Why the United States’ ‘War on Woke’ is a Threat to Educational Futures Everywhere

On November 4, 2024, the United States of America plunged into an era of unprecedented educational crisis. The ascendant presidency of Donald Trump posed a significant threat to national educational policy, placing US collegiate institutions firmly in the limelight. Through the dismantling of the Department for Education and a series of new executive orders, the principles of diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) have come under attack. Under this so called ‘war on woke,’ universities are placed in an unconscionable bind: submit to the autocratic prohibition of social justice or face severe economic penalties. It is not a new phenomenon for tertiary educational institutions to operate as extensions of the state. Nor is it unprecedented for universities to primarily operate as capitalist, profit-making institutions. What is striking is the speed with which decades of incremental educational reform have been decimated, and the scale of economic strongarming utilised to do so. Under the present administration, no university is safe.

Even institutions which appear to operate upon diversity and racial justice as foundational principles are facing mounting pressure to act in accordance with new legislation. It is thus a sad and prophetic irony that Trump’s adversary, Kamala Harris, held her election night rally on the grounds of Howard University, her historically Black alma mater. Established to serve the educational needs of African-Americans following the Civil War, Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have long functioned as an antidote to the legislative and informal exclusion of Black communities from intellectual life. Whilst Trump has not made any explicit threats to HBCU administrations regarding their federal funding, they must nonetheless prepare to walk a very difficult line. I posit that even these institutions, forged as spaces of resistance against white supremacy, are vulnerable to state intrusion and capitalistic co-option.

To illustrate this, I borrow Joe Feagin’s (2013) conceptual framework of the white racial frame, the dominant lens through which systems of racial inequality are reproduced. This includes discriminatory stereotypes of people of color, undermining their humanity and legitimating their marginalization. All universities are penetrable by the white racial frame, including HBCUs. For instance, the notion of ‘Black excellence’ is a central motif of HBCU life and operates as an anti-racist counter-frame. Celebrating representations of Black educational success, Black excellence counters stereotypes of Black young people as lazy, unintelligent and an unnatural fit within the educational world. Whilst it is crucial to nurture the prospects of Black young people who fall under this label, we must ask what future is promised for Black young people who are not deemed ‘excellent.’

As DEI admissions policies have been reprimanded for being anti-meritocratic, there are increasing pressures for Black students to prove they can ‘earn’ their place. We are thus duped into proving the existence of the ‘good immigrant’, the ideal racial other who ingratiates themselves through merit. Through the white racial frame, Black excellence thus becomes a necessary condition for academic inclusion, distorting the celebratory motif. There are two key issues here: first, the humanity of people of colour should not rest upon their productive and intellectual capacity. Second, the very notion of racially ‘neutral’ admissions policies ignores the fact that no student succeeds through meritocracy alone. The systemic advantages of privileged students are made invisible, marking whiteness as a neutral starting point in the game of educational opportunity.

Moreover, the myth of the US university as politically neutral is further perpetuated through new academic funding requirements. Research projects whose grant proposals include words such as ‘disabilities’ ‘gender’, ‘systemic’ and ‘race’ are now flagged as violations by the National Science Foundation and can be denied federal funding. It is unequivocal that knowledge production is inseparable from its historical and political context. Universities have historically operated as colonial knowledge systems, once training agents of empire and widely profiting from imperial expansion. The notion that university life could ever be approached as an objective, non-political enterprise thus reflects a dangerous refusal to reckon with a colonial past, present, and future.

A further manifestation of the white racial frame within US universities can be found in the large-scale silencing and criminalization of anti-colonial student protests. For instance, at Columbia University, close to eighty students have faced expulsion for their participation in Palestinian liberation encampments. Once again, the myth of the university as a politically ‘neutral’ space is reproduced, obscuring its economic ties to genocidal agendas and deep entrenchment within the military industrial complex.

From the perspective of the wider world, it can be easy to feel removed from the United States and view our external educational systems as immune to such an anti-progressivism. However, we cannot dismiss each executive order signing as an unfortunate episode of a reality television show. Trump’s anti-DEI agenda is not an American idiosyncrasy. The aggressive responses of UK universities towards Palestinian liberation encampments demonstrate that these issues are mirrored upon our soil. The white racial frame will continue to embed itself within university practices if we do not advocate for its expulsion across national borders. The future of the university is certainly unpredictable, but one thing is certain: the ‘War on Woke’ is a threat to educational futures everywhere.

References

Cambridge University injunction to block protests for 12 months. (2025, July 24). BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdx5xv04rl5o

Columbia University suspends, expels nearly 80 students over Gaza protests. (n.d.). Al Jazeera. Retrieved 26 July 2025, from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/23/columbia-university-suspends-expels-nearly-80-students-over-gaza-protests

Feagin, Joe R. (2013). The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter Framing (2nd edn). Routledge.

Noone, S. (2025, May 1). HBCUs will not be subjected to federal spending cuts, Trump says. NewsNation. https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/trump-hbcu-funding/

Reilly, K. (2017, November 7). 3 Ways America’s Elite Universities Benefited From Slavery. TIME. https://time.com/5013728/slavery-universities-america/

Yourish, K., Daniel, A., Datar, S., White, I., & Gamio, L. (2025, March 7). These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html