Trump Channels Ike In Defunding Colleges And Technology Elite
In early 2025, the Trump administration initiated a significant crackdown on federal funding for multiple universities, targeting institutions like Brown University, Harvard, and Columbia, with funding freezes totaling billions of dollars. Brown University alone faces a halt of $510 million, while Harvard is under review for nearly $9 billion, citing issues such as the universities’ responses to antisemitism and their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. This move aligns with Trump’s broader agenda to curb what he perceives as ideological overreach in higher education, including threats to withhold funds from schools allowing “illegal” protests. The cuts have led to immediate consequences: research grants have been frozen, labs have shut down, and universities like Duke and the Harvard School of Public Health are scaling back projects, with some facing stop-work orders that threaten life-saving research. This aggressive policy has sparked chaos, with educators warning of long-term damage to U.S. public health and innovation, as institutions struggle with hiring freezes, layoffs, and reduced graduate admissions.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his 1959 farewell address, cautioned against the growing influence of a “scientific-technological elite” and the risks of federal funding dominating the nation’s scholars, a warning that resonates with Trump’s actions. Eisenhower, who oversaw the expansion of the defense research industry during his presidency, expressed concern that centralized federal funding could corrupt the scientific process and allow public policy to be captured by this elite, potentially stifling independent inquiry. He noted the increasing formalization and cost of research, much of which was conducted at the direction of the federal government, and warned of the “prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money.” Trump’s funding cuts can be seen as a direct response to this warning, aiming to disrupt the entrenched power of universities that have grown heavily reliant on federal dollars—Harvard, for instance, has been a major beneficiary of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, which Trump’s policies now threaten to cap or eliminate.
However, Trump’s approach introduces its own set of contradictions when viewed through Eisenhower’s lens. While Eisenhower feared the overreach of a scientific elite propped up by federal money, he also valued the role of research in national progress and cautioned against reckless disruption. Trump’s blanket cuts, driven more by political grievances than a nuanced critique of academic influence, risk dismantling the very infrastructure of innovation that Eisenhower sought to protect, even as he warned of its potential misuse. The freezing of $8.7 billion in grants to Harvard, for example, doesn’t just target an elite—it halts projects that could benefit public health and economic growth, areas Eisenhower deemed critical during his tenure. Moreover, Trump’s alignment with tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, prominently featured at his inauguration, suggests a different kind of elite influence, one that Eisenhower might have equally distrusted. In heeding Eisenhower’s warning about federal overreach in academia, Trump may inadvertently be fostering a new oligarchy, trading one form of “misplaced power” for another, as universities reel and the broader scientific community braces for a potentially devastating fallout.
