Opinion: The Assault On Free Speech Has Only Just Begun
Then-Senator J. D. Vance speaking with attendees at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference. (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
By Donovan Villegas, Guest Columnist
“I’m excited to close this conference with this particular set of remarks, because I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” These are the words that then Senate candidate JD Vance spoke at the National Conservatism Conference in November of 2021.
It’s chilling listening to a prospective Senator openly and confidently say this about any of our democratic institutions, let alone one that advances education and challenges people’s sincerely held beliefs. It’s only more horrifying now that Vance is second in line to the highest office in the land.
Vance is not the only one that subscribes to the world view that universities are places of indoctrination that lead the young people of America down a path of radicalism, “wokeness,” and Marxism. In fact, he is part of a broader pattern that has taken shape in our politics over the past 10 years.
Gov. Ron Desantis of Florida immediately began the job of subjugating public universities in Florida when he took office for the second time in 2023.
He began by appointing allies like Chris Rufo and Matthew Spalding to the board of a notoriously progressive public liberal arts school, New College of Florida. Rufo was an architect of the right’s attacks on “critical race theory,” while Spalding was a professor and dean from Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan.
Rufo made no secret about his plans for New College, telling the New York Times that he intended to arrive at New College with a landing team of board members, lawyers, consultants and political allies to begin a top-down restructuring of the core curriculum. In the time since, New College has transformed from a small liberal arts school known for its LGBTQ+ population and open discussion of social issues in America to a model of what a hostile takeover of an institution looks like.
In less than twelve months, the newly conservative board has fired the college’s president, eliminated their “Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence,” removed the school’s women and gender studies program and denied tenure to several professors who were on track to receive it.
The average GPA and first-year retention at the school has plummeted and one-third of the faculty have departed. Students who have not left for greener pastures describe a thick tension between dissenters who remain and the new, hostile administration. Rufo produced a nine-minute documentary about the transition at New College. In it, he says the fight for classical liberal arts education had “just begun.” Going further, Rufo wrote in the documentary’s description on YouTube, “The takeover of New College has changed the dynamics of America’s culture war and, if successful, will provide a model for conservatives across the nation.”
Unfortunately, this crusade against higher education does not end with Florida. The Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership,” also known as Project 2025, calls for the federal government to wind down and defund “area studies” programs at universities because those studies can run counter to American interests. This demand refers to Title VI of the Higher Education Act, which allocates funding and grants for foreign language studies and area studies, which is a field of research and scholarship focusing on particular geographical, national or cultural regions.
Further, the outline also proposes that the secretary of education be required to “allocate at least 40% of funding to international business programs that teach about free markets and economics and require institutions, faculty and fellowship recipients to certify that they intend to further the stated statutory goals of serving American interests.”
What exactly are those American interests? It doesn’t specify. Only that those interests would presumably be outlined in the legislation that authorizes it.
Nowadays it could refer to anything from annexing Greenland to invading a NATO ally. What is clear is that the policy is supposed to have a chilling effect on the free thought and expression that occurs in higher education. Requiring faculty and students to certify that they will adhere to the official government dogma isn’t just weird, it’s downright authoritarian. But hey, we wouldn’t want people to get any “un-American” thoughts, would we?
Maybe I’m being alarmist, or maybe I’m being dramatic. After all, President Trump openly disavowed Project 2025 on the campaign trail, and Rufo wasn’t a constant attraction at his rallies. You would be correct, had Rufo not met with the Trump Administration’s education team on Inauguration Day.
As Rufo said himself in an interview with the New York Times, “If you have the full weight of the White House, the full weight of the Department of Education and a platoon of right-wing lawyers trying to use all of the statutory and executive authority that they have to reshape higher education, I think it could be a thing of tremendous beauty.”
Now, I fear, his vision is coming to fruition. Among Trump’s flurry of executive orders was one that ordered investigations of DEI practices in the private sector and specifically points out colleges and universities with endowments over $1 billion (which includes all the Ivy League schools).
A second executive order outlines the deportation of foreign students and professors who engage in “anti-Israel activism” as well as ensuring that “aliens otherwise already present in the United States…do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.” The problem is how (intentionally?) vague it is. Anything can be spun as a threat to national security. Mass protests in response to Government policies can be classified as a threat to national security. After all, President Trump wanted to deploy the active-duty military to suppress the 2020 George Floyd protests.
The intent of both orders is to chill free speech and open expression in the institutions that are meant to encourage it. Harvard has already capitulated, adopting late last month a definition of antisemitism that includes harsh criticisms of Israel and Zionism.
Such violations include holding Israel to a “double standard” and likening its policies to Nazism. Under this definition, a student or faculty member that accuses Israel of genocidal action in Gaza could face disciplinary action. Regardless of your feelings on that particular issue, we should all be able to appreciate the value of open discourse in a democratic society.
Free speech on campuses across America is under attack, and it has been for some time. There is a concerted effort to undermine the ideals and principles that institutions of higher education abide by. That is why I am calling on Gettysburg College and its community to pledge to uphold the principles of free speech not just today, but for generations to come. Any attempt at suppressing speech, especially by the organs of government, must be resisted.
