Key Takeaways:
- Restoring Merit: Trump’s plan demands universities end race and sex-based discrimination and return to evaluating students and faculty based on achievement and potential.
- Free Speech and Neutrality: The proposal requires intellectual openness, campus neutrality, and protection of free debate as cornerstones of academic life.
- Cutting Foreign Influence: Institutions must disclose and eliminate foreign entanglements while focusing on affordability, excellence, and American values.
President Donald Trump announced a sweeping new higher education reform initiative Tuesday, vowing to end what he called the “WOKE, SOCIALIST, and ANTI-AMERICAN ideology” that has overtaken America’s universities.
In a fiery Truth Social post, Trump said his administration is “fixing this, and FAST,” promising to restore merit, free speech, and equal opportunity in higher education. “Our Nation’s Great Institutions will once again prioritize Merit and Hard Work before ‘group identity,’ resulting in tremendous new Research and Opportunity to benefit all Americans,” he wrote.
The plan, dubbed the Reform Agenda in Higher Education, targets universities that discriminate based on race or sex, pledging swift enforcement of federal law. But Trump also extended an olive branch — offering schools the chance to partner with the federal government to “help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence.”
Those who sign on must commit to intellectual diversity, institutional neutrality, affordability for students, and transparency about foreign funding. “They will stop racist Admission Policies, and put an end to unjust and illegal discrimination in Faculty Hiring,” Trump stated.
The president’s push represents a sharp pivot away from the bureaucratic groupthink of the past. It emphasizes personal achievement, free inquiry, and American exceptionalism — values long abandoned by left-leaning academia.
“Americans deserve to be treated in accordance with their demonstrated achievements and potential,” Trump declared. “Upon regaining this fundamentally American value, our Nation will be unstoppable.”
With Trump’s reforms, the message to universities is clear: the era of indoctrination is over — and the age of excellence is back.