College and university presidents around the country are ready to channel their inner Nancy Pelosi to resist President Donald Trump in his second term. Wesleyan President Michael Roth ’78 is no exception.
Following Trump’s electoral victory, Roth vowed to defend academic freedom from potential threats posed by the Trump administration, asserted “not [to] be neutral” about Trump’s threat to close the Department of Education, and promised to oppose the administration’s hardline stances on immigration and opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
“It’s one thing to be reminded that ‘elections have consequences,’ but quite another to insist that the best response to the abuse of authority is to be restrained, demure, neutral,” Roth wrote in a Feb. 8, 2025 opinion piece in Slate.
While these stances may be well-intentioned, for the sake of higher education’s future, Roth and other university presidents must be careful to avoid the “boy who cried wolf” conundrum that exists with the media’s portrayal of Trump: When institutions exaggerate or make an emergency out of every statement Trump makes, it diminishes their credibility when legitimate concerns arise.
If universities fall for that trap they risk increasing public distrust of higher education. This would follow in the footsteps of cable news—an institution that fell for the “boy that cried wolf” trap and is now in decline.
Cable news elected Donald Trump in 2016—he received $6 billion in free media coverage. Long gone were the days of legendary anchors and reporters like Walter Cronkite and Andy Rooney. Trump’s candidacy was in line with their newer business model: coverage of sensational stories like OJ Simpson’s police chase and “balloon boy,” a story about a six-year-old boy who floated away in a homemade helium balloon in the sky of Colorado (the story ended up being a complete hoax). Their constant coverage of Trump’s 2015 rallies made for entertainment better than anything else that would air in the daytime television slot. Who would be the target of his name-calling that day? Low-energy Jeb Bush or little Marco Rubio? Tune in to find out!
Then, in a shocking twist, Trump actually ended up becoming president. In a combination of shame and regret over making the man president, the media (with a few exceptions, such as Fox News) decided they would become part of the resistance against Trump.
But for the average American, it appeared that the mainstream media was out to get Trump for every minor detail rather than actually reporting the news. In Trump’s first term, there was the daily occurrence of “breaking news” headlines. He used a Sharpie to include Alabama on the pathway of Hurricane Dorian, his press secretary lied about the crowd size at the inauguration, and he struggled to walk down a ramp. Don’t forget the two years of coverage of the Mueller Report, which was going to expose the deep ties between Trump and Russia but ended up being a bigger bust than Geraldo Rivera’s opening of Al Capone’s vault.
Rather than pick their battles wisely, the media declared a full-out war on Trump. And as a result, fewer people than ever trusted it. The legitimate dangers from Trump—including his attacks on democracy, inhumane family separation policy, and leaving America’s Kurdish allies out to dry—were never fully comprehended by many Americans, as the media’s credibility was diminished. Rather, people just saw these stories as another anti-Trump plot line from the press.
Following Trump’s 2024 election victory, MSNBC and CNN’s ratings plummeted. On Nov. 26, 2024, MSNBC had a grand total of 38,000 viewers in the coveted age 25-54 demographic. I hypothesize that a significant proportion of those 38,000 are TVs playing in empty doctors’ waiting rooms. In comparison, Trump’s appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” has garnered 55 million viewers on YouTube so far. The 2024 election revealed the power of the media’s new guard, including Rogan, Megyn Kelly, Bari Weiss, and Ben Shapiro, who prevail over the old guard of Howard Stern, Rachel Maddow, and Wolf Blitzer.
American universities should learn a lesson from cable news and pick their battles with Trump wisely.
A finite amount of criticism of Trump will exemplify the serious nature of concerns regarding Trump while also preserving trust in higher education. Making every reform from his administration that relates to higher education into a national emergency, not so much.
For example, universities should be prepared to oppose the Trump administration’s proposal to exuberantly tax college endowments. When running for president, Trump suggested taxing the “entire amount” of university endowments to fund the American Academy, a free online college; hopefully, its value is better than that of Trump “University,” à la, a scam. Similarly, universities should work to ensure that the administration does not cut funding for important federal research grants.
At the same time, colleges and universities should be willing to listen to the Trump administration’s proposals, if the proposals will improve higher education. Conditioning federal funding on protecting students rights to free speech or ensuring due process for Title IX investigations are common-sense policies by the Trump administration that should be embraced.
Furthermore, as I have previously argued, universities should embrace “institutional neutrality,” meaning that the administration should only take stances on issues that directly impact the institution. In a university-wide email yesterday, President Michael Roth ’78 lampooned the Trump administration and included a reference to their policies on “foreign aid” and “alliances abroad.” However, it should be those afforded academic freedom—students and faculty—who debate and discuss the merits of controversial topics like NATO and USAID, not the college administration.
If American universities can figure out how to walk this line and take principled stances in the interest of academic freedom, then they will help reveal the importance of higher education during a time when trust in the American academy is in decline. A growing number of Americans believe colleges are simply liberal echo chambers. A Gallup poll found that the number of Republicans who say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education has fallen by 37 percentage points between 2015 and 2023; a nine percentage point decline was reported by Democrats in the same period.
If the response to the Trump administration by universities looks like something that would solely appease viewers of “The View,” then I expect distrust in academia to further increase and concurrent enrollment woes at some colleges to continue.
The Trump administration will bring many challenges to higher education, but how these institutions respond will determine the effects. If they decry every action of Trump’s as illegitimate or break out the pink hats again, it will only weaken higher education’s future. If they selectively choose when to respond to the necessary issues—on a basis of principles—that will be of benefit to the system.
Blake Fox is a member of the class of 2026 and can be reached at bfox@wesleyan.edu.