Donald Trump’s executive actions have to a surprising extent focused on education and knowledge production. Philip N. Cohen argues beyond their short-term implications, these measures represent a concerted effort to undermine scientific enquiry across all fields of research.

“Common sense” are “a couple of words I like to use,” President Donald Trump said, introducing his remarks that attributed the January 29 aviation disaster in Washington, D.C. to diversity hiring initiatives at the Federal Aviation Administration (before the cause of the crash was known). When a journalist asked how he knew diversity was to blame, he replied, “Because I have common sense.” This was only days after his inaugural address, in which Trump said his executive orders would “begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense.”

This trivial turn of phrase can help cut through the massive wall of chaos and confusion Trump has unleashed in just a few weeks, to reveal its underlying motivations.

Common sense is of a piece with “do your own research”, which exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic as the mantra of disregarding expert advice, and then not learning vital information. It is a repudiation of scientific authority, a time-honoured rhetorical device of authoritarian leaders.

Common sense is of a piece with “do your own research”

Common among populists is the desire to tear down the systems of rational knowledge – and ways of knowing – so they can fill the resulting vacuum with their own grandiose personalities. Similarly, Trump holds up common sense against science, not only because scientists are presumed to be corrupt, and probably foreign, but because they are easily depicted as removed from the everyday, real-world experience purportedly inhabited by the leader and The People who comprise his followers. The ultimate result, perhaps most clear in the case of contemporary Russia, is the dissolution of any collective sense of empirical reality, and a deep cynicism that makes democracy impossible.

Economic growth, territorial conquest, trains running on time, were the hallmarks of twentieth century strongmen. You might expect them to be top priorities. And yet, through its actions big and small, this administration evinces a consuming attention to degrade universities, science, and education. Despite, a widely attested aversion to reading seemingly anything, in this respect Trump has an uncanny ability to retrace the historical path demarcated by previous authoritarians.

through its actions big and small, this administration evinces a consuming attention to degrade universities, science, and education

The details of his executive orders, and the actions of his appointees fanning out across the federal agencies, are complicated (even when obviously illegal or scientifically unmoored), so that tracking the big picture is intentionally difficult. Some are incompetent, some are malevolent. Some inflict short-term chaos, some go straight to permanent destruction. The inescapable trap for concerned citizens is that the details matter: they are children going without medication, food aid rotting in ports, post-doctoral scholars struggling to make rent, but they are also not the point.

Tracking the destruction across websites, for example, has turned out to be a fool’s errand, as materials are removed, reposted, renamed, or edited (for example, a page of vaccine guidance for “pregnant people” at the Centers for Disease Control [CDC] has been replaced with the same information for “pregnant women”). Most of the old data and tools seem to be available again after a brief hiatus. Even the unprecedented CDC order for its scientists to withdraw from the publication pipeline all research papers that use “forbidden terms” regarding sex and gender may only prove a glancing blow.

More serious is what these actions imply about the future. In particular, the fate of dozens of ongoing federal surveys, and more that depend on federal funding, that now ask respondents about gender identity beyond the sex binary, plumbing the expanding social reality of biological experience. This increasingly includes public health research (as this presentation, now removed from the CDC website, makes clear).

Even retooling these surveys to remove the offending questionnaire items  would be onerous, costly, and scientifically destructive.

Government researchers have spent years developing data collection practices around sexual behaviour and gender identity, to integrate into major ongoing public health surveys such as the National Health Interview Surveys, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the National Survey of Family Growth, and the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. Beyond public health, these efforts extend across the federal data landscape, including, for example, the National Crime Victimization Survey and the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. Even retooling these surveys to remove the offending questionnaire items  would be onerous, costly, and scientifically destructive. The result would be a massive own goal of scientific waste and lost potential for new knowledge.

Last fall the CDC published a paper in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, describing new data available on the health and behaviour of transgender youth. With the proportion of U.S. high school students identifying as transgender reaching three per cent, the authors wrote, somewhat urgently: “Professionals in public health, education, and government, as well as persons and families seeking to support youths in their lives can use these data to understand the experiences and challenges related to health and well-being faced by transgender and questioning students nationwide and address the need to develop strategies that prevent disparate experiences and outcomes for these populations.” This important paper is still available, but will the survey it promoted – the Youth Risk Behavior Survey – continue uncensored, with the technical and scientific staff on the payroll to analyse and disseminate the information it provides?

But, there are still bigger trophies. Chief among these is permanently knee-capping the infrastructure of science and higher education itself, represented by the order to slash NIH indirect cost payments to universities by billions of dollars. This is coupled with a legislative and regulatory effort to plunder the endowments of major universities, intended more to limit their institutional power than it is to raise tax revenues. This is apparent in the administration’s threat to use university tax exemptions to coerce policy compliance with the Trump agenda, brandishing legal or regulatory action against schools that continue anti-discrimination efforts.

Most of the headlines about the Trump administration’s war against science have focused on health and life sciences, maybe because the orders came down first for CDC, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and National Science Foundation – and these are big budget endeavors. But the wider campaign is against a rational approach to knowledge and its dissemination.

Stripping infrastructure support from federal grants, even if these largely come from NIH, is a tax on the whole campus.

In this the social sciences figure disproportionately. In fact, the gender diversity at issue for CDC is one area where social science has had a profound influence on medical science and public health. Likewise, our research on social disparities drives the much-maligned government policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion – including in STEM fields (as described in this now-deleted report). Stripping infrastructure support from federal grants, even if these largely come from NIH, is a tax on the whole campus. The social sciences and humanities don’t spend as much as our colleagues across campus, but we offer a threatening vision of modern society as a place where computer engineers take some courses in writing, history, and sociology and in so doing learn about ethics, politics, inequality, and culture.

The early focus on science in this administration feels overwhelming, but it is not surprising. To pursue the mission of consolidating executive power and enriching oligarchs, the knowledge ecosystem, sometimes called “science” for short, but including all scholarship in search of knowledge, as well as journalism, must be fundamentally weakened. JD Vance, in his now classic 2021 speech to the National Conservatism conference, said: “We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country … The universities do not pursue knowledge and truth, they pursue deceit and lies.”

Such statements do not usually aim directly at cancer research or computer science, because these are more popular. Social science (often sociology specifically), on the other hand, is an attractive target because our subjects are more readily intelligible and the political implications of our work are more apparent. But you really can’t have one without the other, not in a society that values the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge and reasoning.

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