by Monica J. Casper, Meghan Eagen, Amy E. Farrell, Katherine Felter, Grace E. Howard, E. Goldblatt Hyatt, Erika Robb Larkins, Monica R. McLemore, Kyle J. Morgan, Kayti Protos, Stephanie Troutman Robbins, William Paul Simmons, Joseph Stramondo, Megan Thiele Strong, Diane Tober, Tammie Visintainer

Unlike Simone Biles, who stuck the landing on physics-defying aerial brilliance, leading the women’s gymnastics team to a gold medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics, J.D. Vance is having a shaky start to his vice-presidential bid.

In a sea of problematic ideological viewpoints he has shared publicly, from “childless cat ladies” to attacks on people without children, he has also declared universities and professors as the enemy. While campaigning for the senate in 2022, he claimed that “universities are dedicated to ‘deceit and lies, not to the truth.’” This is not surprising, given that Donald Trump’s presidency was characterized by persistent attacks on higher education. Of course, both men have benefitted mightily from the very institutions and professors they now malign.

There is nothing new about political leaders attacking universities and professors as enemies of the state. In Nazi Germany, universities were an early target of Hitler’s ideological agenda. The 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service led to the dismissal of Jewish professors, while the Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities targeted Jewish students and students whose politics were considered unpalatable or disloyal. The dismantling of higher education was not just part of the Third Reich’s cultural and political extremism, it was central to its success.

While lessons can certainly be drawn from the experience of Germany in the 1930s, the critical role of education in sustaining democracy is not limited to the historical record. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, many Russian university leaders have lined up dutifully behind the Kremlin. Those faculty and students opposing Putin and the ongoing war against Ukraine have been fired and expelled.

And there are currently no universities left in Gaza, destroyed by what some experts term scholasticide, “the systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure.” With schools damaged and students and teachers killed, “the implications for Gaza’s future are as profound as the devastation.” A future requires education, and Gaza, where half the population is under 18, is being systematically denied education.

While the decimation of universities (and people) is far more extreme than censorship and government takeovers, these examples point to state interference in higher education.

But why are American politicians attacking universities? How did higher education, long touted as a route to economic success and regarded as a key anchor of stable communities, become the enemy? More to the point, how did education become such a bitterly partisan issue in the United States? For decades, education was considered “a bastion of bipartisanship.” Now, it is a battleground in the culture wars, with deep divisions between those who see education as a human right, free and accessible to all, and those who wish to dismantle public education.

Reminiscent of McCarthyism, university leaders have found themselves dragged before Congress. Anti-DEI efforts, “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, bathroom bills, library bills, voucher programs, mandatory prayer in the classroom, gun toting teachers, assaults on critical race theory, and other charged issues are emblematic of deep ideological conflicts. Local school boards have become deeply politicized. And teachers and students are on the frontlines.

To hear Trump, Vance, and other elites describe higher education in the U.S., it is dominated by rabid feminists, Black revolutionaries, and other “woke” radicals intent on the country’s ruin. However, Black faculty, especially tenured female and Black professors, are underrepresented on university campuses. All women, and especially women of color, are underrepresented in the higher ranks of faculty and university leadership. Cisgender white people, the elite, continue to dominate academia. Though some professors are Republican, including a few who have shaped Vance’s worldview, as a whole we do lean left. This tendency tracks with the general population. College graduates tend to vote Democratic; those without degrees Republican.

However, choosing a career in academia is rarely a political act, and there are as many reasons for that choice as there are professors. For example, some of us are First Generation — the first in our families to attend college — with higher education serving as a means to our own social mobility. Many are adjuncts working two or three jobs to make ends meet. Lumping together nearly a million diverse people, in fields ranging from chemistry to kinesiology, literature to nursing, and across roles ranging from part-time instructor to tenured full professor, is sloppy. It is also lazy, even if it is an effective political shorthand to dismiss us as out of touch and a threat.

This stance — that professors are dangerous to the public — means that many professors have been targets of online abuse, doxing, physical violence, and other harms. In many universities across the U.S. — and especially in conservative states — the tenure system is being systematically dismantled, leaving professors particularly vulnerable to losing their livelihoods for speaking about or conducting research on controversial topics. The alt-right maintains a website dedicated to exposing so-called “radical” professors. Faculty are losing jobs over pro-Palestinian beliefs. A professor at Notre Dame was targeted for her views on abortion. Similarly, one of us tweeted about ending a wanted pregnancy due to a fetal anomaly and received threats at their workplace, a public university. An extremist contacted their boss, called them a “known pedophile and an alleged murderer” with “no place serving” the people of the state, and demanded their immediate termination. And many of us, especially women and faculty of color, have received personal threats of harm, including threats of rape and murder.

But we are not the enemy.

During and after COVID, teachers and professors had outsized roles in providing care and support for students of all ages and backgrounds. Teachers became de facto therapists and support personnel during the pandemic, as educators have long stepped in — often on their own dime — to fill gaps in the nation’s social support network. Professors we know have fed and housed students, supported them through sexual and other assaults on campus, walked them to counseling services, hosted their families, attended their celebrations, loaned them money, mourned their deaths, and mentored them long after graduation. Often, this labor is outside the scope of our jobs and uncompensated; we do it because we care about our students, even when doing so is detrimental to our own health and well-being.

In addition to the emotional work we give to our students, we also teach our students valuable knowledge and skills. Importantly, we teach them critical thinking. The ability to think critically provides students with the capacity to better understand the world around them and the means to create, use, and understand information, whether that information is a chemistry formula, a patient’s chart, or a newspaper article. We also teach students that not everyone is like them. While politicians decry this as “woke” indoctrination, understanding and respecting our differences is a hallmark of a pluralistic society such as ours. And the ability to wake up is not a bad thing — awakening fostered the Age of Enlightenment and scientific revolutions that brought us today’s conveniences and achievements.

Like it or not, one of the most powerful skills academia imparts to its citizens is the capacity to think independently. Not what to think, but rather how to develop the skill of thinking. Like the press, academic institutions play an essential role within democracies: to serve as the practice and simulation space for the generation and marketplace of ideas. Franklin D. Roosevelt described education as “the real safeguard of democracy.” With the increased reliance on social media for news, professors play a critical role in translating knowledge and facilitating students’ own ability to analyze information. Just as they have always done.

Research shows that conservative students may benefit more from a liberal arts education than their left-leaning counterparts. Scholar Lauren Wright notes that “conservative students face significant intellectual and social challenges in college. These challenges impart educational advantages by forcing conservatives to defend their points of view. Liberal students, surrounded by like-minded peers and mentors, have less opportunity to grow in this way.” Attacking universities limits opportunities for all students to learn.

We know that universities are imperfect; some of us have written about their flaws. And yet none of us would be professors today if we did not believe in the promise of higher education, the promises that knowledge brings. November’s presidential election is a referendum on the future of our country, including its educational system. Depending on the election’s outcome, universities may or may not be in the crosshairs, with some of our jobs at risk. But know this: we will continue to show up for our students as long as we can, because we believe in their futures. And we hope that you do, too.

Header photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash.