When a government starts trashing books and banning fields of study, it has gone beyond censorship: democracy itself is under threat. In the wake of Hampshire College’s closure, Republican attacks on higher education — and liberal arts education in particular — feels closer to home than ever before. In a 2021 speech titled “Universities are the Enemy,” J.D. Vance declared, “We must aggressively attack the universities in this country.” He explained: “Maybe it’s time to seize the endowments, penalize them for being on the wrong side of some of these culture war issues.”
As a professor at Smith College and chair of the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, I have closely followed the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education, and my field in particular. In 1990, I joined the inaugural class of the first women’s studies Ph.D. program in the United States at Emory University. Since then, the field has grown to have 24 Ph.D. programs, close to 100 master’s programs and nearly 800 departments or programs offering undergraduate classes.
Women’s, gender and sexuality studies teaches students to think critically, to question the status quo and to understand how power shapes our lives across gender, race, class, sexuality and more. MAGA Republicans are threatened by the questions we ask, so rather than engage in dialogue with us, they are determined to eliminate us. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 provided the blueprint to achieve that goal, but Republican governors have been testing these strategies for years.
In 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis launched a hostile takeover of New College of Florida, the state’s esteemed liberal arts honors college, appointing six right-wing activists to vacant positions on the 13-member governing board of trustees. None were scholars; most had no ties to the college or even to the state of Florida. Among them was Christopher Rufo, the architect of the national crusade against “critical race theory” — the term Republicans used to discredit discussion of systemic racial inequalities. The new board promptly fired the college president, eliminated the gender studies program, and destroyed hundreds of gender studies books.
DeSantis’s allies celebrated openly. Rufo posted on social media, “We abolished the gender studies program. Now we are throwing out the trash.” DeSantis’ press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, cheered, “Putting gender studies books in the garbage? Great job, @NewCollegeofFL.” Gov. DeSantis’s communications director Bryan Griffin echoed him on social media, “gender studies books ARE getting dumped because that propaganda is no longer offered at@NewCollegeofFL.” Ironically, he told a right-wing news outlet, “We’re reclaiming higher education in Florida from the zealots.”
By contrast, Florida Rep. Anna V. Eskamani called the destruction of gender studies books at New College as “the equivalent to burning books — it’s backwards, politically motivated, and a preview of Project 2025.” The ACLU of Florida also condemned the actions. “This is not merely an administrative oversight; it is an intentional act of censorship that strikes at the heart of our democratic values and the very purpose of education,” said Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. “The dumping of these books… is a clear and dangerous signal… political interference is poisoning our educational institutions. This isn’t just an attack on academic freedom — it is an all-out assault on the right to free expression, the free exchange of ideas, and the intellectual autonomy that our colleges and universities must protect at all costs.”
The new leadership eased admission requirements and invested heavily in athletics to masculinize the environment and recruit more male students, even changing the college’s logo from the Null Sets to the Mighty Banyans, illustrated by a Banyan tree with bulging muscles and an angry grimace.
New College of Florida was a trial run for what was coming nationally. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy agenda called for stripping resources from liberal arts colleges, politicizing curricula, controlling accreditation, privatizing student loans and gutting protections against race and sex discrimination. The Trump administration has already made significant strides toward achieving these goals.
“They don’t want people to be educated for critical thinking, but only educated to be compliant,” said Smith College professor Loretta J. Ross. Trump himself said it best during his 2016 campaign: “I love the poorly educated.”
Authoritarian regimes typically attack higher education. In October 2018, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán banned gender studies graduate programs by revoking their accreditation and state funding, labeling the field “ideology, not a science.” Vladimir Putin banned gender studies from being taught or promoted in Russia. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro aggressively tried to eliminate, discredit and defund education on gender and sexuality in schools and universities. On the first day in office, Trump issued an executive order condemning “gender ideology,” which has since been weaponized to attack women’s and gender studies programs and professors across the U.S. On April 13, the Hungarian people voted out Viktor Orbán. My hope is that on Nov. 3, the American people will reject the Republican Congress that has allowed the Trump administration to run roughshod over higher education, and elect a new Congress ready to repair and restore this cornerstone of American democracy.
Carrie N. Baker is a professor in the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Smith College and a regular contributor to Ms. Magazine.