With Trump’s assault on higher education, universities are frantically scrambling to defend and market their STEM research. In February, Princeton shared a six-slide post to Instagram boasting about the impacts of its healthcare research. Earlier this month, Harvard changed its frontpage to a laundry list of research accomplishments mostly powered by STEM disciplines. And Columbia even agreed to sacrifice its Middle Eastern studies department to continue receiving federal funding primarily used to finance STEM research.
This is part of a trend that has existed long before the Trump administration: Universities have been deprioritizing the humanities. In the past few years, a myriad of universities cut their humanities programs in favor of STEM initiatives. Although Princeton itself has not cut the humanities, its expansion and construction efforts have consistently prioritized engineering.
The output of American universities’ scientific scholarship is incredibly important. But if we market this as the sole purpose of universities, we risk commodifying intellectualism over disseminating knowledge to benefit the world as a whole. This misleads the public on the value of universities and gives way to anti-intellectual attacks on these institutions. To defend against Trump’s attacks and regain the public’s trust, universities must instead prioritize their humanities programs and reestablish the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake as central to their missions.
Part of universities’ current crisis stems from a narrow view of academia that emphasizes results over knowledge. This diminishment of the intellectual process is evident in the Trump administration’s assertion that the Biden administration funded useless “transgender animal experiments,” as well as the conservative attacks on Dr. Ally Louks’s viral thesis about olfactory ethics. Both critiques are grounded in the idea that if the purpose of research is not immediately apparent, it must be useless and trivial.
But universities, inadvertently or not, have perpetuated this view. As Danielle Allen ’93 points out in a piece for The Atlantic, this modern conception of universities as hubs of technological innovation on the research side and engines of social standing on the educational side has only existed since World War II. Ever since America’s scientific research proved essential to win the conflict, she writes, “educational policy has been directed at the goals of national security and economic competitiveness.”Universities have therefore prioritized STEM above all else.
Along with this mentality shift, there has been a shift in students’ mindsets. A 1969 UCLA survey of incoming undergraduates found that 83 percent reported coming to college “to develop a meaningful philosophy of life.” By the 1990s, that number halved, and the percentage entering college to “become financially well-off” had nearly doubled.
When educational institutions embrace an image restricted to financial and technological progress and allow the public to see themselves as mere stepping stones to wealth, they invite scrutiny in the form of anti-intellectual attacks. Those attacks may have started with “useless” disciplines like the humanities. But as we are seeing now, no discipline of higher education will be spared by the Trump administration’s categorical assault on academia. When universities primarily prioritize STEM, they perpetuate a flawed, utilitarian view of what higher education is meant to do and put themselves in a bind.
On this issue, the humanities are the answer. They promote a holistic view of education that creates open-minded thinkers, which is vital in an age of anti-intellectualism. Their emphasis on critical thinking and close investigation is based on the idea that gaining a better understanding of the world around you is always worth it. Graduates of the humanities carry these skills and values throughout their lives, and, regardless of their careers, tend to value their education quite highly.
And its graduates are less likely to prioritize profit when choosing a career: As Abigail Rabieh previously argued in this paper, the humanities encourage public service, which is vital to convincing the public that the mission of universities is worth it.
Universities are right that they need to address their crisis of public reputation. But rather than solely emphasizing scientific discoveries — which are real and important — they need to embrace the humanities. These disciplines are central to developing an informed outlook on the world, encompass much of their operations, and help its graduates serve society. It is just as important — and beneficial — for universities to emphasize the humanities when presenting themselves to the public.
Some may argue that progressive, humanities-oriented programs are exactly what got universities into this mess in the first place. With the scapegoating of “woke” ideology across America, this is an understandable argument.
But Americans’ disdain for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and others like it is arguably a manifestation of larger discontent about academia — namely, the perception that universities promote profit and privilege for its graduates over all else. If universities had marketed themselves as purveyors of knowledge for its own sake and prioritized public service through the humanities, rather than a mechanism for students’ financial success, they would not be so vulnerable to these bad-faith attacks.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t continue investing in STEM research. But we do need to reframe how we conceptualize and market those investments. In many cases, universities do tangibly advance technological progress and the economic standing of the country—but that’s not all they do. In the long term, it is the attention to expression and communication, to how we question and draw closer to one another in the pursuit of truth and meaning itself, that will guide our progression as a society.
Thus, universities must be honest about what they are, rather than trying to cater to the mercurial whims of the public. The humanities encapsulate the core value of knowledge that universities seek to advance and create thinkers who value this knowledge for its own sake. It’s time to embrace them.
Shane McCauley is an assistant Opinion editor from Boston intending to study Anthropology or English and minor in Computer Science. He can be reached at sm8000[at]princeton.edu.
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