In these pages, commentators have skewered Trump and his loyalists for waging war on science and knowledge institutions. Most writers have focused on how the president is wreaking havoc on the education system, encroaching on academic freedom, and thereby jeopardizing the country’s future. Documenting the federal government’s overreach is important but begs the searching question: Why does Trump want to cripple the nation’s capacity to produce life-saving and life-enhancing innovations and to train the next generations?

Make no mistake. Trump’s war on knowledge is a gamble. When Trump detects vulnerability, he strikes. His instincts led him to ride the decline in trust in universities, research centers, and schools. He is wagering that they can serve as instruments for gaining political capital. The risk is that this move may cost not only him but also society dearly.

There is no single explanation for what drives Trump’s campaign against knowledge. Here is the tangle of factors:

Trump’s leadership style comprises a combative, oppositional defiance syndrome. Although the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater Rule” constrains mental health professionals from diagnosing public officials whom they have not actually examined, some psychiatrists find that civic duty calls on them to speak up about McCarthyite assaults on the foundations of democracy. To name one, National Book Award winner Robert Jay Lifton warns that Trump’s mindset is marked by impulsiveness, narcissism and hedonism. Defying rules burnishes his sense of strength and masculinity.

Trump is an anti-intellectual. His Achilles heel is critical thinking: reasoning that probes how power operates, favors nuance and subtlety over simple formulations, and etches alternatives. On the critical flank, Socrates, who taught the young to question authority and challenge traditional values, provides inspiration. His student, Plato, held that the ideal ruler is wise and just. Donald Trump is the antithesis of Plato’s philosopher king. Yet he describes himself as “a very stable genius.”

Trump and his billionaire associates are driven by self-interest and self-enrichment. Bent on egomaniacal, destructive behavior, he wants to dominate the news and spread fear. Trump believes that going after liberal opponents at universities serves these purposes.

Trump aims to grow his fortune by corrupting the marketplace of ideas. Trump and his circle are commodifying knowledge institutions, increasingly subjecting them to deal-making. Although Trump University, which operated from 2005 until 2010, folded in abject scandal, its kind of fraudulent business practices persist. Turning universities into revenue centers is linked to the divide-and-rule strategies inscribed in education policy today. Deals for individual institutions are on offer. Carrots and sticks split them into collaborators and resisters, seemingly to kneecap a collective effort to save the soul of the academy.

Trump cannot tolerate independent institutions. As Noah Feldman, a professor of law at Harvard, has argued, Trump demonizes universities, the press and the legal sphere (courts and law firms) because they exercise independent judgment. Authoritarian leaders do not willingly grant autonomy — space for thinking and action out of their control. In Trump’s rendering, the Department of Education should be shuttered because it supports initiatives that skew left; college curricula need to be reorganized; and race- and gender-based programming must be banned. The fallacy in these gestures is that although individual scholars may lean left, right, or center, the professoriate tends to be institutionally conservative. Resistance by academics to change is not unusual. Most faculty members enjoy their work and the privileges that come with it. Not surprisingly, they defend them.

Trump and his allies’ motive is to superintend civil society: the arena where ideas, beliefs, and values are shaped. It encompasses voluntary activities and private institutions such as faith-based organizations, neighborhood associations, sports clubs and businesses. Civil society bulwarks liberal democracy.

Trump and like-minded demagogues are betting that they can take down the knowledge community and replace it with an authoritarian system, the path forged by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Yet Trump is unwittingly inducing dogged resistance to this gambit. His belligerence is starting to backfire. Many local acts of defiance add up.

For the public good, it is imperative to refuse. Say no to the demolition of education institutions. I would wager that the resistance will win.

Jim Mittelman, a Boulder resident and Camera columnist, is an educator, activist, and author. His books include “The Globalization Syndrome,” “Hyperconflict,” and “Runaway Capitalism” (due out in late 2025).