Since President-elect Donald Trump won the election, colleges and universities have been grappling with his victory’s potential impacts on higher education.
Dartmouth is no exception.
On the campaign trail, Trump and Vice President-elect Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, admonished universities for their left-leaning politics. Now, some Dartmouth professors are discussing the possibility that the incoming administration may target campuses with its proposed policies — which include expanding taxation of university endowments, shuttering the federal Department of Education and unraveling diversity, equity and inclusion measures.
It is “great politics” for Trump to target campuses, according to government professor John Carey, who specializes in political science. Carey said the Republican Party has “run up the score with voters without a four-year college degree” by distancing itself from institutions of higher education.
“In the past, [Trump] has talked about things like tax reform to make university endowments taxable,” Carey said. “That’s a way that in particular you could go after the most elite, wealthiest schools, and they’d be a popular target.”
According to the Washington Post, Trump won the votes of Americans without a college degree by a greater margin than any other Republican since 1984. Against Harris, he won the group by 14 percentage points, while in 2020, the group was split between President Joe Biden and Trump.
Universities have long been a bastion of left-wing ideology. Scrutiny of campuses, however, intensified last spring when a wave of pro-Palestinian protests swept universities across the country — culminating in the resignations of two Ivy League presidents. Economics professor Meir Kohn said Trump’s win demonstrated a widespread discontent with the political culture of universities.
“The fact that [Vice President Kamala] Harris lost to Trump shows that a very large part of the country is not on board with the sort of left-wing activist woke culture which emanates from the colleges and universities,” Kohn said.
Government professor Sean Westwood — who studies American political polarization — said this mentality spilled into Congress.
“In a world where Americans in Congress are hostile towards higher education, I think it’s much, much easier for Trump to try and push through his policy positions, especially on endowment taxation, especially on DEI, especially on other issues where the public also seems to agree with the priorities of the Trump administration,” he said.
Some of these plans are more difficult than others, according to the New York Times. Government professor Brendan Nyhan said he does not believe that Trump’s plan to close the Department of Education is feasible.
“There have been proposals to eliminate the Department of Education for years, and it hasn’t gone anywhere because the politics are often unfriendly,” Nyhan said. “The reason these departments of the government exist is because there are important constituencies in the programs that are popular.”
The department administers federal grant programs for K-12 education and oversees student loan programs, according to the Washington Post.
Pulling back federal dollars for universities would have a material impact on their ability to conduct research, according to Westwood. Funding for many projects comes from federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment of Humanities, according to Westwood. If those agencies were to shut down, it could cut researchers’ “ability to conduct research,” he said.
“Dartmouth is very fortunate to have a large endowment, but in other universities that are more dependent on the expenditures of federal agencies, this can have a really chilling effect on their ability to operate,” Westwood said.
Even without the Department of Education, the federal government could still “preserve pretty much any function it wants that’s in the department,” according to Carey. Abolishing it would be “more of a symbolic move,” he said.
Trump’s plans for mass deportations would also affect some students on college campuses, according to history professor Annelise Orleck. If put into effect, widespread deportations could cause “unparalleled … disruption and fear and division” on campuses, though mass deportations might be difficult to implement, she said.
“I certainly remember the fear and concern of immigrants in this community and on our campus [during Trump’s first term],” Orleck said. “[But] I think that the cost of the logistics are overwhelming.”
In the face of a federal deportation push, Dartmouth would have “really nothing” at its disposal to protect undocumented students from removal, Westwood said.
“Undocumented students should really have a plan in place to protect themselves,” Westwood said.
All of the professors interviewed unilaterally agreed that it is too early to predict what will happen in Trump’s second term. Nyhan pointed out that Trump’s last administration was marked by an “unpredictable” governing style.
“We know from last time that his governing style is chaotic and unpredictable,” he said. “That’s likely to be even more frequent and extreme in this administration.”
Government professor Jason Barabas agreed, adding that he believes the Republicans’ federal trifecta — control over the presidency and majorities in the House and Senate — will “determine a lot of the policy changes” under the Trump administration.
“If the Republicans have unified control of the presidency, the House, the Senate and really a favorable Supreme Court, I think they can get a lot done,” Barabas said. “I think we’ll see more legislation than we typically would in other congressional years.”
