Every path I explored for this message led me back to one unavoidable truth: higher education in America stands at a crossroads, under siege from forces determined to reshape — or dismantle — our very foundations.
Since the beginning of 2025, we have weathered a relentless storm of political pressure, ideological interference, and existential threats to our missions of teaching, discovery, and service. It has been exhausting. It has been dispiriting. And it has, at times, felt eerily familiar — evoking the same undercurrent of fear and uncertainty many of us endured during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the April 3, 2025 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the article “We Are in the Crossfire for Just Doing Our Jobs” captures the raw emotions that so many in our profession feel today: a sense of exhaustion, of lost hope, of questioning whether the work we do will survive the political forces arrayed against it. It is no surprise that we feel unsettled when the very purposes, values, structures, and funding sources that sustain our profession are attacked by those entrusted to govern.
As the senior staff executive at ACPA, I have the distinct honor of being immersed daily in the stories of our community — students, faculty, and staff alike. I witness both the deeply personal struggles and the sweeping national trends that are shaping our field. I see how, even when faced with common threats, our institutions sometimes hesitate to link arms, conditioned by systems that pit college against college in a race for enrollment, prestige, and survival. Yet despite these headwinds, I am proud that nearly 200 colleges, universities, and scholarly societies recently came together to release A Call for Constructive Engagement. This is the kind of unity our times demand.
In uncertain moments, it is natural to search for a finish line — an election, a change of leadership, a better tomorrow. Some place their hope in the 2026 midterms; others look farther to 2028. And yet, as we know too well, the future remains stubbornly unpredictable. Three and a half years can feel like an eternity when each month brings fresh challenges.
Our duty is clear. We must not only endure these times; we must act. We must prepare our students — not just months before elections, but every day — to engage, to vote, to lead. Civic engagement is a movement, not a moment. It must be woven into the very fabric of campus life. And we must think even bigger. The forces we are grappling with today are not new. Higher education has long been made a pawn in the nation’s political games. I often think of a pendulum — its natural swing back and forth. Yet what we are experiencing is no ordinary pendulum. With each political transition, the swings grow sharper, faster, more polarized. We need only look at the evolution of Title IX over the past decade to understand it: a policy reshaped again and again by whichever administration holds power.
Today, we are in the throes of another hard swing. And while future elections may shift the direction, the intensity of the swings is unlikely to abate. So, what then is our calling? We must be the center, the anchor. We must refuse to be so easily bent and broken by political winds no matter which political party governs our state or federal policies.
Our mission — to educate, to expand opportunity, to prepare future generations — must not change, even when everything around us does. We are witnessing institutions being forced to choose between their values and their budgets, between principle and pragmatism. These are painful, imperfect choices. But amid the pressure, we must not lose sight of who we are, and why we exist.
This is not merely a season of survival. It is a season of recommitment. We must hold fast to our purpose. We must link arms more tightly, across institutions and associations. We must meet this moment — and the moments still to come — not with fear, but with fierce, unshakable hope.
Yes, higher education is facing tough times right now. We must also prepare for the likelihood of increased political pendulum activity in future years as the United States and world becomes more polarized in our beliefs and ideologies. Let’s do our best to support each other during the current moment while Newton’s Third Law of Motion teaches us that every action force has an equal and opposite reaction force. If we are wise, higher education will consider the longer-term implications for not paying attention to the political pendulum and make decisions today that start helping us reconnect with the core of who we are and the bold transformation we help create for future generations.
All my best,
Chris Moody, Ed.D.
ACPA Executive Director