Reading Project 2025, part 1: the agenda and the start of a guidebook

How might a likely second Trump administration impact higher education? How can academics plan for and anticipate that major event, should it occur?

This week we begin our reading of Project 2025, a key document in understanding the near- and medium-term future of American politics. This is an online, open, and distributed reading and anyone can participate. Here’s a post explaining how it works. You can find all of our Project 2025 posts here.

In today’s post I’ll summarize this week’s reading, which is the first part of the book, “Taking the Reins of Government”: front matter through page 85. I’ll draw out the bits which bear directly on higher education. Next I’ll add some reflections and then several discussion questions.

Summary overview

The book is actually titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, and that does describe what follows. It assumes an electoral victory yielding a mandate to take major political steps. And it describes what the conservative authors promise to do.

There are several sections here. The first, the foreword, is an introductory overview, which summarizes the book’s ideas. The next, “Taking the Reins of Government,” consists of three chapters breaking down how the federal…