From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams.

This is the Daily.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has put the American university system on notice.

It's pressed for changes, launched investigations, and in some cases, it's even withheld critical funds.

Today, my colleague Alan Blinder

on how schools are responding to all of this pressure

and what it might mean for the future of higher education.

Thank you. of higher education. It's Monday, March 24th.

Ellen, thank you so much for being with us.

I am not surprised, given the news cycle recently and how much we've been hearing about universities that you're working on a Sunday.

My pleasure.

It really feels like we cannot go more than a few days without hearing about this escalating conflict between the Trump administration and the country's colleges and universities.

And you, Alan, have been covering higher education for a really long time.

So we thought you'd be the right person to sit down with so that you could kind of break all of this down for us.

But I think the first thing I want to do is just get a sense from you of whether you've ever seen anything like this showdown that we are currently seeing

between the higher education in this country and the White House.

I haven't seen anything like it, but more to the point, a lot of the sources I talk to,

a lot of presidents and

chancellors and provost, people who have been in and around higher education for decades,

haven't seen anything like it either. They're almost shell-shocked about what's happening.

It's been this wave of campaigns against higher education. It's been this wave of complicating factors that may or may not

have to do with universities themselves. And in the end, you've got this real mess for higher

...