Higher education serves different purposes for different people. For some, it represents transformation and expanded horizons. For others, it remains a site of oppression—a place where white supremacy and anti-Blackness flourish while administrations proclaim commitments to diversity even as their actions contradict these stated values. The commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have long been performative at most predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Now, institutions no longer need to maintain even this pretense.
When the previous Trump administration targeted K-12 education—falsely claiming that critical race theory was being taught in elementary schools and suspending administrators in states like Texas—higher education watched passively, believing itself safe from similar attacks. Instead of mounting resistance and uniting against authoritarian overreach, higher education capitulated. Institutions cancelled classes and programs designed to educate students about historical injustices, prioritizing the comfort of white students and families while disregarding everyone else.
As Professor Emeritus Dr. John R. Thelin documents in his seminal work A History of American Higher Education, the system was designed from its inception to serve wealthy, white, cisgender, able-bodied men. Higher education was never intended to include marginalized people of color or women. The argument that white men are now being excluded from spaces where they have always been centered would be absurd if it weren’t so dangerous.
Anti-discrimination DEI initiatives became necessary precisely because white men were not voluntarily making space for others—supported by white women who were themselves fighting for inclusion. The notion that white men feel excluded from higher education reflects a false sense of entitlement and the sting of having their mediocrity exposed. This wounded sense of supremacy drives them to destroy institutions rather than share them.
Fascism is not approaching—it has arrived.
The targeted attacks on Harvard, UCLA, University of Pennsylvania, minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are rooted in anti-Black rhetoric that was explicitly outlined in Project 2025. This blueprint seeks to create a dystopian America where marginalized voices are silenced and governance is built around white anxieties and grievances.
The worst possible response from higher education institutions is capitulation. Instead of forming coalitions, deploying legal resources, and mobilizing their extensive alumni networks, institutions are either confronting this administration in isolation or retreating into silence. Someone should inform higher education that fascism doesn’t reward compliance. It seeks total destruction and will not protect those who failed to oppose it simply because they remained quiet.
Our institutions and academic disciplines face existential threats. Regardless of how compliant we choose to be, when the destruction is complete, nothing will remain standing. We cannot measure progressive politics by white comfort levels, nor should white feelings determine whether we defend the most vulnerable among us.
Understanding liberation and resistance in this moment requires recognizing that active opposition is our only viable option. Millions have died, millions are dying, and millions more await death—all to satisfy the bloodlust of mediocre leaders drunk on power. Our resistance must be meaningful and sustained.
What purpose will silence serve when we lose everything anyway?
The time for half-measures and performative gestures has passed. Higher education must choose between principled resistance and institutional suicide. The stakes could not be higher, and history will judge our response.
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Dr. Frederick Engram Jr. is an assistant professor of higher education at at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
