Trump’s America, Higher Education and the Emergence of a Neo-Academic Cold War

The turn of the 21 Century was a period of optimism for the process of globalization that included open science, international efforts to confront the world’s major scientific and health challenges, and the value of cross-cultural interchange. But this globalist vision has unravelled. A new geopolitical Cold War has emerged, and in turn a Neo-Academic Cold War. One cause is the rise of neo-nationalist movements that harbor distrust of public institutions and their leaders, including universities and their academic communities. In that vain, Trump’s attacks on American universities include the rhetoric that universities are the “enemy” of his MAGA movement. He and his administration are pursuing draconian funding cuts to academic science, brute intervention in campus autonomy, and isolationist policies that hinder talent mobility. All are playing an outsized role in shaping the Neo-Academic Cold War. This presentation will discuss Trump’s attacks on colleges and universities and how it is eroding America’s higher education advantage. But Trump is not the only cause of the Neo-Academic Cold War. There are a series of contributing traumas: 9/11 and fears related to terrorism, the impact of the Great Recession, Russia and China’s re-emergence as geopolitical adversaries to the US and the EU, shaped in part by the war on Ukraine, the arrival of the pandemic, the global trend toward illiberal democracies, as well as the return of Trump. The net effect is that science and cultural diplomacy, and the concept of collaboration and open access data and research, has declined as a global value. A new bifurcated world of transnational academic engagement has emerged — multipolar environment with new adversarial relations even with traditional allies, including between the US and the EU. In the Neo-Academic Cold War, questions to ponder include the long-term and detrimental  impact on open science and attempts to meet social and environmental challenges that are global, as well as which nations and transnational alliances will be in some form benefactors.