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WATCH: How universities can fight back

Wesleyan’s president, Michael Roth, explains what it is Trump so fears about higher ed, why his attack on it is an existential threat, and why courage, not compromise or caving in, is the answer
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Donald Trump’s actions represent an existential threat to the university as we know it.

But why? What is it about the modern American university that is so upsetting to a famously insecure leader? Why has he fixated on this out of all possible targets?

We just talked with Wesleyan University’s president, Michael Roth, an outspoken defender of student free speech and Trump critic, and 1,300 of you. He spoke of:

  • How universities are a culture-making, opinion-shaping power center, which Trump, like all authoritarians, fears

  • How they facilitate social progress by helping students pick up ideas and perspectives that sever them from the prejudices of their families and hometowns, and why that threatens the right’s larger political project

  • Why the kidnappings of Mahmoud Kahlil and Rümeysa Öztürk and others are so chilling, and part of an attempt to turn university leaders into collaborators

  • How the chilling effects of Trump’s cuts and abductions are already shifting the behavior of students and professors

  • Why the Trump regime’s anti-antisemitism exploits genuine anxieties as a cudgel against his enemies, and how it has made Jews in America not more but less safe

  • How academia came to hold too much influence over the political left and the Democratic Party in particular, and the need to go beyond the jargon and wonkiness and elitist inclusionspeak that keep many Americans at bay

  • And why, even though Roth is afraid, he’s committed to speaking up — because that is the only way to find out if you’re wrong, and the only way to stay free

You won’t want to miss this one, so just click on the video player above.

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