In the United States, the Trump administration has cut an estimated $8 billion in research grants to the country’s top universities since January 2025. Despite declines in funding for education and research, the defense budget is planned to increase by $1.5 trillion over the course of Trump’s term.

A common criticism of Trump’s irresponsible policy often boils down to questions akin to “What about cancer research?” or “What about physics breakthroughs?” Notably, it’s rare for the public to ask “What will happen to the anti-imperialist theorists?” even though the latter studies are several times more likely to be targeted by funding cuts.

The reason for the omission of the humanities from the public consciousness is simple: the average American’s knee-jerk reaction is to position practical STEM fields in academia as being more valuable than abstract humanities studies.

Despite the feud between STEM and the humanities, it’s impossible to separate them as subjects. We cannot discuss the production of green energy without understanding how we exploit the global south for rare earth minerals. We cannot develop AI without a deep understanding of what it means for something to be sentient. We cannot build destructive technology with the goal of “beating China” without rationalizing why China is seen as a force to be contained.

In fact, we cannot analyze STEM education without acknowledging that the very reason American schools value it is that it’s a means of strengthening imperialism. 

After Sputnik’s launch, the National Defense Education Act of 1958 allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to STEM education in the United States with the intention of surpassing Soviet technological capabilities and maintaining global American hegemony.

Beyond increasing institutionalized STEM funding, The act also mandated the training of guidance counselors and the implementation of standardized testing programs to best scout students gifted in STEM. The original version of the bill even mandated that students aided by the bill swear their loyalty to the United States. On the brink of nuclear war, schools built students into soldiers. 

I would argue that the devaluation of the humanities in American academia is a direct manifestation of anti-intellectualism. STEM is seen as being more valuable than the humanities often because, simply put, the average person working in engineering probably makes more than the average philosopher. Honing skills in the sciences is seen as practical, and critical thinking is seen as a waste of time. To this end, the education system shifted from being about the pursuit of knowledge to being about teaching kids to get a job that makes the most money with the least effort.

There’s a widespread consensus that students don’t need to learn analysis skills as long as they can get a good starting salary when graduating college. This philosophy creates a potentially dangerous cycle: STEM is pushed to students to motivate them to work for their governments, and at the same time, the resulting devaluation of the humanities leaves students unable to question their governments.

Instead of treating STEM as being superior to the humanities, since the subjects are so intertwined, they should be treated as equals and in some cases, taught in tandem with one another. Specifically, in STEM classes, this could look like open discussions on ethics and bias in computer science classes; lessons on the relationship between statistical methodology and colonialism in math classes; or lectures about the exploited populations forced to supply resources for the technology thought to be saving the world in science classes.

This already exists to a degree in schools; in biology, it’s common to learn about the relatively modern field of climate change. But though we learned about the science behind ocean acidification, we never understood what is most important about global warming: how it affects humanity. Climate change has ravaged coastal countries, wrecked the housing market, destroyed biodiversity, and made BIPOC bear the brunt of all of it. It’s impossible to comprehend the horrors of science from a purely scientific lens. It’s important that students learn about people affected by their area of study to build understanding and empathy in a field that prioritizes brutality.

Education serves a much larger purpose than teaching the youth how to beat capitalism. The point of education is simply to prepare people to develop skills that best allow them to navigate the post-high school world. Though navigating the world, yes, entails finding a job, beyond that, schools also have the responsibility to teach students how to be good humans by developing their cultural consciousness, teaching them how to interact with others, resist oppression, and care for a community; in other words, the skills that only the arts directly target.

Especially now, with anti-intellectualism, global class divides, and the erasure of history all being on the rise, if we’re in any position to resist, it’s more important than ever to teach students to think critically and care for each other.