President Trump

Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated today as the 45th president of the United States. Here is a backgrounder on the new president and higher education.

The Campaign

• Late in the campaign, Trump said he would help students with their college costs by forcing colleges and universities with large endowments to use more of those funds to minimize tuition.
• The Republican platform called for sexual assaults to be investigated by civil authorities, not campus officials (although Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 would likely need to be changed for colleges to refuse to conduct such investigations).
• During the campaign, many academics spoke out against Trump, and some of those academics were conservatives.
• At the same time, other scholars signaled they were backing Trump.

The Transition and Policy

• President-elect Trump in November nominated Betsy DeVos, known for her work promoting charter schools and support for private schools, as education secretary. She doesn’t have a record on higher education policy issues.
• Those hoping the DeVos confirmation hearing would yield insights into her plans for higher education were disappointed. Her answers were consistently vague, and she was criticized for not demonstrating knowledge of higher education issues.
• Supporters of diversity efforts in higher education have expressed alarm about the nomination of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general. They cite Sessions’s opposition to the use of affirmative action in college admissions.
• Many scientists have been speaking out against Trump nominees for senior positions who reject the scientific consensus on climate change and other issues.
• During the campaign and the transition, Trump criticized talk of “global citizenship,” alarming many educators who embrace the concept.

Campus Responses During the Transition and Going Forward

• When numerous campuses reported racial incidents in the days after Trump’s surprise victory, scores of presidents wrote to him, urging him to “condemn and work to prevent the harassment, hate and acts of violence that are being perpetrated across our nation, sometimes in your name, which is now synonymous with our nation’s highest office.”
• Hundreds of presidents signed another letter urging the new administration to continue Obama administration policies that have given legal status to young people -- including many college students -- brought to the U.S. by their parents and lacking legal authority to remain permanently.
• Campus activists urged colleges to declare themselves “sanctuary” institutions that would protect undocumented students. While many college leaders said that they would support undocumented students and would not voluntarily cooperate with immigration authorities, most stayed away from using the term “sanctuary.”
• Many groups of scholars and writers are planning teach-ins or readings for today, the day of Trump's inauguration. Others are organizing teach-ins to focus on Trump’s policies. And some anthropologists plan group readings of the work of Michel Foucault.

Looking Back at the Obama Administration

• A look at President Obama as the higher education president.
• An examination of the record of Arne Duncan, education secretary for most of the administration.