University Blues: Editorial on the Global Consequences of Trump's Assault on American Higher Education
22 March 2025 | The Telegraph
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…