Reading Project 2025, part 3: defense, welfare, and higher education

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 continue 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 continues last week’s “The Common Defense” section then starts another one, on “The General Welfare,” all found on pages 201–318. After summary I’ll draw out the bits which bear directly on higher education. Next I’ll add some reflections and then several discussion questions. At the end I’ll add some more resources. Please join in with comments below — for examples of that, you can see good discussion at the end of our first post.

Summary overview

With this section the book continues to break down the agencies tasked with providing for “The Common Defense,” a task we saw commence in last week’s reading. It then offers a first attempt at other federal entities which address “The General Welfare.”