The Slow Fix Is No Fix at All: A Response to Neetu Arnold on Higher Ed Reform
Arnold is right about the rot in universities—but wrong about the urgency and method required to root it out.
Neetu Arnold’s recent piece on the Trump administration’s approach to higher education reform is thoughtful, well-argued, and deeply informed by her own advocacy in this space. She’s been one of the clearest voices sounding the alarm on how elite universities have abandoned intellectual pluralism in favor of ideological conformity. Her indictment of DEI bureaucracies, political litmus tests, and racialized gatekeeping is spot on. But when it comes to strategy—what to do now, and how to do it—her advice misses the moment.
Arnold’s central claim is that the administration’s aggressive tactics risk undercutting long-term reform. The better approach, she says, is to work patiently and legally, avoiding overreach, building coalitions with moderate faculty and trustees, and winning change through careful adherence to law and process.
In theory, this sounds wise. In reality, it amounts to unilateral disarmament.
The institutions she’s asking us to gently reform have made clear they have no interest in reforming themselves. Universities didn’t slide into this ideological monoculture by accident. They built it. They reinforced it. And they fought tooth and nail to protect it—whether by embedding DEI statements into faculty hiring, shielding antisemitic protests behind “free expression,” or allowing campus radicals to shout down dissenting voices with administrative impunity.
Arnold warns that if we act too fast or too forcefully, we might alienate moderates. But those moderates already had their moment. For years, centrist faculty and legacy donors stayed silent, even as “diversity” bureaucracies metastasized and students were told that their skin color determined their value. Now that real consequences are finally being imposed, we’re told to slow down—for the sake of institutions that never once hit the brakes while consolidating power.
One example she raises is the administration’s now-infamous letter to Harvard, which threatened to withhold funding unless the university reformed its governance structure and admissions policies. Arnold views this as reckless and legally vulnerable. And she’s right that its rollout was imperfect. But that’s not a reason to retreat. It’s a reason to sharpen. Harvard, and universities like it, receive billions in public funding while operating with the ideological homogeneity of a political party. At some point, the public has a right to ask: what exactly are we subsidizing?
The deeper problem with Arnold’s approach is that it misunderstands the nature of the opposition. Elite universities are not ideologically agnostic institutions that have simply drifted too far left. They are entrenched political actors. They wield credentials as weapons, enforce conformity through policy, and use public resources to shape private belief. You don’t persuade institutions like that with process memos. You challenge them with leverage—and you don’t apologize for doing so.
To be clear: reform must be lawful. But lawful doesn’t mean slow. It doesn’t mean gentle. And it certainly doesn’t mean waiting for internal actors to save the system from itself. The modern university is too complex, too distributed, and too captured for that. As Arnold herself notes, DEI ideology has infected everything from faculty search committees to grant-making criteria. When you inject politics into the bloodstream, you can’t complain that the treatment isn’t surgical.
Arnold’s concern for overreach is real. And she’s right that some valuable programs—like research into cancer detection or AI innovation—may get caught in the net if oversight is clumsy. But that’s not an argument against acting. It’s an argument for acting smartly. We can protect vital research while cutting off public funding for ideological patronage. What we cannot do is pretend we have time to untangle the threads slowly while the garment is still being woven.
She ends on a note of caution: if conservatives overplay their hand, the Left may respond by slamming the door shut through legislation, ensuring that no future administration can use federal leverage to demand reform. That’s possible. But it’s not a reason to hesitate. It’s a reason to get as much done as possible now. The threat isn’t that we’ll go too far. It’s that we won’t go far enough before the window closes.
Arnold believes in reform. So do I. Where we differ is on whether it’s still possible to win this battle without fighting it. I don’t believe it is. The institutions won’t change unless they’re made to. That doesn’t mean chaos. It means resolve. It means using every legal tool available—firmly, intelligently, and unapologetically.
Neetu Arnold has earned her place as a thoughtful reformer. But the time for slow fixes has passed. We’ve spent years diagnosing the disease. The only thing left now is the cure.