Historians: Student activism critical to prevent authoritarian threat to academia
As the Vietnam War raged overseas, a different kind of battle ignited on American soil.
Thousands of students surged into action across college campuses — standing on window ledges of occupied buildings, holding handmade signs scrawled with anti-war messages, and burning their draft cards. Their urgency, echoed through lecture halls and spilled into the streets, turned universities into epicenters of resistance.
The chants drew national attention to higher education, sparking a backlash — but also helped to end the war, according to historian Ellen Schrecker.
Today, students need to realize how effective their protests can be as a tool for creating change — in part to prevent the U.S. from becoming authoritarian in the face of federal government attacks on higher education, Schrecker said.
"It means a student should get up and demonstrate and do everything they can to ensure that (President Donald) Trump doesn't get his way and force universities to cancel classes he doesn't like ," she said.
Since Trump took office, he has gone after colleges and universities, including targeting Harvard University's federal funding to address antisemitism, which he said plagued the campus during the encampments and protests over the war in Gaza.
Federal funding cuts are only part of the picture, as investigations and executive orders across many institutions of higher education have also emerged, aiming to change how these institutions operate.
The influence of the federal government on higher education is not new; it follows a "cyclical" pattern in American history, said Eddie R. Cole, a professor of education and history at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"This is not the first time that Congress or the White House has been hostile to our colleges and universities. What we see today is the latest chapter in a long history of political tensions in higher education. This is truly an American tale," Cole said.
However, to others, like Schrecker, despite the similarities between past political administrations and now, there is a newfound danger to higher education that is "unprecedented."
Historical parallels
Those in academia have long faced pressures from the federal government or outside organizations, Cole said.
During the 1930s and '40s in the South, during Jim Crow segregation, if speech wasn't in support of desegregation, academics lost their jobs, he said.
President Richard Nixon created an "enemies list" to compile political opponents, such as professors and others, echoing similar tactics that organizations such as Turning Point USA have done with the Professor Watchlist, Cole said.
The Professor Watchlist was created by conservative activist Charlie Kirk — who was shot and killed on Sept. 10 during an event at Utah Valley University — to "expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom," according to its website .
Kirk's death has become a heated topic as the rhetoric surrounding it has led to consequences for many people. Jimmy Kimmel was temporarily booted off the air due to his comments about Kirk , and some teachers were placed on leave or fired from their jobs.
"I could almost predict the future that two years from now, another issue will be on the table and there will still be debates around speech and free speech and who can and can't speak on campuses," he said.
The firing of academics was also seen during Sen. Joseph McCarthy's efforts to root out accused communists — leading to a culture of repression in the Cold War known as the "Red Scare."
As a result of the political repression during the McCarthy period, there were mass firings of academics, and it was sometimes difficult to get rehired elsewhere, said Schrecker, who has studied McCarthyism extensively.
Fewer people also engaged in political activism at the time due to concerns about how the government could harm their livelihood, Schrecker said.
That fear parallels what some students and academics have noted in a court case that aimed to arrest, detain and deport noncitizen academics who were involved in pro-Palestine activism.
While Schrecker sees the overlap between the Trump administration rooting out certain academics or even subject matter in higher education, she said the McCarthy period focused more on individuals than altering and harming larger institutions like Harvard.
The 'golden age of higher education'
McCarthyism overlapped in the 1950s with other historical movements that contradicted the era's norms.
Around this time, the "golden age of higher education" emerged. It was characterized by a boom in enrollment and more investment from federal and state governments, Schrecker said.
Part of what fueled the "golden age" was the need to rapidly expand higher education due to the baby boomer generation, a post-World War II birth rate "boom." As more students were ready to enter colleges and universities, higher education had to adapt and expand.
The public perception of higher education also rose, as people viewed colleges and universities as a means to boost their economic status, Schrecker said.
While some academics were under attack in the McCarthy era and forced out of colleges and universities, the "golden age of higher education" opened doors for many professors to be rehired because of the expanding number of students, Schrecker said.
"You're seeing this huge expansion in higher education. At the same time, you're seeing a huge expansion in political activity because of the civil rights movement, because of the anti-war movement, because of the women's movement," Schrecker said.
Harvard encampment on Tuesday, May 7, 2025.Juliet Schulman-Hall
A growing protest movement
The end of McCarthyism came about in part because of a rebound in activism through the civil rights movement and protests during the Vietnam War led by students, Schrecker said.
"The Civil Rights movement sort of pushed McCarthyism off the front pages and forced the American political system to deal with a real problem of racial inequality," she said.
The unprecedented student-led protests during the Vietnam War received widespread backlash, Schrecker said.
"Nobody had ever seen students sort of taking over their campuses and shutting down classes," she said. "So you get a backlash that a number of very smart, very charismatic right-wing politicians take advantage of."
Former president Ronald Reagan is an example, whose campaign was partially focused on criticizing the University of California, Berkeley Free Speech movement, Schrecker said. It was a long-lasting protest from 1964 to 1965 against the university's restriction on campus political activities.
At the same time, organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, a conservative nonprofit, got its start around this time. It went on to publish Project 2025 , a 900-plus page master plan of sorts that reenvisions a federal government with expanded presidential power. That plan was a blueprint for the attacks against Harvard from the Trump administration.
"A lot of the political repression against higher education, it begins slowly, in the late '60s. There's a lot of money going into right-wing foundations ... this is when they get their start. And what the people who are funding them are trying to do is to create alternative sources of information for the government, for the media, for foundations that can replace the academy," Schrecker said.
The activism fueled a turning point where universities transitioned from their "golden age" to a period where state legislatures and politicians reduced funding for colleges and universities. This forced institutions to fund themselves through student tuition, even if they were once free, Schrecker said.
"That creates a certain amount of resentment. Realistically, of course, why should you pay for something that used to be free?" she said.
The activism and backlash from state and federal governments are reminiscent of the explosion of activism related to the war in Gaza, leading to encampments and protests, according to Kabria Baumgartner, an associate professor at Northeastern University.
Those encampments and protests are part of the reason why the Trump administration has said it is going after Harvard for alleged antisemitism. The handling of the activism by universities has spurred donors at Harvard to withdraw funding from institutions.
It also comes amid a growing mistrust about the importance of higher education and its value, as tuition prices skyrocket to six digits at some of the most elite institutions.
"We're seeing that moment of intensity today. But U.S. higher education has always been kind of a battleground," she said.
A difference in what has been happening between the Trump administration and higher education is the administration's top-down approach to reforming higher education. In the 1960s and '70s, higher education changed primarily because of student organizing, or a bottom-up approach, Baumgartner said.
"I think the shift that happened amid the golden age of higher education actually fostered a diversity of thought and identity, and I think that became deeply ingrained within the university," Baumgartner said. "Universities became increasingly multiracial in the student body and faculty and staff, and we see that today. So to me, that is a legacy of student organizing and student activism. And I think that's partly why U.S. higher education became the envy of the world. That's why international students wanted to study in the U.S., because the United States was offering a system of higher education that was unparalleled."
Moving forward
If someone were to take lessons from the past and apply them to the current fight between the Trump administration and higher education, Baumgartner said the role of student organizing is essential.
"I do think students can occupy a similar role today. I think they can take lessons from the past," she said. "I think now is a time for students to actually express what they want universities to do and how they want to, as students, contribute to the university."
Cole, from UCLA, also spoke of the importance of an accrediting body in higher education, as well as faculty and student unionization. These traditional processes and organizations that help buffer institutions from political interference need to be re-emphasized, he said.
There needs to be more fighting back against the Trump administration generally, Schrecker said.
While Harvard has fought back in court against the Trump administration, other institutions such as Columbia University and Brown University have struck deals with the administration. She said this capitulation to the federal government allows for continued influence on higher education, where more academics could be fired or certain ideas or topics won't be taught, similar to what happened during the McCarthy period.
"I don't believe in passing with time. I think there has to be movement, there has to be activism. Otherwise, you're going to see the United States lapse into authoritarianism, become an unfree society," she said.
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