The administration of US President Donald Trump is pursuing a destructive agenda against science. The White House seems to be intent on telling funding agencies what they can fund, universities who they can hire, and researchers what they can study. Research grants are being slashed, with a particular emphasis on science that goes against the administration’s ideological line, be it on topics such as climate change or on the inclusion and support of under-represented groups in society. Failure to comply with these edicts has been met with threats to hike taxes on university endowments and to restrict the pipeline of international students, who have long been instrumental to the success of US science and innovation.

The Trump administration is waging an unprecedented war on institutions devoted to research and higher learning. While plenty of countries have harmed universities by imposing neoliberal logics on academia – creating artificial markets in the name of spurring professors to be more productive – the Trumpist subjugation of all science to political imperatives has no equivalent in a democracy; if anything, it is reminiscent of Stalin’s Soviet Union. The assault now also targets foreign students and any kind of international collaboration – a major blow to US soft power. Why are Trumpists engaging in what can only be described as an act of wanton self-injury?

We are now more than a year into President Trump’s second stint in the White House, establishing a grim and undeniable record of attacks on science. Every month that has passed since his inauguration day, there have been multiple actions that target science, scientists, and science-based policies. These aren’t just isolated incidents—seen together, they tell a story of a planned and intentional attack on our federal scientific infrastructure, causing real harm to people and the planet today and endangering all of us in the longer term.

Following the unification of Germany in 1871, significant shifts have occurred in the landscape of censorship legislation. This begs the question, what has been the effect of Germany’s censorship laws since 1871 on Germany’s modern understanding of free speech? As the nation has changed in its physical borders, leading political figures and parties, and social-cultural norms, so have the laws and constitutional amendments that dictate what is considered free speech. Unification brought about instrumental reform in the way Germany allowed its citizens to express themselves. Before 1871, the best reference for how the smaller German states policed what material could be published was the 1819 Carlsbad Decrees which came about after the murder of August von Kotzebue, a conservative writer. Austria’s Foreign Minister at the time, Klemens von Metternich, used this murder as an excuse to severely crack down on the public. The Carlsbad Decrees included three laws which all served to restrict free speech in Germany. More specifically, free speech of faculty members was limited at universities, any newspaper piece “without the foreknowledge and prior approval of the state authorities” could not be published, all publications had to be labeled with the author, editor, and publisher’s name or those involved would be punished, and any publication could be suppressed if it broke “the maintenance of peace and quiet” in Germany. 1 The lack of specificity in these rules allowed German officials to use their discretion in matters such as determining what constitutes disturbing peace and quiet, and other vague aspects of the decree. The Carlsbad Decrees are widely known for their repressive nature and goal of minimizing political opposition. With this, when the unification of Germany occurred in 1871, the newly united nation had to greatly reform its censorship laws. This marked the beginning of a long debate in united Germany over the rights Germans have to express their thoughts and opinions publicly.