Getting ready to read Project 2025 in an open, online discussion

How might a likely second Trump administration impact higher education?  How can academics plan for and anticipate that major event, should it occur?

A week ago I posted that Trump is the likely winner of the upcoming American presidential election.  I offered to do a few things which might help those of us who work in higher education prepare.  One of those items is an online reading of what seems to be a crucial document for the next administration, Project 2025.  Today I’ll describe plans for that reading.

What I’d look to do is read a chunk of the book each week, around 100 pages.  That should be enough to let us finish the whole text before the November election. Each Monday I’ll post about that reading here on the blog.  Those posts will include my summary notes about the passage, followed by some reflections and several questions.  I’ll copy each post to Medium, share each post across social media, and also try to offer a video on YouTube.  (This is more or less what I’ve done in our online book club for years) I hope to hold a Future Trends Forum meeting or two on this as well.

How do you participate?  There are a bunch of ways:

• Reading along (helpfully, the text is freely available as a giant pdf).  If you can, follow our schedule (see below).  If you’re reading more slowly, no worries.  The blog posts will wait for you.
• Commenting on each blog post.  Historically people have shared their reactions, asked or answered questions, disagreed with my take or other folks’ comments – in other words, discussed the reading.
• Posting on your own sites, be they blogs, a Medium post, a Google Site page, a podcast, a video, or whatever you like.  I’ll try to link to those my next blog post, as well as embedding them and summarizing their contents.  Please tag or ping me if you want to make sure I see them.
• Responding on social media.  Right now my plan is to share links to each blog post from my accounts on (deep breath) Twitter/X, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Facebook, Bluesky, and Threads.  Speaking of which, here’s my YouTube channel.
• You might also want to respond to me privately, if you’re worried about what people could make of your reactions.  If so, here’s a way to reach me without the web knowing.

The reason I have for doing this is to assist academics in responding to what a second Trump might do.  This means I will keep an eye on implications for higher education throughout.  Sometimes the implications will be direct, as when the book explicitly calls for ending the Department of Education.  At other times the connections will be implicit or contextual.  For example, if the document calls for mass deportation of people, that will impact academic institutions.  Yet if you’d like to read along for purposes other than what’s happening to colleges and universities, you are most welcome.

Given how contentious this topic is, I’d like to ask readers (at least those responding on this blog) to be respectful of each other.  This might be a big ask at times, depending on the events of the next few months, but I think it’s possible to explore this reading without trying to tear each other apart.  If things get heated I’ll weigh in to try cooling a situation down. As blog owner I reserve the right to delete comments if they get out of hand.

Here’s the schedule:

August 22 – “Taking the Reins of Government”: front matter through page 85.

August 29 – “The Common Defense”:  pages 87-199.

September 5 – “The Common Defense” and “The General Welfare”: pages 201-318

September 12 – “The General Welfare”: pages 319-416. NB: this starts with a chapter on the Department of Education.

September 19 – “The General Welfare”: pages 417-516.

September 26 – “The General Welfare”: pages 517-617.

October 2 – “The General Welfare” and “The Economy”: pages 619-715.

October 9 – “The Economy”: pages 717-823.

October 16 – “Independent Regulatory Agencies” and “Onward!”:  pages 825-887.

If this reading looks daunting – nearly 900 pages! – here are some introductions and resources which might help:

• Wikipedia entry
• Katherine Knott, “Project 2025 Would Radically Overhaul Higher Ed. Here’s How.” 
• Judd Legum, “What Trump doesn’t want you to know about Project 2025”
• Rick Perlstein, “Project 2025 … and 1921, and 1973, and 1981: Terrifying blueprints for the next Republican presidency are a quadrennial tradition”
• Thomas Zimmer, “What ‘Project 2025’ Would Do to America”
• The Lincoln Project, “Aftermath”:

If you’d like to learn more about how this kind of online, open, and distributed reading works, here’s a link to all posts for one excellent book we read, and which elicited a great deal of responses.  Speaking of which, I’ll tag all posts here Project2025.

Any questions?  In the meantime, click on the pdf or the links above and let’s start reading.

Thanks to a bunch of people who helped set this up: Chandra; Peter Shea; my fine supporters on Patreon.