For countless bright Indian students, studying at a top American university is the ultimate dream. Securing a spot at Columbia or another elite institution is a moment of celebration. International students, too, are drawn to the world-class education and opportunities that US campuses offer. But right now, these prestigious universities are caught in the crosshairs of an intense crackdown by the Trump administration, facing unprecedented turmoil and uncertainty. What's behind this dramatic shift?
Barack Obama, back when he was the US President and when intellectualism wasn't considered a liability in American politics, repeatedly stressed the need to invest in education, research and technology to keep the US ahead of rising powers like China and India. Yes, he singled out India and China, at least on two occasions that I can recall, as two potential threats to American innovation and research supremacy. His argument was that such investments were “an essential down payment on our future”, necessary for America to “out-educate, out-innovate and out-build the rest of the world”. He even went so far as to suggest that slashing funding for research and development could mean that “the great innovations of this century” might not happen in America at all.
Starving Campuses
Fast forward to today, and the Trump administration appears to have taken Obama's warning as a challenge. Instead of doubling down on America's intellectual and technological supremacy, it is using the Republican Party's ideological playbook to dismantle federal funding for research, treat professors as ideological enemies and wage war on the very institutions that made the US an academic superpower.
Liberals call his action an assault on knowledge; conservatives call it a long-overdue reckoning. But if the goal is to ensure that India and China leapfrog ahead in scientific innovation while America bogs itself down in a culture war against universities, then soon, the administration's mission might even be accomplished.
The first academic sledgehammer fell on Columbia University, with the administration slashing $400 million in federal grants—ostensibly because the university had “failed to protect American students and faculty” from antisemitic harassment. Many Jewish students and teachers welcomed the action. But hundreds of other Jewish professors, scholars and students promptly signed a letter condemning the administration's move, making it clear that this wasn't about protecting Jewish students but about punishing academia for its perceived ideological sins.
Next, the prestigious Johns Hopkins University learned that the administration was slashing a staggering $800 million in federal grants, primarily provided through USAID. A university press release said, "With the termination of more than $800 million in USAID grants at the university, Johns Hopkins has had to wind down much of its USAID grant-related activities in Baltimore and internationally. This has resulted in the loss of more than 2,200 jobs."
The Assault Has Just Begun
Columbia and Johns Hopkins are just the beginning. The government has put 60 state and private colleges and universities under investigation for alleged antisemitic harassment related to pro-Palestinian protests.
President Trump has long dismissed the Department of Education as a bloated relic polluted by liberal ideology. The Republicans believe the department is nothing but a bureaucratic swamp in desperate need of draining. According to the US media, the President is now fully dismantling the department and has signed an executive order to that effect. The Democratic Party argues that this is illegal and that dismantling the department would require Congress's approval. But legal hurdles seldom stand in the way of a culture war.
The Department of Education's primary function isn't indoctrination—it's money. It distributes billions of dollars in federal funding to schools and universities and oversees the federal student loan system. Gutting it isn't just an ideological victory—it's a direct hit on low-income students, students of colour, and those with disabilities, who rely most on federal aid.
Two Indian Students In Headlines
The Trump administration has also launched a chilling crackdown on campus activism. Federal agents have detained several students who participated in last year's anti-Israeli or pro-Gaza protests. One Indian PhD student, Ranjani Srinivasan, had to use the government's self-deportation app to leave the country, while another, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, was arrested on Monday. The administration has labelled Badar Khan Suri a threat to US foreign policy, citing alleged ties to Hamas—an accusation his lawyer calls absurd. A rarely used immigration law is being used to fast-track his deportation.
It all started with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian refugee whose green card was revoked over his involvement in Columbia University protests. It sent a chill across campuses nationwide. Columbia has 24,000 international students, many of whom are unsure whether they would be allowed to stay in the country. Students are now forced to second-guess whether exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech is worth the risk. The Department of Homeland Security wasted no time in making an example out of Khalil, after all, following up with the arrest of Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian student from the West Bank.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has promised to strip visas and green cards from what he called “Hamas supporters”, a convenient catch-all for anyone who dares to advocate for Palestinian rights.
Remember Mao's China?
What's happening in America today bears eerie similarities to China's Cultural Revolution, where Mao Zedong purged academia, shut down universities and crushed intellectual freedom in his quest to “revolutionise” the country. The consequences of Trump's assault on universities are monumental. It threatens to end US supremacy in research and quality education. Indian-origin journalist and political commentator Fareed Zakaria recently noted that while America is copying Mao's assault on universities, China is adopting the best of what the US offers—world-class education, cutting-edge research and technological innovation.
Many see Trump's actions as a war against liberalism and elitism. But dig deeper and the President's motives make political sense. In the 2020 election, 65% of non-college voters backed Trump, while 61% of university-educated voters went for Joe Biden. The 2024 election results show a similar pattern. It is well established that Trump supporters and "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) activists distrust universities, believing them to be ideological breeding grounds for liberals and leftists.
That explains why Vice President JD Vance, back when he was a senator in 2021, chillingly declared, “We have to honestly and aggressively attack universities in this country. The professors are the enemy.” Trump and his staunch supporters also despise diversity and inclusion programmes. Universities that promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes have seen their funding getting slashed. Under government pressure, initiatives celebrating inclusion have been dismantled, while diversity itself is being reframed as a threat to national security.
The American Self-Sabotage
At stake is not just freedom of speech, disgruntled professors or campus protests—it's America's entire supremacy in research and innovation. Federal funding cuts are jeopardising groundbreaking research on cancer, vaccines, artificial intelligence and other scientific advancements that have historically kept the US ahead of the world. But now, America's "war on knowledge" might just ensure that if the next great scientific breakthrough happens, it likely won't be in an American lab—it'll be in China or even India. While India's budget on technology, research and higher education has ballooned over the past couple of decades, Beijing too has been pouring billions into AI, biotechnology, and quantum computing.
It may get worse as the brain drain starts soon. Why would brilliant minds stay in a country where academic freedom is on life support and research funding is being redirected to serve political agendas?
Eventually, it will affect the US economy too. Tech companies, medical research and engineering firms all rely on the steady pipeline of talent and ideas churned out by universities. When these institutions crumble under the weight of political interference, expect the economy to follow suit.
(Syed Zubair Ahmed is a London-based senior Indian journalist with three decades of experience with the Western media)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
