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In the days following President Donald Trump‘s return to the White House, college and university presidents nationwide rushed to release statements promising a renewed commitment to openness, inquiry, and institutional neutrality. Administrators who had spent years speaking almost exclusively in the language of “belonging” and “safety” suddenly rediscovered the virtues of debate, pluralism, and the free exchange of ideas. Commentators began speculating about a “vibe shift” in higher education — a cultural turning point, a recognition that the intellectual monoculture of the past two decades had reached its limit.
But the rhetoric has shifted far more than the reality. As someone who teaches on a progressive campus, sees students every day, and studies higher education professionally, I can say confidently that life on campus today looks remarkably similar to what it looked like before and after Trump’s first victory in 2016. Little has changed, and in some ways, the quick rhetorical pivot only underscores how superficial this supposed shift truly is.
The best illustration comes from Harvard University, the country’s cultural bellwether. As I wrote recently in Minding the Campus, Harvard unveiled a new set of “dialogue workshops” designed to help students “navigate ideological difference” and rebuild a healthier climate. The language sounds promising — who doesn’t want more civil disagreement? — but the premise is misguided. Harvard’s problem is not that students lack conversational technique; it’s that the campus operates under a culture of fear. Data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression show that 45% of Harvard students hesitate to share honest views in class, a majority of faculty avoid controversial material, and 41% of researchers avoid entire lines of inquiry for fear of backlash. In 2024, Harvard ranked dead last among 257 schools in FIRE’s Free Speech Rankings, and while the school has since climbed to 245th, it still receives a failing grade. A workshop cannot fix a culture that punishes dissent. What Harvard has done is change tone, not structure — a pattern repeated across American higher education.
Administrators nationwide may now speak more cautiously, tempering their political declarations and emphasizing a desire for inclusion and dialogue. But beneath the rhetorical softening lies the same sprawling bureaucratic infrastructure that has shaped campus life for years. Renamed diversity, equity, and inclusion offices remain expansive; orientation programs still frame students as fragile; and committees continue to police language, climate, and emotion.
Students feel these realities instinctively. A student of mine recently told me, “I’m always editing myself. It’s easier to stay quiet than risk being seen as the wrong kind of person.” That is not a climate rebounding toward openness. It is the same climate that has prevailed for nearly a decade, just wrapped in gentler administrative language.
If anyone doubts it, consider what happened only days ago at Sarah Lawrence College, where I teach. In a recent Jewish Journal essay, I described walking across campus after Thanksgiving and encountering a prominent building wall covered in graffiti reading “ZIONISM IS RACISM + GENOCIDE,” “F**K NORMALIZATION,” and “FREE PALESTINE.” This wasn’t a poster. It was painted on brick — a message no student could avoid. Directly above the vandalism hung the college’s own plaques solemnly declaring, “Hate Speech Is Not Free Speech” and “Express Yourself; Respect Your Community,” making the contradiction almost allegorical. As I wrote, the slogans were not arguments but accusations, signaling to Zionist and Jewish students that they were unwelcome and unsafe. Yet no senior administrator condemned the act quickly or unequivocally. Faculty members who had proudly signed a letter praising “dialogue across difference” fell silent. If the culture of higher education were truly shifting toward openness, this would have been an opportunity to demonstrate it. Instead, the response — equivocal, cautious, procedural — revealed continuity, not change.
Data from across the country reinforce the point. In the wake of the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression surveyed more than 2,000 undergraduates about their beliefs on speech, harm, and violence. As presented in Minding the Campus, the results are nothing short of alarming and offer no evidence of an intellectual opening. An extraordinary 91% of students said “words can be violence.” Seventy-nine percent agreed that “silence is violence.” Nearly a third, or 28%, said there are circumstances where violence is acceptable to stop speech. Nearly half reported feeling less comfortable sharing views in class, common spaces, or online than they did just a year ago. Most striking, these numbers did not soften after a speaker was literally murdered — a moment that one might hope would clarify the difference between rhetoric and force. Instead, students have stood by the idea that speech itself is dangerous. This is not evidence of a campus growing more open; it is evidence of a moral framework that has hardened.
Understanding why this moment feels static requires understanding the deeper forces at work since 2016. Students now arrive on campus shaped not primarily by faculty but by online ecosystems in which social sanction is swift and unforgiving. Administrative bloat has grown steadily; many colleges now employ more administrators than faculty, and their purpose is often the management of student emotion, not the cultivation of adult citizens. And between 2020 and 2022, universities normalized an unprecedented level of political engagement, issuing statements on policing, climate, reproductive rights, immigration, and the Israel-Palestine War. Institutional neutrality, long essential to scholarly life, eroded, and a single election does not rebuild that foundation.
This is why predictions that Trump’s renewed victory would embolden contrarian students or revive a culture of vigorous debate have not materialized. Today’s students are more cautious, not less. They are wary of misinterpretation and attracting criticism online or from peers. Caution is not openness. It is defensive crouching. Meanwhile, the ideological composition of the professoriate has not shifted; the humanities and social sciences remain overwhelmingly progressive. The classroom, the very place where any real cultural shift would have to take root, remains shaped by the same assumptions that defined the last decade.
If something has shifted, it is the posture of university leaders. After years of donor frustration, congressional scrutiny, declining public trust, and the post–Oct. 7 meltdowns, administrators are anxious. They know parents are worried, alumni are skeptical, and legislators are attentive. They also know that taxpayers, who ultimately subsidize enormous swaths of the higher education system, are increasingly unwilling to underwrite institutions that seem unable or unwilling to uphold basic norms of intellectual freedom. So leaders adjust their tone: less strident political language, more calls for dialogue. But tone is not structure. Rather than shrink bureaucracies, universities rebrand them. Rather than affirm true institutional neutrality, they create committees with aspirational names. Rather than protect dissent, they gesture toward “mutual respect.” It is an adaptation without change.
THE CENTER IS REAL. WASHINGTON JUST CAN’T SEE IT
Real reform would look very different. It would begin with a genuine commitment to institutional neutrality: an acknowledgment that a university cannot operate as a political actor and an intellectual commons at the same time. It would require reducing the bureaucratic mediation of student life so that young adults learn to handle disagreement rather than outsource it. And it would demand serious protections for scholars who pursue controversial work, because without intellectual risk-takers, there is no free inquiry.
So is campus life different after Trump’s victory? In tone, perhaps, but in substance, not at all. Students remain cautious. Faculty remain wary. Bureaucracies remain powerful. Speech norms remain distorted. And the incentives that punish dissent remain firmly in place. The vibe shift is real only in language, not in practice. Until universities change their structures, not just their slogans, the campus culture will not improve meaningfully. For now, on too many campuses, the plaques may say “respect,” but the walls still say something else entirely.
