The Trump administration’s assault on American higher education is a tragic mistake. Its destructive effects could last for a generation. And the worst aspect, perhaps, is that this destruction isn’t accidental. It’s a consequence of the anti-elitist crusade against government funding for research that was proclaimed in Project 2025 and other MAGA manifestos.

“Nothing is more important than deconstructing the centralized administrative state,” proclaims the opening chapter of Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership.” It described the Department of Health and Human Services — which oversees the National Institutes of Health, which funds research — as “the belly of the massive behemoth that is the modern administrative state.”

President Donald Trump’s team has now slit that belly wide open. Grants to Johns Hopkins have been cut by $800 million, forcing the university to impose a hiring freeze, spending limits and other austerity measures. Harvard, the oldest university in America, has been savaged even more capriciously. The administration has slashed $2.6 billion in federal research grants and tried to prevent Harvard from accepting any foreign students.

Harvard has done what institutions too rarely do when threatened by Trump. It has stood on principle, refusing to compromise or retreat. But it is paying a severe price. Maureen Martin, the university’s director of immigration services, said in a court filing last week opposing the administration’s foreign ban: “Students and faculty alike have expressed profound fear, concern, and confusion.” Dozens of traumatized foreign students have asked if they can delay admission or apply elsewhere, she said.

Around the world, foreign governments and universities are racing to exploit Trump’s folly by recruiting U.S. students and faculty. In March, when Trump began his onslaught, a French university declared itself a “Safe Place for Science” and began luring Americans. The European Union since then has committed more than $500 million to make Europe a “magnet for researchers.” The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology last month announced “unconditional offers, streamlined admission procedures, and academic support” for besieged international students at Harvard.

Trump isn’t attacking just universities but the entire ecosystem that supports their research. According to the academic journal Science, his new budget will cut the National Institutes of Health by 37%, the National Science Foundation by more than 50% and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 39%. NASA’s science funding will be slashed 53%; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will lose 24%.

“We’re going to pay for this, not just in lives and children’s lives right now, but we’re going to pay for this for a century,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) said last month when the budget was released.

More poison for research comes from a Trump plan announced last month to impose what it called “gold-standard science,” based on what amount to political guidelines. An open letter, organized by a group called Stand Up for Science, quickly gained 6,300 signatures, including several Nobel laureates. The signers affirmed “our continued pledge to rigorous science, as defined by our field, not the White House.”

The Economist has documented early signs of the damage caused by this science purge. Citing survey data from Springer Nature, the magazine reported that in the first quarter of 2025, job applications by Americans for research positions abroad rose 32% from the previous year; a poll of 1,200 American researchers found that 75% were thinking of leaving their jobs.

Research laboratories aren’t like real estate, where you can quickly fill empty lots with new construction. When key scientists depart, they often take their “intellectual property” with them — and often, it’s impossible to replace. America won’t just lose the brainpower but also the economic spin-offs it produces.

This isn’t just an elite “blue state” issue. Nearly every big city in America has technology businesses that feed off its local universities. A group called United for Medical Research, which gathers academic and commercial research organizations, estimated that last fiscal year’s NIH research spending of $36.9 billion created $94.6 billion in new economic activity.

The U.S. pharmaceutical industry will pay a big price. A study by the Health Forum of the JAMA estimated that 99% of new drugs approved from 2010 to 2019 had some NIH funding. The study predicted a 15.3% reduction in new therapies as funding is cut, which could reduce the lifespan of Americans by 0.24 years per person. That might not sound like much, but the study said that over the next 25 years, it would add up to 82 million years of lost life, which it valued at $8.2 trillion.

As America loses ground in science and technology, China almost certainly will gain. The pharmaceutical industry is the most obvious example. Far more clinical trials for new drugs are now performed in China than America, according to a recent report by Axios. In 2020, less than 5% of major pharmaceutical transactions involved China; last year, it was 30%, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Trump’s assault on America’s top universities and research centers is reminiscent of China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. As the Red Guards crusaded against the Chinese elite, they assaulted professors, placed dunce caps on their heads, and sent them to farms and factories to do menial labor.

A former Red Guard named Chen Xiaolu recalled his participation in this mayhem and issued an apology in 2013. “That period of time is unbearable to look back upon, but those are days that we’ll have to face our whole lives.” Someday, that’s what people will say about Trump’s gruesome assault on science.

David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. His latest novel is “Phantom Orbit.” He is on X: @ignatiuspost.