Trump Administration Bullying Higher Education to Reverse Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedoms

Exploring how Trump’s policies endanger First Amendment rights in higher education institutions.

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

- First Amendment, United States Constitution

While the original U.S. Congress proposed the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments of the United States Constitution) on September 25, 1789, which the states collectively ratified on December 15, 1791, throughout the history of the country, given place and time, these rights and protections have never truly been applied and enforced evenly.

People have often taken to the streets and to the courts to extend their Constitutional rights to areas where they had been restricted or entirely withheld. One of these spaces included the nation’s institutions of higher education.

Prior to the early 1960s, campus administrators and their boards of overseers suppressed…