I recently returned home from a philosophy conference in the United States—my first since Trump & Co. began their assault on US academic institutions—and was horrified in all the ways you might expect. Colleagues spoke of federal research funding cuts, escalating attacks on academic freedom, department closures, and fears of a US brain drain. One professor had seemingly been fired for her “woke” research, underscoring the human cost of institutional capitulation to Trump’s demands. Yet I also came away with a less expected though still worrying impression: that of the academy’s unwitting complicity in radicalising the populist forces currently arrayed against it.
No doubt the Trump administration’s war on higher education is standard autocratic fare: destroy standards of truth and evidence—and the people and institutions that care about them—so that “reality” can become whatever the dear leader says it is. But the current attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education are not merely a pretext for Trump’s power grab. Unfortunately, they are also effective political messaging that both channels and fuels widespread resentment of educated elites.
How did we get here? The uncomfortable truth is that progressive academics themselves bear part of the blame. The issue, in short, is groupthink.
Significant swaths of progressive academia exhibit a kind of intellectual tribalism. Too often we take shelter in our sameness, finding warmth, belonging and a sense of righteousness in our shared convictions. But tribalism rewards conformity and treats disagreement as a litmus test for moral purity. Are you with us or against us? Those who lack the appropriate progressive credentials or eschew the latest terminological innovations—such as using “Latinx” instead of “Latinos” and “Latinas”—are frequently deemed unworthy of engagement.
At the recent conference, as colleagues took turns scrutinising the sexism and racism of a towering 18th century philosopher, I heard the same question repeated: is this or that respected scholar’s reading of the figure in question part of the problem or the solution? Implicit subtext: Whose complicity remains to be exposed and lamented? Who’s in and who’s out?
As citizens of a diverse democratic society, we have a duty to engage respectfully with political and ideological opponents, to seek to learn from them, to take a genuine interest in thinking together and finding common ground. Universities in particular should be places where everyone can practise these virtues. Yet too often they function as hubs of virtue-signalling, whereby academics seek to consolidate in-group standing among ever-shrinking circles of the like-minded.
Such dynamics stifle free thought and expression, insulating us from alternative viewpoints. Little wonder, then, that a significant gap has emerged between progressive academics’ self-perception—as crusaders against privilege and oppression—and how they are widely perceived from outside: as agents and beneficiaries of the very elitist exclusion they decry. Trump’s effective political ad mocking progressive concern with pronouns (“Kamala Harris is for they/them. Trump is for you.”) illustrates the chasm. This same disconnect also fuels the populist, authoritarian backlash against higher learning that threatens us all.
If progressive academics are to defend the value of learning and research to a sceptical, even scornful public, more must embrace open-mindedness, humble curiosity and heterodox thinking. Breaking free from groupthink requires moving beyond our ideological comfort zones and engaging earnestly with the strongest possible counterarguments. I saw this at the conference, too. We need much more of it.
Of course, none of these aims will be furthered by gutting research funding, undermining university independence, discarding standards of truth and evidence, or imposing state-enforced right-wing ideology. Advocating for the repudiation of progressive groupthink is not making common cause with Trumpism. Rather, it is recognising this political moment as an opportunity to show how genuine anti-elitism, broad-mindedness and higher learning go together.
Despite popular caricatures and the real groupthink problem to which they point, higher education has never been a mere vehicle for inculcating left-wing pieties about systemic oppression. At its best, it strengthens the habits of open inquiry, dialogue, humility and truth-seeking that make free societies strong.
Ironically, the authoritarian right has largely succeeded in painting itself as truth-seekers hell-bent on tearing away the veil of left-wing dogma. They ape the virtues of free-thinking by framing opposition to academic consensus on a given issue as a badge of intellectual authenticity. The progressive left must respond not merely by closing ranks—although solidarity is important—but also by exemplifying genuine intellectual openness and courage, reminding us all of what real free-thinking is and why it is so important.
