Over the past 13 years working in higher education administration, I’ve come to strongly believe that higher education is central to the success of the democratic experiment. Yet, higher ed—as well as democracy more broadly—is under attack amid a new wave of authoritarianism.

To meet this moment, I stepped down from my role as President of Delta College in Michigan to lead the Alliance for Higher Education, a coalition focused on uniting higher ed institutions to better protect them from recent attacks on their independence, financial stability, service to students, and the ability to teach, research, and explore freely. After four years of training university leadership specifically on navigating anti-free speech, anti-democratic legislation, one truth revealed itself: For higher ed to survive this period of sustained attack, its institutions and leadership must fight for and protect the sector in ways it has not in the past.

Recent authoritarian attacks have targeted a significant vulnerability of knowledge-producing organizations—the threat of revenue loss. Higher ed institutions rely on funding from donors and state or federal governments to build out extensive budgets that fund faculty and staff salaries, student scholarships, and facility maintenance. When significant portions of this funding are threatened—say when the federal government threatens to revoke a federal grant—jobs could be lost, students can no longer be supported, and buildings or programs on campus are shuttered. That places enormous financial stress on an institution’s administration, and authoritarian efforts have targeted this pain point to coerce academic institutions into adhering to certain ideological values.

For nearly a decade, leaders in higher education have attempted to guard against this vulnerability by engaging in a strategy of risk-averse appeasement of authoritarian interests. Administrators believed that workarounds, strategically ‘waiting for the storm to pass,’ and what they perceived to be ‘creative’ legal or operational techniques would preserve their missions. Institutions renamed offices from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to avoid any signals of ‘equity,’ ‘race,’ or ‘sexuality.’ Some boards ousted administrators who failed to comply with federal demands to dismantle DEI programs. Others chose to remain ‘neutral’ in this context, but the lack of voice about the political environment left faculty and staff unclear and self-censoring their curriculum, research, and interview processes.

Whatever the merits of these strategies in the past, they cannot help institutions at a moment when an authoritarian movement ingrained at the federal and state levels has them directly in its sights. Unfortunately, however, many institutions still respond with risk-averse tactics, implementing policies that impinge or completely eliminate protections for free speech and academic freedom. Moreover, these policies allow a culture of fear to permeate their institutions, inducing faculty, staff, and students to self-censor in the absence of leadership that defends their institution’s independence.

But institutional practices are only part of the problem in this moment.

For decades (if not centuries), knowledge-producing organizations have competed with one another, whether that be for top talent in students and faculty or for funding itself. As a result, higher ed institutions often view themselves as isolated in both self-interest and mission. Although such postures have contributed to American higher education being the envy of the world, they also weakened this sector in another critical way: it is highly fragmented and its influence is scattered among thousands of organizations nationwide with little incentive to build coalitions or work together.

The higher education sector is comprised of 4,000 colleges, each with varying dependence on federal and state funding for their work. With the deeply fragmented nature of the sector described above, institutions are often not aware of the extent to which other institutions depend on various forms of financial support or whether other institutions’ funding is under attack. Proof of this rests in the fact that national attention on the assault on higher education reached its highest threshold only when Ivy League universities were held hostage by the Trump administration in an effort to truncate free speech and academic inquiry. Yet, this certainly wasn’t the first time institutions of higher education had been attacked by authoritarian forces. Just a few years prior, public institutions in Florida, Texas, Indiana, and Oklahoma faced similar hostile takeovers by state governments, including broad attacks on civil and free speech rights.

If the higher education sector had been united in coalition, these early attacks on higher ed institutions in states like Florida would have been seen as a bellwether. It could have resulted in a united response to protect the values of academic freedom, free speech, and civil rights. Finally, it could have also prevented larger attacks on other institutions like the Ivy League universities, demonstrating to the modern authoritarian movement that institutions of higher learning are not to be messed with and would work together to fight back. Instead, institutions and their leadership, out of both self-interest and fear, only reacted when they themselves were attacked. This resulted in the authoritarian attack on higher ed metastasizing to 21 different states and to the federal level.

In this context, higher education institutions need to band together to form coalitions and protect one another. It must be recognized at this point that an attack on one is an attack on all. In some states, public institutions have already lost their freedoms, and the authoritarian movement has won. Institutions left unaffected so far must help restore these freedoms for others, or they too might lose their freedoms one day.

At present, there are four distinct kinds of political and legislative contexts facing states:

  1. States that have been deeply impacted. These states have developed legislation that has often been found to be unconstitutional. For instance, Florida’s S.T.O.P. Woke Act was recently found unconstitutional by the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But the damage to higher education institutions and students is already complete with curriculum being eviscerated and offices supporting minority students being eliminated. Moreover, Florida has also adopted a broad definition of “terrorism” that will further chill speech and infringe on press freedom. (Other states that have been deeply impacted by attacks on academic freedom include Ohio, Texas, and Iowa.)
  2. States that have already been impacted, and face further potential threats. Kentucky, for instance, has a governor who has stood in the gap between right-wing lawmakers and an all-out assault on knowledge. (North Carolina is similarly situated in this regard.)
  3. States that have stood strong in support of knowledge and higher education, but are subject to shifting political winds based on elections. (An example of this is Wisconsin.)
  4. States that can be models of protecting free speech and promoting freedom of ideas, knowledge, and equity. (Look to Illinois and California.)

To help create a national defense coalition, we need a data-based approach that intertwines with efforts to enforce free speech protections. For instance, in Florida, a state that has launched the most sweeping attacks on First Amendment rights, the impacts of these attacks can be quantified. Data reveal that faculty and staff are leaving Florida for states with fewer restrictions, worsening the learning experience for students and creating a “brain drain” of higher ed faculty talent.

In the face of authoritarianism, a pragmatic but forceful approach that illustrates the negative outcomes of restricting free speech on a state in both economic and democratic terms is necessary. Legal and moral rationale are not stopping the attacks on institutions, and so we will need a new way to respond. Capturing new data on the impacts of attacks on higher education will allow for that, and this will be a central part of the Alliance for Higher Education’s work with a hope of impacting federal legislation and economic support to institutions focused on academic freedom, freedom of speech, and uplifting all students.

Finally, for a strong national coalition to form in opposition to authoritarian attacks, our sector needs leaders who are fully prepared for the authoritarian moment. Training for leadership needs to pivot from focusing on simple administration to understanding how to adhere to and fight for values in the context of a decades-long project to assault democracy. The Alliance for Higher Education has developed the curriculum for just this sort of training. And the sector requires us to consider it as an imperative.

With these efforts, we have a chance at defending higher education and our shared values, such as the pursuit of knowledge without political interference.