Why Trump Wants to Control Universities

A couple of years ago, the conservative writer Christopher Rufo did a fellowship in Budapest, where, upon his arrival, János Csák, Hungary’s then–minister of culture and innovation, “greeted me with a strong handshake,” Rufo later wrote in an essay about the trip. Hungary’s population is not quite 10 million, and the country is among the poorest in the EU, yet Rufo believed that it had something to teach the U.S. The two countries, according to Rufo, were beset by the same diseases: “the fraying of national culture, entrenched left-wing institutions, and the rejection of sexual difference.” But unlike the U.S., Hungary had a plan. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was using “muscular state policy” to turn the culture back around. Among his major targets were Hungarian universities.

In this episode, Radio Atlantic host Hanna Rosin talks with the education writer Adam Harris, who believes that Rufo’s essay can help explain the Trump administration’s current attack on universities. Since Donald Trump has taken office, he has threatened to take back hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding from universities, and compiled lists of places that might not be in compliance, for various reasons: They failed to protect Jews on campus. They failed to protect women’s sports. They use “racial preferences and stereotypes” in their programs. The administration’s aim, Harris suggests, is much the same as Orbán’s—not just to dismantle the intellectual elite but also to build a new conservative one that better reflects its cultural values.

Listen to the full episode here.