“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”
—Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom
On this Independence Day in 2025, the air is heavy with foreboding. Across the United States, fireworks burst into the sky as if nothing has changed. But below the spectacle lies a country teetering between democracy and authoritarian rule. The institutions tasked with preserving truth, freedom, and critical thought—most notably higher education—are caught in the crossfire of what Erich Fromm warned of nearly a century ago: the rise of modern fascism, not as a dramatic coup, but as a creeping normalization of authoritarian values under the guise of "freedom."
The Rumbles Before the Eruption
In hindsight, the signs were glaring. Corporate capture of the public good. The erosion of academic freedom. The transformation of universities from spaces of inquiry to credential factories and financial instruments. A growing surveillance infrastructure built not only by Big Tech but in concert with university IT departments, data brokers, and online program managers. The rise of so-called “free speech zones” and legislative gag orders that redefined political speech while silencing dissent.
What we are witnessing is not merely political turbulence—it is a full-scale epistemic breakdown, a national forgetting of what education is supposed to be.
The Trump Spending Bill and Project 2025
The reemergence of Donald Trump on the national stage—and his allies' vision through the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—has laid bare the authoritarian designs of a political movement bent on reshaping the federal government into a weapon against its own people. Under the new Trump Spending Bill, long-standing environmental protections, civil rights enforcement, and funding for critical education and research have been gutted. Student aid programs like Pell Grants are under siege, while massive giveaways to corporate polluters and military contractors accelerate.
The Department of Education itself is on life support, with Executive Order 14242 outlining a road map for its dissolution. Academic accreditation is being refashioned into a tool of ideological enforcement. DEI initiatives are being replaced with patriotic education mandates, while campuses are encouraged to police faculty and curricula for "anti-Americanism."
Higher Education: Complicit, Crippled, and Co-opted
Higher education did not arrive at this moment innocently. Elite institutions embraced neoliberalism decades ago, relying increasingly on corporate donations, defense contracts, and hedge fund returns. Many public universities, once proud bastions of working-class mobility, became tuition-dependent and debt-financed enterprises.
For years, scholars warned of growing authoritarian trends in American politics. But those voices—often contingent faculty, graduate students, and independent researchers—were sidelined, their jobs precarious, their influence limited. Meanwhile, college presidents and boards of trustees courted billionaires and politicians, hoping to remain above the fray.
The result is a sector fractured and weakened, unable to mount a coherent defense of democracy. In many places, it has become part of the problem—administered by opportunists, managed by AI-powered surveillance, and staffed by an underclass of overworked adjuncts who barely make a living.
The Yearning for Submission
Fromm’s insight—his warning that many people want to submit—rings especially true today. The cult of personality, the vilification of expertise, and the rise of conspiracy over fact have flourished in a vacuum of meaning and solidarity. Higher education once promised both, but its commodification has left millions alienated, indebted, and skeptical.
The myth of meritocracy—long propped up by institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Phoenix—has collapsed under the weight of its contradictions. People now look elsewhere for answers: to strongmen, to influencers, to AI chatbots, and to nostalgic visions of a past that never truly existed.
What Comes Next?
This is not a call for despair, but for resistance. If there is hope for American democracy, it lies in reclaiming the public mission of education—not just in words, but in practice.
That means supporting independent and investigative journalism. It means dismantling the corporate stranglehold on curriculum, research, and governance. It means honoring the work of teachers, librarians, and adjuncts who continue to hold the line in the face of overwhelming odds. And it means building alliances with those outside the academy—working families, community organizers, students—who understand that education is not a luxury, but a battleground.
On this Fourth of July, let us not retreat into comfortable myths or cynical fatalism. The volcano is still rumbling. But so too is the conscience of those who refuse to be silenced.
Let us remember: freedom is not inherited—it is practiced, defended, and reimagined in every generation.
Sources
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Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom (1941)
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Heritage Foundation, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Project 2025)
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U.S. House of Representatives, 2025 Appropriations Bill
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The Century Foundation, “The Future of Higher Ed in an Age of Authoritarianism” (2024)
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Chronicle of Higher Education, “Colleges Under Siege” (2025)
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Higher Education Inquirer archives
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