Reading Project 2025, part 4: overthrowing the Department of 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, pages 319–416, which continues under last week’s header of “The General Welfare.” Then I’ll draw out the bits which bear directly on higher education. Next I’ll add some reflections followed by 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 comments at the end of our first post.

Reactions and discussion keep coming in. Paul and Matthew shared some thoughts about last week’s reading. Ed, Laura, and sibyledu discussed the week before. One blogger fed Project2025 texts into an AI music generator to create death metal tracks. Consider that a soundtrack.

Summary overview

With this section the book continues to explore non-military government operations, and starts with one unit crucial to educators: the Department of Education.