Opinion | Trump Isn’t Fixing America’s Campuses. He’s Bleeding Them Dry.

When I went back to my office at Duke last week to prepare for the fall semester, I confronted danger signs, police-style tape and other obstacles outside the entrance to the building. I had to weave my way in. And while the impediments reflected humdrum structural maintenance, I couldn’t help but see a metaphor in them, one so on the nose that a novelist writing about higher education under President Trump would probably be ashamed to use it.

Those of us in academia are on newly threatening terrain. Will the Trump administration take away yet more of our funding? How closely is it watching us? Those questions dog me, but no more so than a larger one: What sense, if any, does the administration’s attack on many of the country’s leading colleges and universities make?

Trump is right about some of higher education’s shortcomings, derelictions and outright failures. Campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza unveiled an antisemitism that many schools were shamefully slow to recognize, if they recognized it at all; their Jewish students didn’t seem to be accorded the same concern that classmates in other minority groups received. To varying degrees, many schools have promoted a progressive orthodoxy at odds with free discourse. Some diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives simply went too far. And there’s a striking lack of ideological and political diversity among faculty members, a significant majority of whom are left of center.

But what Trump and his allies are doing is no targeted effort to correct that. It’s a sweeping, indiscriminate, performative smackdown of elite institutions by a crew trying to solidify its power under the banner of anti-elitism. It doesn’t attempt to usher those institutions from a place of bias and extremism to one of neutrality and moderation. It answers excess with excess, orthodoxy with orthodoxy, censorship with censorship. And it disregards the damage it’s doing.

The leaders of this charge say that they want these institutions, with all their tax breaks and federal research funds, to be more accountable to the public. Fine. Let’s have a serious discussion about what that means. What it would look like. How it squares with academic freedom. And how it wouldn’t end up with colleges being forced to bend to the whims of whoever’s in power.

Because that’s what’s happening now. With debatable authority and without any consultation with Congress, Trump is using the suspension of federal grants, threats of further cuts and demands that schools essentially pay fines for their supposed transgressions to get them to do as he pleases. That’s not a discussion; it’s intimidation. That’s not accountability; it’s extortion. He extracted $200 million from Columbia. He’s reportedly looking for $500 million from Harvard and more than $1 billion from U.C.L.A. Why these targets? They’re politically juicy. These sums? They’re attention-grabbing. He’s staging a show of force. A spectacle of punishment.

And an illogical one at that. His and his allies’ principal grievances are with professors and courses in the humanities, in the social sciences, which are the realms where white supremacy and structural racism are studied. So they’re slowing money to … Alzheimer’s research? Gumming up or dragging down investigations into the causes and treatments of other diseases? Slashing studies of sea-level rise and flooding because they trigger “climate anxiety”? How does that fight antisemitism? It’s the DOGE approach, sadistic and sloppy: Inflict pain with no regard for what and who are really being hurt, because the true goal is to assert dominance, shrink others’ influence and please your supporters by destroying something in particular that they’ve decided to hate and smashing the status quo in general.

In an excellent essay in Times Opinion in May, Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor, perfectly captured the heedless, disproportionate nature of this offensive. Pinker copped to Harvard’s and (by implication) other top schools’ sins, including the vilification and reprimanding of a few professors who uttered words and floated ideas that displeased and discomfited some left-leaning students. He admitted the need for reflection and reform. But he also cataloged the over-the-top, all-over-the-place frenzy of the Trump administration’s response, including threats or moves to eliminate Harvard’s tax-free nonprofit status, block the enrollment of foreign students and cut or freeze a magnitude of funding that’s nearing $3 billion. Instead of focusing on discrete treatments for Harvard’s specific ailments, Pinker wrote, the Trump administration apparently preferred to “cut its carotid and watch it bleed out.”

The bloodletters say they’re acting in the public interest, for the public good. How is the crippling of science and scientific livelihoods a public good? How is the exsanguination of Harvard? Listening to Trump and his allies talk about higher education, I seldom if ever hear any adequate recognition of its successes — for prime example, the indisputable role that American universities played and play as cradles of innovation, global leaders in research and thus engines of national wealth — or any sufficient awareness of the care that we should take to preserve and perpetuate those.

What I do hear is a caricature of elite schools. I’ve been on the Duke faculty for more than four years, and I’ve certainly seen evidence of what right-wing critics of higher education are furious about. But I’ve also seen this: one student’s paper about how Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are merchants of grievance too ready to assign various Americans the labels of villain or victim; another student’s presentation on the overreach of some schools’ and organizations’ harmful language glossaries (“blind study,” “homeless,” “hardworking,” “brown bag”); all my students’ receptiveness and respectfulness when I’ve invited conservative guest speakers to talk with them and take their questions; my fellow faculty members’ delight that I brought those speakers in.

Despite the warning signs around my Duke building, the danger as I begin my fifth year of teaching here isn’t from within. It’s from without, and it’s chilling.

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For the Love of Sentences

In The Times, Ligaya Mishan extolled the egg’s uses in baking: “The whites alone, whipped steadily, foam up into a paralyzed surf and, when folded into batter — carefully, with as little effort as possible — bring a cake near levitation. Gravity ends here. This is how angels eat.” (Thanks to Kate Kavanagh of Concord, Mass., for nominating this.)

Separately, in a review of the Washington, D.C., restaurant Dōgon by Kwame Onwuachi, Ligaya thrilled to the curry lamb, which “comes to the table in crisped, brownie-size slabs — only three, but dense and rich, salt and savor compressed like a haiku or a neutron star.” And in another review, she extolled the singularity and eccentricity of a briny hideaway in Manhattan’s East Village: “To describe Smithereens as a New England-style seafood spot is like calling ‘Moby-Dick’ a story about fishing. The restaurant is darker and weirder, a love letter to the North Atlantic at its most ominous and brooding, written in seaweed and smashed lobster heads. Even the martini tastes like a gulp of saltwater, the last memory of a drowning man.” (Bob Altizer, Phoenix, and Jodie Wohl, Seattle, among others)

Also in The Times, Jennifer Harlan savored summer: “Even though I have long since graduated from the halcyon days of academic calendars, something about the season still sings of leisure; the hours stretch out like a cat in a sunbeam, begging to be whiled away on a porch somewhere, lost in a well-worn paperback, with a sweaty glass of limeade within reach.” (Gordon Rogers, Columbia, Mo.)

In The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel pondered A.I.’s intensifying impact on society. “You are swimming in the primordial soup of machine cognition,” he wrote, noting such scary new phenomena as the “flirty A.I. chatbot,” “A.I. revenge porn” and A.I.-enhanced fascist propaganda. “From this morass, we are told, an ‘artificial general intelligence’ will eventually emerge, turbo-charging the human race or, well, maybe destroying it,” he added. “But look: Every boob with a T-Mobile plan will soon have more raw intelligence in their pocket than has ever existed in the world.” (Josh Bruce, Chicago)

Also in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols deconstructed a television interview in which Trump made preposterous claims about the war between Russia and Ukraine: “The setting, as it so often is when Trump piles into a car with his thoughts and then goes full ‘Thelma & Louise’ off a rhetorical cliff, was ‘Fox & Friends.’ The Fox hosts, although predictably fawning, did their best to keep the president from the ledge, but when Trump pushes the accelerator, everyone goes along for the ride.” (John Marchelya, Baltimore, and Jessica N. Lange, Beavercreek, Ohio)

And David A. Graham lamented many Democrats’ desires to find their own versions of policies, podcasts and provocateurs essential to MAGA success: “Leftist authoritarianism with good health care coverage is not an appealing alternative to Trumpism. It’s Cuba.” He later concluded that for Democrats, “imitation is the sincerest forum for getting flattened.” (Tim Clark, Phoenix, and Mary Nellenback, Auburn, N.Y., among others)

In The New York Review of Books, Fintan O’Toole explained why the Jeffrey Epstein story bedevils Trump like almost nothing else: “It lives at once in a gothic horror movie he has helped to script and in the all-too-tangible world of untrammeled power and merciless exploitation he actually inhabits. It provokes both wild surmises and entirely rational questions.” (Stan Shatenstein, Montreal)

In The American Prospect, Ryan Cooper divined a Greek myth in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s war on game-changing, lifesaving mRNA vaccines: “It’s as if Prometheus decided to return fire to the gods because woo-woo Instagram influencers convinced him that cooking your food is unhealthy.” (John Peterson, Mullica Township, N.J.)

In The Athletic, Jon Greenberg charted when and how the Milwaukee Brewers pulled so far ahead of the Chicago Cubs in their division of Major League Baseball: “When these teams last met in Milwaukee just before the trade deadline, the Brewers took two out of three for a two-game lead in the division. Then they won 14 straight while the Cubs replaced their bats with pool noodles.” (Capper Tramm, Asheville, N.C.)

And in The Minnesota Star Tribune, Jim Souhan gaped at an especially terrible pass thrown during a preseason game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New England Patriots by Sam Howell, one of the Vikings’ backup quarterbacks: “The ball hung in the air like an oblong piñata. Time passed. The Twins traded another 10 players. Beards grew. Finally, Howell’s pass fluttered back to earth, and a few Patriots drew straws to decide who would intercept it.” (Lee Kaplan, White Bear Township, Minn.)

To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.

What I’m Watching

Because I was hugely impressed by the writer and director Zach Cregger’s 2022 movie “Barbarian,” which at once mined the tropes and broke the rules of the horror genre, I was eager to see his new movie, “Weapons.” It has been a box office and critical hit, and justly so: Its narrative structure, which moves the story forward by looping backward and showing events from different characters’ perspectives, works brilliantly, and it intensifies the viewer’s curiosity and sense of dread at precisely the pace it intends (before, ugh, a frenzied and ultraviolent final-act reveal that significantly deflates the fun).

But I mention “Weapons” for another reason — the indelibly funny and spooky performance by Amy Madigan. I won’t say much more about her character lest I create spoilers. But I’m delighted to see chatter about her as a contender for best supporting actress at the next Academy Awards. I’d give her the statuette right now. She’s up against a history of Oscar snubs for acting in horror movies; I direct you to the omission of Toni Collette from the best actress race the year that “Hereditary” was released. Here’s hoping that this time around, the academy’s voters won’t let the blood of “Weapons” blind them to the beauty of Madigan’s work.

On a Personal (By Which I Mean Regan) Note

The way I see it — or, rather, the way Regan sees it — my legs when I’m standing are upside-down goal posts, and she’s a football.

She insists on passing between them. Field goal! Not all the time, but at many times: when she’s elated to be reunited with me, and moves fleetly; when she’s cowed because I’ve reprimanded her, and moves sluggishly; when she’s feeling timid, and trembles a bit.

She nudges her way through, like one of those machines that bore the tunnels for subways. And then, more often than not, she circles around and does it a second or even third time. She’s implacable. Compulsive.

And rude. I’m giving you fair warning and an advance apology: Mere seconds after you meet and greet her, she may try to tunnel through you. It’s her signature hello. And it understandably strikes many people as somewhat too friendly, like a stranger barging through your front door and opening the fridge before bothering to ask your name.

Frankly, it mortifies me. But it’s one of her few training-resistant behaviors. So I just try to keep vigil. I yank her backward before she has reached the end zone. And I puzzle over this tic of hers, as I puzzle over so much of what she does, as we all puzzle over these furry companions of ours, whom we come to understand so well and yet never understand at all.

I asked the internet: Why do dogs walk through people’s legs? True to form, it gave me a bouquet of possibilities without committing to a single flower. They’re seeking shelter. They’re showing submission. They’re dancing: a canine version of the limbo. I made up that last answer, but then I made up my analysis at the start of Regan’s various motivations for breaching the goal posts. I’ve probably made up whole chunks of her personality.

That’s the magic of dogs (and cats). They do invite us in, but they’re incapable of opening the door all the way, or we just can’t figure out the secret knock. They exist for us in the other kind of limbo, hovering between irrational and rational, mundane and mysterious, wild and tamed, and generously allowing us to project onto them whatever we need to.