How the Trump Administration Made Higher Education a Target

Oct 20, 2025

Emma Green, a staff writer for The New Yorker known for her in-depth political reporting, explores the Trump administration's aggressive higher-education agenda. She discusses how the administration has targeted elite institutions like Harvard and the implications of federal funding in academia. Green reveals insights from figures in the conservative movement, including Mae Mailman, about their views on academic freedom and the motivations behind their actions. The conversation highlights the political landscape that emerged around issues of campus culture and funding.

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INSIGHT

Shift From Incremental To Muscular Policy

The Trump administration shifted from incremental tweaks to aggressive, large-scale interventions in higher education.
They used federal leverage to threaten freezing hundreds of millions in funding to force compliance from elite schools.

ANECDOTE

Mae Mailman's Strike-Force Coordination

Mae Mailman coordinated an interagency 'strike force' targeting universities and aligned letters, press statements, and actions.
Her role synchronized Department of Justice, HHS, and Education actions to create rapid, repeated enforcement moves.

ANECDOTE

Mailman's Teach For America Origin Story

Mae Mailman described her Teach For America experience as fostering a dislike of 'victimhood' narratives in education.
That experience helped form her belief universities teach negativity and weaken students' sense of agency.

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The swiftness and severity with which the Trump Administration has tried to impose its will on higher education came as a shock to many, not least university presidents and faculties from Harvard to U.C.L.A. But for conservatives this arena of cultural conflict has been a long time coming. The staff writer Emma Green has been speaking with influential figures in the current Administration as well as in the larger conservative movement about how they mapped out this battle for Donald Trump’s return to power. “There’s a recognition among the people that I interviewed,” Green tells David Remnick, “that the Administration cannot come in and script to universities: this is what you will teach and this is the degrees that you will offer, and just script it from top to bottom. First of all, that would be not legally possible. And it also, I think in some ways, violates core instincts that conservatives have around academic freedom, because a lot of these people have been on élite campuses and had the experience of being told that their views weren’t acceptable.” Green also speaks with James Kvaal, an education official who served in both the Biden and Obama Administrations, and May Mailman, a conservative education-policy activist who worked in the Trump White House and coördinated its attacks against universities. “When you have federal grants, you do not need to be funding racism and racial hierarchies and violence and harassment,” Mailman told Green. “I think that line is: do what you wanna do, but we don’t want to have to fund it.”

Emma Green’s “Inside the Trump Administration’s Assault on Higher Education” was published on October 13, 2025.

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week.

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