Academia’s partisanship invites retaliation

The author argues that decades of openly left‑leaning hiring, DEI bureaucracy, and activist teaching alienated half the country and stripped universities of legitimacy. In that climate, a Republican administration can gut DEI, cut indirect grant costs, and freeze new awards with little public sympathy. The point is not just policy disagreement but a predictable backlash to one‑sided institutional politics. — It reframes current federal actions against universities as a consequence of institutional politicization, not merely a one‑sided assault, influencing how stakeholders respond and reform.