The Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs’ In the News series welcomed Wall Street Journal reporter and Colby alumnus Doug Belkin for a conversation titled “Why Universities Are the Frontline in American Politics.” Moderated by sociology professor Neil Gross and senior government major Caroline Eldredge `26, the event explored how universities have become central battlegrounds in America’s political conflicts.
Belkin, who graduated from Colby in 1990, has covered higher education for the Wall Street Journal for nearly two decades, documenting shifts in enrollment, public confidence, and federal policy. Speaking from his home base in Chicago, he reflected briefly on his Colby experience, including studying English, swimming on the varsity team, and taking a course on the “literature of existentialism” during his senior year. That class, he joked, “caused a bit of an identity crisis.”
The discussion quickly turned to the heart of the evening: the changing relationship between higher education and the federal government. Belkin described what he sees as an “unprecedented centralization of power” under the Trump administration, which he argued represents a major break from the country’s historically decentralized approach to higher education.
“In the U.S., universities have long operated independently,” Belkin explained. “We don’t have a minister of education who decides what people study. Schools really get to decide what to do and how to do it.” But in recent years, he said, federal pressure on universities has intensified. “This president has said, ‘You’ve gotten really far out of line… you’re not serving the American people anymore,’” Belkin continued. “And he’s using funding as leverage to try to pull universities back into line.”
That pressure has crystallized in what’s known as the college compact, a proposed agreement between the federal government and participating universities. Belkin described the compact as part of a broader effort to reshape how universities spend money and define their ideological priorities. Among its provisions are restrictions on diversity and inclusion programs, limits on foreign student enrollment, and calls for “intellectual diversity” in faculty hiring.
“He’s saying universities have become indoctrination grounds,” Belkin noted. “He wants checks and balances on intellectual diversity.” The compact also includes measures such as tuition caps and a push to address grade inflation, which Belkin said has made college transcripts “less meaningful for employers.”
Professor Gross pressed Belkin on the proposal’s most controversial elements, such as the demand to eliminate departments seen as hostile to conservative ideas and to prohibit admissions preferences based on political affiliation. Belkin said those measures reflect a broader current within the MAGA movement: “They want universities punished. There’s a lot of anger out there toward them.”
He cited Florida as a testing ground for many of these policies. “If you want to know what higher education in America is going to look like in a year or two,” he said, “look at what’s happening in Florida. DeSantis has kind of tried these already.” Republican governors, Belkin added, have largely backed such efforts, while Democratic governors like Gavin Newsom have moved sharply in opposition, threatening to cut off state funds to any institution that signs the compact.
When asked why this political confrontation has emerged now, Belkin traced its roots to decades of change in the American education system. Beginning in the 1970s, he said, federal policy embraced the idea of “college for all,” channeling resources and social prestige toward higher education. “That was great for colleges,” he said, “but it was a mistake, because we over-indexed on college.” Too many students enrolled but didn’t finish, and many who did earn degrees realized that a degree offered limited returns. “So now you’re talking about college for all that’s broken for most folks,” he said. “That created a lot of anger toward universities.”
Belkin described this anger as a key ingredient in the current political climate. “You add to that universities moving a little bit more to the left every decade,” he said, “and by 2014, you start to see students saying it’s not okay to have conservative speakers on campus.” The resulting frustration, he argued, has become a political opportunity: “There’s resentment toward elites, toward universities, toward professors — and that’s fueled politics for a decade.”
He noted that much of the tension within higher education also reflects a divide between disciplines. STEM faculty, as Belkin explained, often rely on external grant money, much of it from federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health. Their work is measured by research output and funding success, creating a closer financial relationship between science departments and the federal government.
Humanities professors, by contrast, depend less on external funding and more on institutional support. Their work often engages directly with questions of culture, race, and identity, which has made them more visible targets in today’s political debates. Because of these differences, Belkin noted, the threat of funding cuts provokes very different reactions from different members of the faculty.
Belkin concluded by noting the impossible position many institutions now face. Faculty members, he said, view the compact as an attack on academic freedom, while trustees and administrators feel pressure to protect their schools’ financial futures. “If you give up your academic freedom, you’re not a university anymore,” he said. “But if you lose federal funding, you can’t function as one either. Heads you lose, tails you don’t win — that’s where they are.”
~ Sophia Ikiri `29
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