Bascom Hall, University of Wisconsin-Madison. (Ron Cogswell | used by permission of the photographer)

With the 100th day of President Donald Trump’s second term in office approaching, University of Wisconsin-Madison professors and staff met Thursday to take stock of the growing threats to higher education and U.S. democracy and to discuss collective action to push back. 

UW-Madison professor Mark Copelevitch said the threats to higher education are “unprecedented because it’s happening in America” yet compared the current moment to a movie that historians and experts have seen “over and over again.” 

Copelovitch described the current U.S. system of government as competitive authoritarianism. He said comparisons for what is happening today don’t have to go back to 1930s Germany — recent examples are  Viktor Orban in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. 

“Universities are centers of independent ideas and dissent. Professors are attacked by populist and nationalist leaders as being the radical elite,” Copelovitch said.

University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty, including Copelovitch and other professors were gathered for panels organized by the Public Representation Organization of the Faculty Senate (PROFS) and the Academic Staff Professionals Representation Organization (ASPRO) to discuss shared challenges and the prospects for collective action to defend higher education.

UW-Madison is facing an array of challenges to its operations due to the federal government as over $12 million in research grants to UW-Madison have been cut and caps on indirect cost reimbursements for research grants at 15% represent another significant cut to research funds, and dozens of students across UW campuses and other schools had their visas cancelled. Copelovitch said it is part of a greater attempt to exert influence over the shape of universities across the country.

“What’s happening at Madison [is] terrible and horrible and has real world consequences specifically here,” Copelovitch said. “But again, it is part of a broader pattern that is affecting all the universities across the country. So far, most universities have treated the problems as institution-specific symptoms… That is the big challenge right now. How do you get dozens, if not hundreds of institutions, to start acting collectively to push back against this?”

The panelists said one of the big challenges that universities face is explaining to the public how their budgets work and the impacts of potential cuts.

UW-Madison Veterinary Medicine Research Administration Director Jenny Dahlberg said one lost grant will be “much more broad reaching” than some imagine. “This is an entire generation of scientists that no longer will have opportunities to conduct research. That is alarming,” she said. 

Dahlberg said faculty and staff need to find a way to protect their ability to speak freely about research and to train the next generation. 

Copelovitch said universities will have to communicate to the public about their budgets and recent attacks on academic freedom, and explain that if those things continue it “ultimately means that the universities that people think they’re going to send their kids to eventually are just not going to exist in that format.”

Don Moynihan, a University of Michigan professor and previously a UW-Madison faculty member, said conversations about whether universities are too reliant on federal funding miss the point. He said that investments into research at universities were part of a deal between universities and the government created at the end of World War II. 

“If you will help us with our goals of building out research infrastructure, we will ensure a steady flow of resources into that research infrastructure,” Moynihan said. “Now, we have one of those partners basically withdrawing from the partnership and not just withdrawing from the partnership, but also trying to dictate what the other party does, even though they’re bringing less resources to the table and that activity violated that contract.” 

Moynihan said there’s no way to manage the budget holes that could be created by cuts and that it’s not really feasible that the private sector could fill to gap.

“You’re going to accept or live with a much smaller campus that does much less research…  and that story will be true across lots of other research areas,” Moynihan said. 

Moynihan said the Trump’s administration’s letter to Harvard University, which demanded changes to its administration, student admissions process and called for audits into “DEI” across the campus, lays out a “full menu” of administration priorities. The administration said it would also be cutting over $2 billion in federal grants to the school. 

Moynihan said that it’s clear that individual universities making side deals won’t be a viable strategy. 

“Without collective action, there is not going to be any effective pushback against this administration,” Moynihan said.

Copelovitch said that he has been “heartened” to see the pushback in the last few weeks. UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin signed a letter together with hundreds of other higher education leaders to speak against the “unprecedented government overreach” and the “political interference now endangering American higher education.”  

Copelovitch said discussions about universities banding together, including a recent proposal that  Big Ten schools form a NATO-like agreement, will also be key. 

“No chancellor or provost is going to stick their neck out and lead the fray. Harvard is doing it a little bit, and Harvard can afford to do it, but leaders of any individual public institution are not going to do that, so there’s a need to speak collectively,” Copelovitch said. 

“Fragility” of U.S. democracy

The upheaval in U.S. institutions has gone beyond higher education, and at a separate event, titled “The Fragility and Performance of Democracy in the U.S.” hosted by the Elections Research Center on Thursday afternoon, focused on analyzing Trump’s attacks on the U.S. administrative state and the consolidation of executive power .

UW-Madison professor and director of the Elections Research Center Barry Burden said he didn’t think “any of us imagined we would see the kind of chaos that we’ve experienced these first 100 days,” but said the second Trump administration “has been so massively disruptive” and is “pushing the limits of what a democratic system can handle.” 

“It is doing things that previously seemed illegal, impossible, unimaginable or unconstitutional, and they’re happening daily and often with people who are not really part of the government or part of his party — people like Elon Musk and others — being brought in to do the hatchet work on federal agencies,” Burden said. 

Burden said that Trump is showing warning signs of a “personalized” president, which is often a warning sign for democracies. 

“We’ve seen in other countries where a fairly elected leader, and [Trump] is a fairly elected leader, can nonetheless abuse the government against their enemies and make it a kind of weapon — whether it’s using the IRS for political purposes, or threatening judges or intimidating universities or journalists,” Burden said. “All of those things are using his power as president to get parts of society to bow to him and serve his interests.” 

Burden said the protests being held across the country at state Capitols, in small cities and towns — including in Wisconsin — in recent weeks are a sign that civil society is starting to rise up in opposition. 

“We’ve seen the public come back out of its hiding,” Burden said. He added that unpopularity amongst the public and public resistance — along with accountability by the courts and the media — are what has been essential in resisting autocrats in eastern Europe and Latin America as well. “It’s all hands on deck, really, to stop a democratic government from sliding away.”

Burden said that people need to understand their place in upholding democracy.

“Democracy needs people to keep it flourishing,” Burden said. “It doesn’t operate on its own. We often think of it as a kind of system. You write a constitution, and it exists, and it’s in place, and it will just continue. That’s not how it works. It has to be sustained and tended to and protected. It takes a whole bunch of different actors. It takes the public being vigilant. It takes journalists, media outlets holding government accountable, and transmitting what’s happening. … and it takes political parties to govern themselves and keep bad elements out of government.”

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