressure from governments and corporates to tailor themselves to specified world views. If Mr Trump succeeds, American universities will lose much of their allure and the world will lose a legacy upholding freedom of educational thought.