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President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office at the White House on April 23.

For months, the White House has waged an all-out war on higher education: slashing billions of dollars in funding and commanding universities to choke free speech, eliminating programs that foster inclusion, and silencing viewpoints that contradict the administration’s agenda. In the meantime, President Donald Trump and his allies are shuttering systems that help marginalized communities attend college in the first place.

There’s no question: Higher education is under siege. Left unchecked, the assault will continue until higher education is unable to challenge the administration’s extreme agenda.

History has shown us time and time again that our institutions are prime targets for authoritarian and abusive regimes to quash dissent and force people to conform.

Hitler’s Nazi regime purposely targeted Frankfurt University, which was known to be a bastion of free thought and scholarship. A new Nazi commissar announced that Jews would be forbidden at the university and threatened to put faculty and student dissenters in concentration camps. Across Germany, many university teachers lost their jobs because they were Jewish or disagreed with the Nazis. Schools were also forced to promote Nazi ideology in the classroom.

Decades later in 1980s El Salvador, with the backing of U.S. military and economic aid, military leaders targeted the University of Central America – an institution well-known for opposing the government's human rights abuses and advocating for peace and human rights. In 1989,

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