Two discouraging but one very hopeful story about Trump’s and Trumpists’ higher ed attacks. Let’s do the bad news first.

First, Michael Schill, the president of Northwestern (my alma mater), announced today that he is resigning, following tremendous pressure from the GOP and, undoubtedly, others, likely including some donors. Here’s the NYT article. Like other university presidents, Schill appeared before Elise Stefanik’s Congressional committee last year in the so-called hearings on anti-semitism run rampant on university campuses. Schill’s testimony, while perhaps not all it could have been, struck an appropriate tone in defense of academic freedom and was at not the complete disaster that befell his peers at other institutions, notably Harvard and Penn. But, it turns out MAGA retribution was only delayed, not repulsed.

Second, a story I had missed: in June 2025, Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced that Florida and six other states had formed a new higher ed accreditation agency — spurred by conservative (read: “reactionary”) complaints about the “ideological” and “woke” nature of the current accreditation process. Today, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article explaining how officials in the University of North Carolina System, which has basically been hijacked by anti-woke ideologues, along with the American Enterprise Institute, was a driving force behind the development of the new agency. [The Chronicle article might be behind a paywall; I can provide a copy if needed.] The MAGA assault on higher ed is well-coordinated and a real threat to the higher ed ecosystem.

The good news, of course, is that a federal judge has ruled that the Administration’s cancellation of Harvard’s funding was illegal. No telling where this is going to go, but we are seeing again and again that when institutions stand up to Trump, they have a good chance of winning. Especially in the courts, as this piece in The Atlantic reports.