This is an opinion from the Center.
Higher education is a battlefield of the Culture War, and students pursuing intellectual stimulation and fulfillment have become the innocent casualties.
The Trump administration cut billions of dollars in federal funding of research and other academic functions for colleges and universities in 2025, nominally due to the institutions’ failures to prevent campus antisemitism. Some cuts addressed race and ethnicity programs, with the administration announcing “Cuts to Woke Programs”. Others strayed from that focus; according to NPR (Lean Left bias), for example, the cuts negatively impacted cancer research as lab workers left the University and progress slowed..
The administration also implemented a new, tiered endowment tax that taxes universities with large endowments at the highest levels.
More broadly, the right seems to be lining up against what they view as liberal institutions, having also recently challenged affirmative action in the Supreme Court and consistently calling out political bias in DEI programs and in classroom curricula.
A recent article from the Yale Daily News highlights conservative backlash over a report that found almost 30 Yale University departments with no Republican faculty. There is a clear concern on the right that conservative perspectives are lacking at the nation’s top universities.
Meanwhile, the left is more skeptical of what issue the Trump administration is truly addressing. One report from Al Jazeera (Lean Left bias) seemed doubtful of the administration’s motivations; it referenced “alleged” violations of Jewish students’ rights at Harvard and framed the administration’s actions as “threats.” This coverage reflects slant and media bias by word choice.
By questioning the existence of antisemitism on campus, the left ignores very real threats to student safety, some academics’ complicity in incubating and propagating antisemitism, and damages the role of academia as a beacon of free inquiry and thought. And by interfering with university research far removed from antisemitic activity, the right damages American intellectual and scientific strength and capacity — a noteworthy fact as Harvard University fell behind two Chinese institutions in one ranking of academic research institutions.
The experience of a college student is more nuanced than the false dichotomy that the media and politicians have drawn between fighting antisemitism and respecting the integrity and independence of the nation’s preeminent halls of research and thought.
As a member of the team at AllSides, I started my freshman year at Princeton University this fall excited to get on the ground and see what my news feed wasn’t telling me about the escalating conflict between the Trump Administration and higher education. As a Jewish student, I was well-attuned to campus debate over the Israel-Hamas conflict and over antisemitic incidents. My instinct was to support government efforts to protect Jewish life; after all, my own sister was subject to antisemitic harassment at Middlebury College, and I had spent my college application cycle weighing my own safety in the decision-making process.
Princeton is not free of political bias, and liberal students and faculty certainly outnumber conservatives. But I’ve found that President Donald Trump’s professed commitment to fighting bias and antisemitism is not manifesting itself in any useful manner. The administration seems to be punishing universities — perhaps for antisemitism and perhaps for other reasons — but its policies are not actually working to solve his identified problem.
As my friends at the Daily Princetonian reported, new budget constraints saw the demise of the University’s “Wintersession” classes, the reduction of hours at University libraries, and changes to student meal plan options, all as academic departments were asked to create plans to reduce expenditures by 5% and 10%.
Princeton is not the only place where education is suffering due to budget constraints. In fact, as the judge in Harvard’s lawsuit against the administration wrote, “There is no obvious link between the affected projects and antisemitism.”
If your newsfeed hasn’t shown you both sides of the war between the Trump administration and higher education, take it from a Jewish student on a budget-constrained college campus. Antisemitism cannot be ignored, but federal funding cuts are not the answer. A war against higher education is a war against the future of our nation and the development of humanity’s knowledge. But a defense of antisemitism in order to maintain the absolute independence of the University from accountability is profoundly dangerous.
The divide between the left and the right over higher education isn’t just another demonstration of polarization. It’s posing a danger to our students and our nation’s future.
Ian Rosenzweig is a Bias Research Assistant for AllSides. He has a Center bias.
This piece was reviewed and edited by Director of Research Andrew Weinzierl (Lean Left) and News Analyst & Social Media Editor Malayna J. Bizier (Right).
