How the US undermines academic freedom and bans Plato

Academic censorship has reached alarming proportions in the United States. Since Trump's re-election, the National Science Foundation (the American counterpart of the Dutch Research Council, NWO) has been required to screen research applications for prohibited words such as “women”, “diverse”, “climate science” and “historical”.

But the censorship goes much further, and now also threatens the freedom of academic education. A few weeks ago, at Texas A&M University, a Philosophy professor was told that he had to modify his lecture on Plato because it addressed Plato's views on gender and thus contravened a new ban on teaching "gender ideology", as reported by the Philosophy news outlet Daily Nous.

Let that sink in for a moment: in the United States, Plato's thinking has been banned.

Freedom of speech is being dismantled
In addition to this direct censorship, American universities are also subject to more indirect attempts to undermine academic freedom. Top-down control is being increased.

For example, Texas has curtailed the power of university councils (known as “faculty senates” in the United States) after the University of Texas at Austin's council resisted Republican attempts at censorship. 

In other Republican states, such as Ohio, Utah and West Virginia, any form of employee participation at public universities is being dismantled. Private universities are kept in line differently: the federal government threatens to withhold subsidies if administrators do not comply with the dictates from above.

Ironically, these attacks on academic freedom are sold as an attempt to counter "left-wing indoctrination" – and thus to defend freedom.

Orwellian government censorship
Since 2020, Republican politicians have been fighting against the phantom of a "woke" dictatorship – the idea that a left-wing elite determines what people think and do at universities. This allows them to position government censorship as a defence of academic freedom in an almost Orwellian manner.

For example, since 2022, Florida has had a law that severely restricts freedom of education on racism and gender. That law was introduced under the name "Individual Freedom Act". Diversity policies at universities – which sought to address the underrepresentation of women and minorities – are being dismantled in the name of "viewpoint diversity", which is code language for: "We only appoint professors who share the views of the Trump administration".

Could this also happen in the Netherlands? To ask the question is to answer it.

Pressure from the far right
Several Dutch politicians and parties seem to enthusiastically endorse Trump's agenda regarding academia. Several years ago, Forum for Democracy (FvD) launched a reporting centre for “left-wing indoctrination”, which was supported by another far-right party, PVV. But they are not the only ones. The parties JA21 and BBB also speak out against “ideological influence at universities”.

Recently, both parties called for "more control over extremism" in the Social Sciences. They are supported by journalists such as Wierd Duk, who propagates the idea that education and research at Dutch universities are dictated by a left-wing clique and urgently calls on politicians to address this.

And politicians certainly do not seem deaf to these calls. In 2025, for example, the Minister of Education, Gouke Moes, intervened directly in a debate about a lecturer at Radboud University whose appointment was under discussion because of his politically unwelcome views. We can expect to see less of this kind of direct interference under the new Minister of Education.

But what about the next cabinet? In the Netherlands, far-right parties have been winning between a quarter and even a third of the votes for years. So it is highly likely that we will soon have another cabinet in which the far right predominates.

What can we do? How can the Dutch university community arm itself against these attacks on academic freedom?

Resilient and democratic universities
First of all, it is important to be aware of the danger. For far too long, our administrators have gone along with the far-right rhetoric that academic freedom is being threatened from within by left-wing activists. In 2021, several Dutch administrators, including the former rector, Henk Kummeling, echoed the idea that Dutch academia was facing a “woke problem” – a claim eagerly repeated by the right-wing newspaper De Telegraaf. Fortunately, this now seems to be changing. Last summer, Dutch rectors, including Wilco Hazeleger, published a joint op-ed in Trouw, taking a strong stand against political interference in universities.

Time is running out
In addition to raising awareness, we must make our universities more resilient to external pressure by democratising them internally and making them more financially independent. How exactly this should be done is a matter for broad debate. But it is clear that it is necessary. As the American example illustrates, top-down organised universities are very vulnerable to political influence and to financial blackmail by politicians. It is also clear that we do not have much time to implement the necessary reforms. The wind seems to be blowing in a favourable direction for Dutch universities in The Hague right now, but it remains to be seen how long that will last.

This op-ed was submitted to DUB. The opinions expressed belong to the author and do not necessarily represent DUB's view.