Conference Program

This paper examines higher education (HE) priorities advanced in the opening months of the second Trump administration, a period shaped by the prominent role of Elon Musk as a Special Government Employee and the emergence of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). Building on the premise that HE is always political rather than insulated from ideological struggle (Marshall & Scribner, 1991; Apple, 2003), the study mobilises world-systems theory to situate US HE policy shifts within world core–periphery dynamics and struggles over hegemony (Wallerstein, 1974; Spring, 2015). Methodologically, the study undertakes a thematic analysis of 16 national-level presidential policy documents (13 executive orders and 3 proclamations) issued between 20 January and 28 May 2025, collected from the Federal Register (2025) via structured keyword searches and analysed in NVivo 12 using a four-phase thematic analysis framework (Kushnir, 2025b).

The analysis identifies three interconnected priorities. First, the restoration of “traditional values” is operationalised through executive actions that frame diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives as illegitimate, bureaucratic, and discriminatory, and that recast “merit” and “biological truth” as neutral foundations for public policy. This agenda is paired with efforts to reduce federal oversight – up to and including proposals to abolish the Department of Education – while simultaneously conditioning federal support on ideological compliance. Second, the defence of “religious freedom” positions Christians as targets of institutional hostility and links moral authority to policy interventions spanning campus life, public health mandates, and “gender ideology”. Measures framed as combating antisemitism further expand punitive oversight of universities and student protest, fusing religious liberty claims with national security and disciplinary governance. Third, “accountability” is reframed from a quality assurance and public responsibility mechanism into an instrument of surveillance and control: accreditation reform is used to delegitimise equity-oriented standards, weaken monitoring of outcomes, and enable institutions to exit “antithetical” accreditors, while foreign-funding disclosure requirements represent international collaboration as a security risk.

The paper argues that these priorities – emerging alongside visible disruptions to educational research capacity (e.g., major cuts to the Institute of Education Sciences) and to academic mobility (e.g., intensified visa constraints and threats to international enrolment) – signal a strategic “purification” of the HE sector as a nationalist project rather than administrative neutral reform (Binkley & Toness, 2025; Feng, 2025). Yet, interpreted through world-systems theory, the early trajectory suggests recalibration rather than structural transformation: while the turmoil may open short-term opportunities for semi-peripheral systems to attract talent, entrenched infrastructures of US academic dominance and the political economy of international student flows remain resilient (Bound et al., 2021; Chase-Dunn et al., 2019).

This study’s significance is in explaining how early second-term federal actions have reshaped US HE and what that means for universities in and beyond the US trying to protect academic freedom, equity work, and international collaboration.