The second Trump administration has shown remarkable aggression in abruptly canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants at elite universities — in an effort to force them to make major policy changes in line with the president’s politics.

Trump officials revoked $400 million in research funding to Columbia University (illegally, per experts). They’ve also paused $175 million in funds to the University of Pennsylvania.

That’s likely just the start. They’ve threatened dozens of other schools. And the National Institutes for Health (NIH) is also trying to change its research funding formula in a way that would hit elite universities particularly hard.

The administration’s demands on these schools include cracking down on protesters of Israel’s war in Gaza, disallowing trans women athletes from women’s sports teams, and ending the practice of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in admissions and campus life. For Columbia, Trump officials even demanded the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department be taken out of the hands of its current leadership — a threat to academic freedom from the state.

All this fits into a larger strategy. Right-wingers have increasingly come to believe that elite universities are one of the main incubators of “woke” cultural progressivism; that, by advancing left-wing ideas about various issues and socializing young Americans into believing them, they help progressives dominate the culture.

Winning the culture war, they believe, requires a more aggressive attack on elite universities — to hurt them, and to coerce them into being more sympathetic to the right.

And Trump officials believe the tens of billions of dollars in research funding the federal government provides to academic institutions gives them leverage to make this happen.

They are apparently correct in this belief. On Friday, Columbia agreed to give in to various demands Trump officials had made, including giving campus police new powers to arrest student protesters and taking its Middle Eastern studies department away from its current leadership. (Trump officials have not yet said they’ll restore the revoked $400 million.)

All this comes at a cost to the nation. One key reason Republican presidents haven’t tried anything like this before: This research........

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