The relationship between the federal government and American universities is tense and often misunderstood. The gap between the purposes and priorities of government, on one side, and the missions and functions of universities, on the other, is alarming.

Historically, the United States has relied on its colleges and universities for several things critical to national defense. First, higher education produces a more educated work force for a globally competitive marketplace. Second, advanced learning fills federal, state, and local government positions that citizens rely on for necessary services. Third, the military and civilian defense establishments require leaders who understand the science and engineering behind modern weapons. Future defense and national security leaders must also understand the American military experience and the relationship between the armed forces and society.

The current and prospective international system is one that poses a wide variety of threats to world peace and international order. U.S. armed forces will be tasked for deterrence and war fighting missions across the entire spectrum of conflict,  from nuclear weapons spread and the possibility of war in space, to the nuances of urban terrorism and counterinsurgency. Officers who rise to senior command will need the perspective of innovators and adaptors, sometimes improvising in combat when exigent conditions override old rules of engagement.

As technology advances and the geostrategic environment grows more complicated, the United States will need a stronger educational establishment to compete with China and other rising powers. Nowhere in Europe or among major Asian military powers is national education under such crossfire as it is in the United States today. How did we get here, and what is to be done?

A primary cause of the war against American education is the perception among politicians, activists, and journalists that higher education has been colonized by radicals who hate America, misrepresent its history, and aim to produce dissidents who attack traditional culture and values, including patriotism and military service. This narrative has spread through misleading political campaigns, indifferent media coverage, and, unfortunately, some missteps by educators themselves.

At the center of this narrative is conflict between the Trump administration and Ivy League universities where demonstrations included violence and charges of antisemitism. Coverage of episodes at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia has emphasized the behavior of a small percentage of students, sometimes supported by nonstudents and outside money, and overlooked the far larger share of students and faculty who avoid political violence and intimidation.

Admittedly, some leaders in higher education were slow to confront agitators who crossed the line between permissible speech and harassment. On July 24, 2025, Columbia University announced a settlement with the Trump administration: $220 million in fines in exchange for an end to attacks on Columbia’s federally funded research program. Some commentators and observers saw a dangerous precedent; others preferred Harvard’s decision to litigate. Acting Columbia President Claire Shipman argued the agreement was needed to prevent further disruption, and possible destruction, of the broader research enterprise. Whatever the outcome, we are far from the day President John F. Kennedy, at Yale’s 1962 commencement, joked that he enjoyed the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree.

Attacks on higher education also suggest that students, faculty, and administrators are elitists out of touch with Middle America. In fact, most students that attend public institutions come from middle class families, and do not learn their basic values from professors. Values are learned years before college through family and other primary groups. Professors rarely convert diehard conservatives into liberals, or vice versa. Radicals who break the law and violate campus codes are seldom motivated by instructors and more often they are encouraged and funded by activists who move from campus to campus. For example, antisemitism at some universities has been fueled by provocateurs exploiting student concern for non-terrorist Palestinians in Gaza while mischaracterizing Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023, attacks.

Administrators can also be faulted for negligence in defending First Amendment rights and for suppressing speech on spurious grounds. Unlike high school students, most college students are legal adults. They have the right to use confrontational rhetoric and provocative discourse protected by the First Amendment, however infuriating it may be. Too many universities have come to see themselves as providers of reassurance and guarantors of good feeling, backing that impulse with coercive training and sanctions against so-called offensive remarks inside and outside the classroom. The result is an atmosphere in which conversation is reduced to clichés and the celebration of the obvious instead of the clash of ideas from which great minds are molded.

It is an irony that more cut-and-thrust classroom testing of ideas can be found in some U.S. military war colleges and service academies than in many civilian institutions. Even there, however, trends toward government micro-management of curricula and textbook selection are troubling. Ukraine’s resistance to Russia since the February 2022 invasion is lesson to be learned in this debate: Ukraine turned a failed coup de main into a war of attrition through determination, drones, better intelligence, and a faster OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act) than Russia.

Going forward, educators, politicians, warriors and voters will have to decide: do we want rigorous and results-oriented learning experiences for our future generations of leaders, or, instead, do we prefer ritualized feelgood rites of passage that will produce generations of intellectual bobbleheads majoring in conspicuous consumption?

Stephen J. Cimbala is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn State Brandywine and the author of numerous works on nuclear deterrence, arms control, and military strategy. He is a senior fellow at NIDS and a recent contributor to the Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies edited by Dr. Alexander Hill (Routledge: 2025). The views of the author are his own.

The Halls of Ivy and National Defense was originally published on Global Security Review.

Professional diplomats in the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies might have wondered if this was an unrehearsed skit from Saturday Night Live.  Only Alec Baldwin playing the role of Trump was missing. Allies do not talk to each other like in front of the media.

It was clear that Trump and Vice President JD Vance expected to have a pleasant conversation in front of the cameras, have a nice private lunch, and then publicly sign a mineral deal with President Zelensky. They did not expect the pushback and demands that came near the end of the conversation. As a famous French diplomat once said, with respect to another diplomatic blunder, it was “worse than a crime. It was a mistake.”

Zelensky ended up being unceremoniously escorted out of the White House without lunch or a deal. The agreement that would allow the United States to mine rare Earth minerals in Ukraine was that it would repay the United States for the more than $160 billion that American taxpayers have invested in Ukraine’s defense. Profits from American mining operations would also help rebuild Ukraine. American businesses operating in Ukraine would also offer de facto security guarantees to Ukraine. Absent such an agreement, it was feared that China may partner with Ukraine to mine these critical minerals.

While President Trump is likely genuine in his desire to see the killing end and Ukraine rebuilt, Ukraine is only a small part of a larger strategic game the United States is playing. The Trump administration believes that Europe is no longer the strategic pivot of international relations. Instead, the focal point of American diplomacy and military preparedness is the Far East, with a rising China as the main adversary standing in the way of American global leadership and international influence. Europe is a secondary theater of operations, and it is time Europeans bare the burden of their own defense.

This view is a tectonic shift in American focus, but understandable. China has ambitions that go well beyond military and political competition with the United States in China’s backyard.

China’s global strategy of multi-domain competition with the US includes all spheres of power and influence. Its tool kit includes explicit challenges to the United States in the development and deployment of nuclear weapons, the military use of space, artificial intelligence development, cyberwar, and economic influence.

China’s ambitious naval expansion may fall short of driving the US Navy from the high seas, but its combined arms approach to anti-access and area denial (A2AD) in East Asia is intended to deter and, if necessary, defeat any power that would oppose China’s mastery of its immediate sphere of influence, including Taiwan.

Nevertheless, recognition of the threat posed by a rising China does not invalidate the strategic significance of events in Europe. America’s commitment to the defense and security of a free Europe is not transactional, it is existential. This is embodied in the NATO alliance.

NATO is the result of symbiotic relationships among democratic states that provide collective security within a context of political freedom. Ironically, this is why JD Vance’s challenge to European allies at the Munich Security Conference was so interesting. Vance noted that the United States and Europe are linked, not only by procedures and financial commitments, but also by shared values, including free speech. He rightly urged the European members of NATO and the European Union to enhance their commitments to free speech that, in his view, are in decline across Europe.

Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine, with its objective of destroying Ukraine’s armed forces, economy, infrastructure and its viability as a state is clearly grossly immoral. But evil in the world is nothing new, nor is it incumbent on the American taxpayer to fund every effort to eradicate all evil in the world. American efforts to impose liberal democracies where they do not exist has a poor track record of success.

Europe was the cradle of American civilization, but Americans fled Europe because of religious persecution, a lack of economic opportunity, and other reasons that are inconsistent with freedom. Doubtless, Zelensky and other European politicians drive their American partners crazy at times. During the Second World War, Charles de Gaulle drove British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower to distraction.  But the imperious de Gaulle was the symbol of French nationalism for those who opposed Germany and the Vichy regime.

An American abandonment of a free Europe would leave Europe to repeat its past mistakes, which the continent has repeated over and over and over again. Zelensky is far from an ideal partner. However, a Ukraine swallowed by Russia will result in a less stable Europe.

Vladimir Putin clearly sees a free Ukraine as a political and economic threat to Russia.  He denies that Ukraine is a distinct civilization or country. He constantly refers to Ukrainians as neo-Nazis. A negotiated settlement will not change this perspective. Any agreement with Putin must follow President Ronald Reagan’s dictum, trust but verify.

Ironically, one outcome of the war between Russia and Ukraine is the enlargement of NATO with the addition of Finland and Sweden. Thus, NATO added considerable strategic depth and an ability to prevent Russian ships from leaving port in the Baltic Sea. Without the United States, European NATO may waiver. In the end, President Trump’s efforts to push European states to play a larger role in their own security are important, but they should never lead to an American departure from the Alliance.

Stephen Cimbala, PhD, is a Professor at Penn State University at Brandywine and a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

Trump and Zelensky: Bad Manners or Strategic Disaster? was originally published on Global Security Review.