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From left, George Harne, Kyle Washut and Lindsey Burke speaking at a panel Tuesday.
Josh Moody
WASHINGTON, D.C.—With the Trump administration taking special aim at higher education, conservative policymakers and college leaders are embracing the opportunity to force a cultural reset across academe.
At a forum Tuesday morning called “Reclaiming the Culture of American Higher Education,” the architects of Project 2025, an official from the U.S. Department of Education and four college presidents cast the sector as ripe for reform. The event offered insights into how conservative thinkers operating the levers of power at the Education Department view the current state of higher education and the need for change.
“We’re reclaiming institutions, we’re reclaiming the culture broadly, we’re certainly reclaiming policy,” Kevin Roberts, Heritage Foundation president and Project 2025 mastermind, said in opening remarks. He praised the Trump administration as a valuable partner in driving reform.
Jonathan Pidluzny, deputy chief of staff for policy and programs at the Department of Education, followed Roberts. Pidluzny, who previously worked under Education Secretary Linda McMahon at the America First Policy Institute, framed the culture of higher education as antithetical to American values and the sector as broken and unaccountable. In brief remarks, he offered a vision for reform that includes “a complete reorientation of civil rights enforcement.”
He blamed higher ed’s troubles partly on the Biden administration and partly on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which Trump has also targeted.
“We see the headlines every day—all the ways DEI imposes a viewpoint monoculture, the relentless assault on free speech at our elite institutions, faculty who tell survey researchers that they fear to teach honestly, either for fear of being canceled or for formal sanctions,” he said.
Jonathan Pidluzny argued that higher education is in dire need of reform.
Josh Moody
Pidluzny took aim at accreditors as well.
“Our accountability systems are also badly broken. It’s almost impossible to start a new university today largely because of our accreditation system. And universities that underperform are allowed to go on underperforming with few consequences,” he said.
(Speculation is rife that an executive order reshaping accreditation will be issued this month.)
After describing higher education as broken, Pidluzny offered a road map for how to fix it. First, he argued for the need to reorient the enforcement of civil rights on campus, which he said the department has begun to do by holding universities accountable for harassment, discrimination and specifically antisemitism.
Though Pidluzny did not reference any specific actions taken so far, the Trump administration has launched dozens of investigations into colleges probing alleged antisemitism and race-based programs and scholarships, as well as women’s sports programs that have allowed transgender athletes to compete in accordance with the NCAA’s rules. Numerous critics have decried those investigations as improper, arguing that Trump is weaponizing the federal government to strip colleges of institutional autonomy and has impeded academic freedom. Already the Trump administration has frozen $400 million in federal funding at Columbia University over its handling of pro-Palestinian protests and threatened others.
Pidluzny also said that ED must “reorient federal investments away from ideology, back to the advancement of learning and teaching excellence”—an effort he believes is already underway.
And he argued for a “new vision” of funding universities and holding them accountable.
“Critical reform principles include a careful look at how we do quality assurance, new thinking about accountability systems, so that universities that are charging six figures for a low-return-on-investment credential also have some skin in the game,” he said. “Finally, we should think about ways to build new incentives to align program portfolios with the needs of the marketplace.”
Colleges in the Room
While Pidluzny leveled sweeping criticism at higher education, he also credited the college presidents in the room for their work leading “excellent institutions.” But the colleges represented at the forum occupy a unique space in the higher education landscape: All are unabashedly conservative, and two of the four do not participate in federal financial aid programs.
The college presidents in attendance were Brad Johnson of College of the Ozarks, Brian Mueller of Grand Canyon University, George Harne of Christendom College and Kyle Washut of Wyoming Catholic College. (Neither Christendom nor Wyoming Catholic accepts federal financial aid.)
In a panel discussion led by Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation and author of the Project 2025 chapter on the Department of Education, all four presidents presented views of what sets their institution apart from others.
Mueller, of Grand Canyon—a university with multiple physical locations and a massive online arm—noted that a biblical worldview is incorporated across all academic subjects at GCU.
“The media, higher ed and Hollywood has tried to convince most of America that what is being taught at 95 percent of our universities is what Americans want, and that is absolutely untrue,” Mueller said. “The majority of Americans don’t want what’s being taught from a worldview perspective in most of these institutions. It wants what we’re teaching in our institutions.”
Harne emphasized the liberal arts commitment at Christendom College in Virginia, which he argued holds “the keys to human flourishing.” He noted that Christendom is vocal about its faith-based mission and accused other universities of “pretend[ing] to be neutral,” only for students to discover a political agenda when they arrive on campus. While “Christendom is not for everyone,” he said its mission attracts donors and families who believe in what the college is doing.
Johnson pointed to a program at the College of Ozarks that requires students to work 560 hours each academic year in exchange for free attendance. He emphasized that the college, located in rural Missouri, opens doors for many students who do not have to take on debt to attend. Instead, because of their work program, “everyone graduates debt-free,” he said.
Washut highlighted the unique outdoor experiences at Wyoming Catholic College, which includes a required three-week backpacking trip in the Rocky Mountains for incoming freshmen. The campus is also famously phone-free and has no internet in the dorms. Washut said that model attracts students who are “looking for a challenge” they can’t find elsewhere.
“Not since the Oregon Trail have people unintentionally stuck around Wyoming,” Washut quipped.
After Burke complimented each president and lauded their mission, the panel ended with a jab at Columbia University, which is still reeling from the protests that emerged last spring, leading to unprecedented demands for reform from the Trump administration and the resignations of two presidents amid the ongoing fallout.
“Do you wake up every morning and thank your lucky stars you are not the president of Columbia?” Burke remarked.
