Dear Revealer readers,

For many in higher education today, the start of this academic year is filled with apprehension. Universities across the country, both public and private, are slashing humanities departments, long seen as central to teaching students critical thinking skills and analytical abilities. Countless international students are unable to obtain visas to study in the United States, depleting tuition revenue to institutions and depriving the country of hosting some of the world’s future brightest minds. College administrators are renaming student support offices, if not outright closing them, so the Trump administration won’t target them for engaging in the now verboten “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Trans students wait to see if their institutions will support them or bow to the Trump administration’s pressure to bar them from athletics, and potentially from housing and other spaces that match their gender identity. Faculty who teach about race (among other subjects) are worried about what will happen if they teach texts with critical race theory, which the Department of Justice deems unlawful. Meanwhile, undocumented students and students with undocumented parents live in a limbo of fear, unsure if masked ICE agents will pull them or their loved ones into a vehicle at any time and send them to a detention center in this or another country.

In truth, this list barely scratches the surface of what is happening in higher education today. Alongside these issues, one might also mention the Trump regime’s gutting of research funding in the sciences, the hiring freezes and staff layoffs at countless schools, or the ongoing crackdown on anyone who protests Israel’s war in Gaza (what we formerly would have called exercising free speech).

Of course, schools this fall will still hold new student orientations, fraternity parties, and late-night study sessions. But I think we must acknowledge and document all that we are losing as American higher education succumbs to pressures to conform to the right-wing demands of an authoritarian regime with bureaucrats well-placed at both federal and state levels. After all, these losses are not innocuous. They reflect the reshaping of American life, a strategy to change what ideas we have exposure to, what types of knowledge we can produce, what we feel free to say aloud or put in writing, and how we even think about what is possible in this world.

Here at The Revealer, we will continue to exercise our freedom of the press to provide the public with accurate, reliable reporting and analysis about what is happening in today’s world, both in the United States and abroad. Our September issue is no exception and focuses on right-wing shifts locally and globally.

The September issue opens with Andrew Monteith’s “The Attacks on Higher Education Have Religious Roots,” where he investigates the significant role the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank responsible for Project 2025, plays in the Trump administration’s targeting of colleges and universities and their strategies to make schools comply with their demands or face closure. After that, in “TikTok Masculinity,” Miguel Petrosky explores why Gen Z men are moving further to the political right than Millennials, and possibly becoming more religious as well. Then, in “American Trinity: Faith, Fame, and Fanaticism,” Neil J. Young reviews the book Sister, Sinner about the famous and scandal-ridden female Pentecostal preacher Aimee Semple McPherson, and considers similarities between McPherson’s legions of fans and Trump’s—and why such fans do not care when their idol lies or commits crimes. From there, we shift our focus from Christian nationalism in the United States to Hindu nationalism in India. In “Hindus Escape Pakistan’s Persecution, Only to Hit India’s Bureaucratic Walls,” Anuj Behal spotlights how, although India promotes itself as a beacon of hope for Hindus everywhere, Pakistani Hindus face incredibly difficult hurdles when they try to immigrate to India, with many spending years, sometimes decades, without citizenship. After that, we return to the United States with Ben Woollard’s “Environmental Damage, Cultural Stress, and Religion in America,” where he reviews the book Religion in the Lands that Became America and considers the role religion has played in the ecological catastrophe’s facing the country. And, in “Inside a Black Catholic Parish,” an excerpt from Black and Catholic: Racism, Religion, and Identity, Tia Noelle Pratt takes us inside a predominantly Black Catholic church in Harlem and documents how it differs from other Catholic communities.  

The September issue also includes the newest episode of The Revealer podcast: “Black Catholics and Racism in the U.S. Catholic Church.” Tia Noelle Pratt joins us to discuss the history of Black Catholics in the United States, how the Catholic Church perpetuates systemic racism, and the issues facing Black Catholics today. You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As this academic year gets underway, I worry about how the assault on higher education can quickly transform our culture. After all, we mustn’t accept the idea that such things as support centers for Black students are racist. They help a marginalized community adjust to university life. Likewise, trans women in sports are not a threat to cisgender women, nor do they create unfair dynamics. In terms of sexual violence against women, there is no greater threat to cisgender women than straight, cisgender men. And we have no documented evidence of male athletes becoming trans women just to win at sports. Some people are just better athletes than others. And of course, universities are not full of professors indoctrinating students in communism or atheism. If they were, we would probably have different elected officials at the federal level, if not at many local levels. Therefore, I hope colleges and universities will find ways to stand up against these attacks and create robust opportunities to help students think critically about the world they are inheriting–for the sake of higher education, for the research these institutions should be producing, and for the health, freedom, and democracy of the entire country.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.