Talk Won’t Cure Academia’s Rot

Frank Bruni’s recent New York Times op-ed, “Trump Isn’t Fixing America’s Campuses. He’s Bleeding Them Dry.,” was only the latest example of a genre that has become familiar.

Thoughtful commentators — Bruni, Harvard University’s Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker and others — acknowledge academia’s failures, admit the reality of ideological capture, and even highlight the corrosive effects of antisemitism and enforced orthodoxy. Yet after conceding all this, they retreat into the same solution: more conversation, more dialogue, more reflection.

This posture is comforting but wholly inadequate. Bruni is right that universities have promoted a progressive orthodoxy at odds with free discourse. He is right that antisemitism was tolerated during campus protests in ways no other bigotry would have been. He is right that faculty ranks are dominated by one ideology, leaving intellectual diversity an endangered species. And he is not alone in saying so. Pinker has acknowledged Harvard’s intolerance of dissent. Nicholas Lemann, former dean of Columbia’s journalism school, has urged caution about overreactions to campus radicalism. Others in mainstream commentary have made similar gestures — conceding the rot, then counseling patience.
But patience has already failed. Academia has had decades to correct these trends.

Instead, the problems have deepened. DEI bureaucracies have grown more entrenched, ideological policing of language and

thought more aggressive, and tolerance for antisemitism more glaring. The record is not one of gradual self-correction; it is one of steady deterioration. Calls for yet another “national conversation” do not signal reform. They signal delay.

We agree that the Trump administration’s methods are ham-handed and reckless. Bruni is right to criticize the indiscriminate threats to slash billions in federal research funds. Bludgeoning universities by crippling Alzheimer’s or climate research in order to punish humanities departments is destructive and short-sighted. But critics like Bruni use Trump’s excesses as a reason to reject any strong remedy at all. In doing so, they equate external pressure with extortion and accountability with intimidation. That is simply wrong.

The reality is that universities will not reform themselves. Their leadership is too invested in the current system. External force is necessary — not Trump’s scattershot punishment, but targeted measures that work: conditioning federal funding on adherence to free-speech protections, requiring genuine ideological diversity in hiring and imposing consequences for institutions that discriminate, whether against Jewish students or against dissenting voices. These are not attacks on higher education. They are the only realistic path to preserving it.

Commentators like Bruni and Pinker warn of overreach, and in one sense they are right: overreach is real and should be avoided. But the far greater danger is underreach — accepting the decay of our institutions while consoling ourselves with talk. Endless dialogue is not prudence. It is surrender. And it plays directly into the universities’ hands, allowing them to wait out political pressure while continuing to indulge bias, censorship and ideological conformity.

We can hold two truths at once: Trump’s approach is destructive, and academia desperately needs reform. The fact that Trump is wielding the hammer poorly does not mean the rot should be ignored. Bruni and others offer sympathy to those harmed by campus orthodoxy but deny them any real remedy. Talking won’t fix this.
Action will.