I’ve lived the first half of my adult life in darkness. Prison, gangs, conflict, violence. By the time I turned thirty, I had spent more than thirteen years in correctional facilities, including a total of nearly a decade in solitary confinement.
That same year, education saved my life. A grant from the Sunshine Lady Foundation funded a two-year degree program at the prison where I was housed. I’d always been inclined toward learning, reading eclectically, and debating ideas with other bookworms. But I had no formal education beyond ninth grade, and no clue what to expect. What I experienced in my first classes—including ones on Asian philosophy and animal behavior—was nothing short of a religious conversion. It changed everything for me.
For me, education was a source of light. Literature pulled me away from self-loathing and nihilism, and toward the beauty of the world. The bleak, miserable world I occupied was illuminated, its true nature exposed. Other potential versions of my life were lit up as well, inviting me in. There is no way to know what my life would have become without higher education. I would likely still be lost in the dark, purposeless and heading nowhere.
That’s why I’ve found witnessing the Trump Administration’s open war to destroy higher education so infuriating. And it’s what makes seeing university after university capitulate to his extortion tactics so disgusting. I keep watching in astonished outrage as White House appointees smirk into the camera during press conferences as they announce patently false pretexts for stripping away access to higher education. This is all clearly being done in bad faith, but so far, the administration’s actions have drawn insufficient opposition.
The Trump team’s higher-ed intimidation campaign is being waged in part under the guise of fighting antisemitism. A policy brief titled “Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism” was released by the Heritage Foundation (the same group that cooked up Project 2025) just two days after Donald Trump’s reelection.
As The New York Times reported in May, the strategy of Project Esther is straightforward: By formally labelling the opinions of political opponents as antisemitic, and organizations that express dissenting viewpoints as “Hamas Support Organizations,” the government can legally justify cutting off their funding.
As a result of their tactics, colleges across America will be severely weakened, eliminated, or forced to make the concessions. Noncompliant members of those organizations, if federally recognized as terrorists, can be fired from their jobs, expelled from their schools, banished from public life, and even deported.
Without question, this is the darkest hour for higher education in America. School administrators have no good options, and only one moral choice of action: resist. Preserve academic integrity at all costs, even if it means losing funding. Do not allow this administration to dictate what universities are allowed to teach, or whom they are allowed to enroll. And, above all, do not let it dictate what students, professors, or anyone else on a college campus is allowed to say.
I’m sure many decision-makers in higher education have assumed that any changes they agree to will be temporary and reversible. But what if they’re wrong?
I know what education does for people like me. I know there are hundreds of thousands of young women and men packed into the darkness of America’s prisons who need the light that education provides. There are millions more who are free from prisons and jails but locked into their own desperate situations, for whom education is the surest way to change their lives. Our colleges need to be there for them, not just now, but ten years from now, a generation from now, lifetimes from now.
To America’s deans and to every university board member in our country, I say: Don’t sell these students out. Don’t trade their futures to momentarily appease a bullying, sociopathic philistine who will continue to hate and come after you no matter what you do. Our higher education system can survive these attacks. But we have no hope of saving it without courage.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.