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When European media write about Donald Trump’s fight against left-wing radicalism at American universities, they usually do so without in any way nuanced the debate. Trump is portrayed as a threat to democracy and to the independence and freedom of American institutions.
On the other hand, a university like Harvard – where Trump’s policies are most clearly opposed – is described as a courageous champion of academic freedom. Harvard dares to stand up to the autocratic denier of knowledge and the despiser of science. And that is why it is not just about academic freedom but about democracy and liberal society.
It is a well-established principle in the Western world that our universities should not have to adapt to power. Researchers at our universities should feel free to research and teach what they want (at least in principle). The free pursuit of knowledge should not be hindered by politicians or by politicians’ ideological preferences. Research should be free research, otherwise it is not research. Researchers should be free researchers, otherwise they are not real researchers.
It is about a democratic principle of freedom. Researchers should dare to question the prevailing order. They should dare to question politicians’ priorities. They should dare to challenge ordinary people’s ideas about what is true and right. Free research should be a free search for knowledge.
But it is also about the effectiveness of research. Research that is to be able to advance thought and knowledge must dare to think new things, it must dare to question norms and socially established “truths”. That is how research moves society forward. That is how research fulfills its function as a source of social development, progress and innovation.
If political power then intervenes in the free search for knowledge and prescribes researchers how they should think and what they should do, this will be a way of crushing the entire system. Authentic search for knowledge cannot be adapted to the wishes of power. Rational analysis of society and culture cannot be forced into ideological clothes. If universities are to start dancing to the tune of power, they will only be concerned with confirming the legitimacy of power. We cannot have it that way and we should not have it that way in the Western world, and therefore the university must be free from political power.
And here the key concept becomes independence. Universities should be an integrated part of society, they should be financed (mostly anyway) by public funds, that is, by tax money, but they should at the same time be independent in relation to politics. Universities are thus in a dependent relationship with the public when it comes to financing and teaching obligations, but they should be completely independent when it comes to the content of the research and teaching that is produced.
The picture that we paint here of research and teaching is the picture that dominates the media throughout the Western world right now. Universities should be free and independent. And in that light, Donald Trump becomes an authoritarian leader who threatens the freedom of universities and thought.
But is it really that simple? Isn’t there reason to be suspicious when the entire media establishment runs in the same direction to warn about the political right’s threat to democracy?
The truth is rather that it is a utopian fantasy that universities and higher education institutions would function completely independently of the political and ideological context in which they operate. It is also a utopia to believe that universities cannot function as political actors. If universities seem to take a position on politically charged subjects in different ways, is it not obvious that they are choosing to act politically? And can one expect more from the often self-aggrandizing academics at our universities than for them to deny that they are acting politically and that it might be reasonable for other forces in society to react to it in that case? If it is true that education makes us so wise, then surely even our university researchers should be able to admit that a university world that makes itself a political actor can also expect to be treated as such.
It is common knowledge around the world that there is a strong university left in the USA. It is not the only prevailing trend, there are other tendencies as well, but it is a fact that American universities have adopted – and created – a modern leftist mindset where power and hierarchies are always to be questioned and where the West and Western people are always to be made suspicious. This is not something that gives unambiguous glory to American universities.
In 1996, the so-called Sokal hoax exploded, in which an American professor, Alan Sokal, had a nonsense text with a lot of dubious claims and conclusions published in an American university journal, “Social Text”. The affair revealed how a self-righteous and distinguished academic world could let through a text full of unreasonable claims and which had been spiced up with “postmodern” jargon. The text was incoherent, incorrect and unreasonable. But it was ideological and modern. So when you talk about American universities enjoying such a high status, it is also true that there is a certain condescension around the world about the naivety with which American academics have adopted modern French thinking to create so-called “post-modernism”.
Another problem has been the dominance that has existed in certain subjects of an obviously ideologically biased meta-narrative about hierarchies and domination, where whites, Westerners and men have been unilaterally described as unjust winners in a system of differences and hierarchies, and where all other categories of people are portrayed as victims. This is perhaps most clearly seen in the field of research called “whiteness theory”, where one sees oneself as very profound when one claims that “whiteness” is a social norm in countries where there have traditionally been mostly white people. (Anything else would have been very strange.) And such a phenomenon as the whiteness norm is also presented as a problem to be fought. The whiteness norm should be the subject of academic and political activism that frees people from yet another norm that governs our thinking.
And by extension, there is a tendency – and here we can speak of post-modernism – to make all social phenomena a result of the exercise of power. Nations are fictitious notions based on false ideas of homogeneity and exclusion. Differences between men and women are invented by a patriarchy that wants to oppress women. Differences between cultures are based on racist notions of the superiority of the West over supposedly primitive cultures. Norms become something to be questioned and changed. Especially Western norms.
When, after the war in Gaza, American universities also became the scene of a multitude of Israel-critical and sometimes even anti-Semitic manifestations, it was a confirmation of something that the American right already knew about. Their elite universities have been transformed into producers of extreme leftist ideology.
And then it is not entirely unreasonable that a president and an administration that has the people’s mandate to oppose woke culture and highlight traditional American values begin to protest. Even if we believe in the principle of academic freedom, we must be able to think that there are limits even there. If the universities had gone in an extreme right-wing direction, no one would have protested if a Democratic president had started to oppose this. In a democracy, the power over public funds must ultimately lie with the people and their representatives. If authorities and the education system move in a clear ideological direction and thereby make themselves political actors, they can expect to be treated as such.