Opinion: While Trump government is attacking universities, China is fostering higher education

A reign of terror is raging through the world of American higher education. The Donald Trump administration is as determined as it is vindictive against what it sees as the political, intellectual and administrative transgression of the liberal conscience of this world. It has been chillingly strategic about dismantling programmes in its arch enemy – measures in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The loudest has been the recent fall of Columbia University in New York, which has essentially given in to all of the government’s demands, from suppressing cultures of protest on campus to placing its reputed department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies in the administrative uncertainty of a five-year receivership. On Friday, the university announced that its interim president, Katrina Armstrong, was stepping down.

More universities are keeling over. We are looking at an era where the US government may have significant control in the life of universities, which have, for the longest time, remained islands of liberal intellect in oceans of intolerant anti-intellectualism.

The Ides of March got my social media timelines flooded with posts articulating shock, anger and outrage at the arrest of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, his sudden separation from his pregnant wife, and the threat of deportation hanging over...

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