The Trump administration is labeling American universities as “Incubators of wokeness,” accuses them of “ideological indoctrination” and pressures them into compliance by withholding research funding. Foreign students are met with suspicion. They are undergoing enhanced questioning during their visa application process or are threatened with visa cancellations during their studies. Trump seems to be taking his cues from authoritarian governments attacking progressive institutions or even cracking down on full-fledged student protests like in Serbia.
I am joined by Deborah Cohn, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University in Bloomington, and Aleksandra Vukotić, Professor of American Studies at Belgrade University in Serbia. Together we will discuss the changing attitude to once revered institutions of higher education in the US and in Serbia and the attack on academic freedom.
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MK: Debbie and Aleksandra, we are currently attending the Salzburg Global American Studies Program where we are exploring the topic: “What Next for the US? What Next for America in the World?” While there is a lot of territory to cover on this broad subject, in this conversation I would like to take a closer look at the challenges institutions of higher education are facing in both the US and Serbia. There seem to be similar trends in how the respective administrations are challenging institutions, faculty and students.
Aleksandra, I would like to start with you because in an op-ed you submitted to the Salzburg American Studies Program you asked: “How have universities become enemies of the state in the US, Serbia, and beyond?” Your question is motivated by the ongoing protests initiated by university and high school students in Serbia. They were triggered by a tragic accident in November 2024 when a newly renovated canopy at the Novi Sad railway station collapsed, killing sixteen people.
AV: Thank you for referencing my question, which strikes me as particularly important these days, not only in the Serbian context, but worldwide.
The accident, of course, revealed the deep-seated problem of corruption. It’s something that we already were aware of, but this tragic event triggered a series of protests that turned into a massive student-led protest against corruption. The students were immediately joined by university professors, across the state, not just in Belgrade and Novi Sad. They simply demanded that the rules that are already set in our Constitution are observed. The protesters also asked for investment in education and for accountability, which is something that gets neglected far too often in the Serbian context.
The government’s response was fierce; non-violent student protests were met with police violence. Also, the students, professors, and public intellectuals who joined the protesters were publicly defamed. Some of the high school teachers lost their jobs because high schools also joined in the protests. And finally, the punishment for university faculty was a drastic reduction of their salaries for an entire five-month period.
This is not the first time that we’ve had protests in Serbia of that kind, but the University of Belgrade has not been in the (political) spotlight since the 1990s, when it was a generator of rebellion against a repressive regime. Fast forward almost three decades later, it again plays the same role. There is a similar situation in the US, where students and professors from leading universities have been labelled “enemies of the state” for upholding democratic values.
On the other hand, what I see as a positive aspect, perhaps: When you label someone as an enemy, as dangerous, you also change the perception and present them as a powerful opponent. So I’m applying this to my academic environment. There are so many paradoxes there, especially with respect to the humanities, which are usually perceived and portrayed as irrelevant. And yet, it appears that the humanities are now perceived as important players in this kind of a game, if we may call it that, in Serbia, in the US and elsewhere. So this is something I feel is important, this kind of image that is changing.
MK: Thank you so much, Aleksandra, for explaining to us what is going on in Serbia, a story that seems underreported, but also for drawing a parallel with the United States. You mention the attacks on the humanities in particular. The Trump administration is demanding that academic programs should lead students to jobs that are essential to the economy. And one wonders where that leaves the humanities that are in their very core about asking critical questions. But, to the Trump administration, asking critical questions makes universities, “incubators of wokeness, and undermining the mission to educate young people and to foster critical thinking skills,” to quote the New York Times here.
Now, transitioning to what’s happening in the US, research funding from the federal government for the humanities and the sciences is being pulled. There has been a lot of pressure so far on elite universities, but it’s spreading. Could you talk about that, Debbie?
DC: Let me connect a couple of things that you said to what’s going on in the US, where there’s a kind of a paradox focusing on the humanities first. There’s a paradox where the humanities have long been fighting against this impression that we don’t lead to jobs, etc., when in fact, the data says that that’s incorrect. Critical thinking skills and the ability to analyze are transferable skills that allow people in the humanities and in the liberal arts in general to move from one career to another, to keep up with people in the fields that are thought of as providing better money, better job satisfaction.
So there’s a paradox in that on the one hand, the humanities are being branded as useless in an attempt to sideline them. And on the other hand, as you’re saying with the “enemies of the state”, they’re being clamped down on because they foster critical thinking. So it’s both/and rather than either/or.
What we’re seeing in the US goes back far beyond the current moment and the current regime. Universities are centers that foment the progressivism and social change that we’re seeing in society. And one of the topics that we’re discussing at this conference is the backlash against progressivism. Universities are places where obviously lots of scientific breakthroughs and discoveries come through, but they’re also places for people who question and who advance new ways of looking at society. And the pushback on these changes have become full-fronted assaults on education at all levels, including K-12.
And they are not all coming from the federal government. In Oklahoma, for example, the new high school history curriculum requires teachers to teach the false and many-times disproven claim that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump. Oklahoma also is implementing an „America First Test“ that is supposedly aimed at combatting „woke indoctrination“: teachers coming from California and New York (states viewed as particularly progressive) will have to pass the test if they want to teach in the state in order to demonstrate that their values are in alignment with what the state wants to teach.
In my own state, Indiana, you’ve got clampdowns at multiple levels that were initiated not by the president, but by followers of the president. About 10 years ago, about 65% of high school students in Indiana would go on to college. Now, that number is down to 51.7%, but our governor is saying that that number is too high. Over the past 10 to 15 years, the state of Indiana has been focusing education on workforce development and taking an emphasis away from preparation for secondary education. We’ve seen this in multiple different ways.
For example, I was active last summer speaking up against proposed changes to the high school degree program. All high school students in Indiana would need to complete an internship to give them workforce experience. There was no thought to how they’re going get transportation, whether background checks would be done for people working with the teenagers, where students in rural counties would go to have their internships, and so on. The emphasis on workforce development, which takes precedence over general education, is a huge trend here. As one parent put it, they’re creating worker bees. And they’re creating worker bees for jobs that aren’t necessarily going to exist anymore. But the less educated populace you have, the more compliant of a population you may have.
MK: Well, in German schools, in middle and high schools, students usually participate in two internships. I do think it’s a good thing because students need to experience what it means to choose a certain career path. This gives them a glimpse at what that path could look like, which you never experience when you’re just in school. But what you’re saying is you have to take reality into consideration. So in rural areas, it’s not that easy to organize an internship. In Germany, it’s probably very different than in the US because the infrastructure is different.
DC: The proponents of the plan brought up the Swiss model of education, but they had given no thought to infrastructure, and there was none in place. And as of last summer (2024), when they were talking about this, they wanted the internship program to go into effect this summer (2025). So I agree, there can be value to the experience, but you have to think about the infrastructure as well as the diploma. And they were giving no thought to that whatsoever.
MK: You are both teachers at the university level, and both of you see that what you do doesn’t have that same respect as it had before. The perception of what the universities have to offer, of what is required to be an educated person, an educated citizen, is also changing. Something is happening that is shifting away from the “we want all Americans, all people in Serbia, in Germany, or elsewhere, to have as much education as possible.” A shift from viewing education as a value in itself. Instead, higher education is viewed as something suspicious.
Vocational training is great and we all need people with vocational training, but we also want people to pursue a career that requires a degree from a university, from a college. But a secondary or University degree seems to be downgraded in both your countries.
Do you agree, Aleksandra?
AV: Yeah, definitely, I see what you mean.
So on the one hand, there is a systematic disinvestment in education, primary, secondary, and higher education in Serbia. And culture for that matter as well, not just education. Universities are perceived as elitist institutions, and there is a little bit of populism there, I think, with the current government. Its representatives feel that students and faculty are not their voters. They’re not speaking to us. They just disregard this part of the population. They even demean them publicly, financially, and in many other ways. So this is why the students have asked for a better investment in education. In the words of Serbian public intellectuals, the government has “declared war” on that which should be most cherished: education, its own culture, its own youth, and its own nature.
The parallels with the US are that universities are perceived as centers of dissent. What’s more, they are projected as ivory towers, institutions that do not care about the ordinary person. Just as Debbie said, there’s increased pressure to steer young people to a more “practical” career, and this is a process I recognize in Serbia and many other parts of the world today.
MK: Staying with the topic of decreasing the value of higher education, but changing focus to international educational exchange: Among the best universities in the world, seven out of 10 are in the US They have always attracted the brightest of the world to study in the US Foreign students, it seems to me, are not seen as an asset anymore, but they are faced with suspicion. We’re seeing that the visa process has become much more difficult. Interviews in American consulates were actually suspended for several weeks in May, typically when foreign students who had a scholarship for the new academic year were applying for their visa. What effect will that have on American institutions? American institutions of higher education rely on out-of-state tuition. The financial aspect aside, what will that do to American universities and to academic freedom and academic mobility around the world, Debbie?
DC: First, I want to just comment on a couple of points to contextualize some of the things. I think the prestige view of the university has faded over the past 30, 40 years. There have been declining numbers in the humanities. Certainly in the US, since 2009, since the Great Recession, we have seen an acceleration of the decline in the numbers of students pursuing degrees not viewed as practical or leading immediately to a degree after graduation—despite the research that shows the positive outcomes for students in the humanities and liberal arts. You have students and students’ parents who are paying the tuition bill saying, we want you to be able to get out and are not listening to the advocacy of people in liberal arts, in the humanities. So that development is accelerating or having a multiplier effect on changes that are already happening.
Returning to the present moment, as the humanities and critical thinking have fallen under attack, the sciences (which also teach critical inquiry) have been relatively safe from said attacks, but they too are suffering and under attack now. They, too, are having their funding revoked in absolutely transformational ways that makes it difficult to conduct research and has a domino effect on down the line through postdocs and through graduate students and through undergraduate students as well as on the research per se. In short, the entire infrastructure of science research is being hit.
Back to your question about international students no longer being welcomed. We see that on multiple different fronts, whether through the slowdowns to the visa process, through being literally whisked off the street for having spoken up in ways that are legal, through having visas revoked. This is absolutely terrifying.
It sends a message to people outside the country that historically have looked at the US as the place to go. And parents are getting that message and saying, “no, I’m not going to send my kid there.” Kids are saying, “I’m going to look elsewhere.” As you said, they’re no longer seen as assets, but as suspicious. The impact of that is going to be felt in many ways. First, you’ve got the loss of new ideas that people from different places with different ways of doing things can bring and introduce.
Second, international students generally pay full tuition and their tuition is an important source of revenue for universities across the country. So, academic communities are losing out on creativity, they’re losing ideas, and they’re losing money. And that’s going to have a domino effect as well on what universities in the US can do. Foreign students are going to go elsewhere, and universities elsewhere are making themselves more attractive to try and attract those students.
Another one of the unintended consequences is that not only does the loss of international students have a financial impact on the universities, it has a financial impact on the cities and towns in which those universities are placed—and legislators are completely ignoring this. The services and the businesses that serve these students no longer have their customers. And that’s going to have an impact on the economy of the town and of the states.
MK: It’s a bleak picture you are describing, both in Serbia and in the US when it comes to higher education and the lack of respect for it. To counter this a bit, I would like to end our conversation with what you do in the classroom to help your students through these difficult times. What is it that one can do? You have agency, we all have agency. What is it, Aleksandra, that you tell your students?
AV: Well, perhaps if I can just refer back to the student protests of the so-called TikTok generation, which tremendously surprised us in Serbia. We are actually now trying to learn something from our students. What has surprised me the most is their maturity and the ways in which they’ve managed to organize themselves into such powerful groups. So, what I try to do these day is to give them my full support so the students know they can really count on me. I teach American literature, so I’ve also tried to put this moment in the perspective of the 1968 protests and the social impact the student protests had at that moment. And the 1968 and 1990s student protests in Serbia, as well. I believe these past examples continue to be hugely inspirational for the students, although these are their own protests. Of course we’ve joined them, but this is a different time, a different context. So we read American literature, because as I already said humanities are instrumental in equipping the young with critical thinking tools.
MK: Debbie, what is it you are doing in the classroom to support students in dealing with the attacks on their institutions and their fields of study?
DC: It’s hard to get around the bleakness. On top of everything else, Indiana, where I live, has passed a law saying that we have to show “intellectual diversity” in the classroom and people can report us if they don’t feel that we are doing that. So, I have to be very careful about what I say and color between the lines. At the same time, though, my school has suggested that we consider adopting “developing the ability to understand and analyze current and/or historical events through the lens of concepts from this course“ as a learning outcome that allows us to make the connection between past and present an important part of the course.
I have taken this to heart and taught a course on Mexico in the spring, when a lot of the news was related to Mexico, so I integrated it into our discussions. I wanted my students to see the connections between what we were looking at and what is going on in society. I wanted them to have those tools and have the awareness. Also, in this current semester, I’ve developed a course on plagues and pandemics, and there are, again, a number of parallels between current and recent years. I’m teaching students the skills and background and providing them with the information that they need, and they are making the connections with COVID, etc., on their own. I am self-censoring at times, but I will go to where I need to go with to let them know. And I know that there can be consequences for that.
MK: Well, I would wish that we could have another conversation, maybe a year from now, to see how resilient our educational systems have proven to be. The students and faculty that are speaking up in Serbia, in the US and in many other countries are holding up values that should not be challenged in the first place in a democratic society: freedom of speech, academic freedom and mobility. Let’s hope that we will see the arches of history bending in the right direction – with the help of educators like you, Aleksandra and Debbie, and your students. Thank you so much for all you do.
Foundation for this interview was a conversation during a conference break on September 18, 2025 at Salzburg Global. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Audio transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.
Notes
American Council on Education, Higher Education & The Trump Administration.
Alan Blinder, “As Trump Attacks Universities, Some Are Agreeing to Negotiate,” NYT (Sept. 5, 2025)
Breza Race Maksimovic and Srdja Popovic, “How Serbian Students Created the Largest Protest Movement in Decades,” Journal of Democracy (August 2025)
Timothy Snyder, “Thinking About . . . Youth Protest in Serbia And some thoughts for America“ (Sept. 20, 2025).
Kayla Jimenez, “Oklahoma to require schools to teach Trump’s 2020 election conspiracy theories,”USA TODAY (May 22, 2025).
Jonathan Wolfe, “Oklahoma Proposes ‘America First Test’ for Teachers From New York and California,” NYT (August 20, 2025).
Public Diplomacy Council of America, “Foreign Exchange Programs Under the Trump Administration,” Interview on C-Span with Alliance for International Exchange Executive Director Mark Overmann (Sept. 8, 2025).
