Digital Humanities as a Bulwark: Resisting the Anti-DEI, Anti-Humanities Backlash of Trump 2.0

The war on the humanities is no longer a looming threat—it is here.

The second Trump administration, bolstered by far-right cultural movements and conservative state legislatures, has already accelerated the full-scale dismantling of DEI programs, defunding of ethnic studies, and erasure of historical narratives that challenge white supremacy, patriarchy, and corporate power. Across the country, universities are gutting DEI initiatives under the guise of “neutrality,” academic freedom is being curtailed in favor of state-mandated curricula, and once-thriving humanities departments are being told they must either align themselves with market-driven objectives or die. The reactionary machine has made its intentions clear: the humanities, particularly those that center race, gender, and social justice, must be eliminated because they pose a fundamental challenge to the right-wing project of white authoritarian control.

The question is no longer what can be done to prepare for this attack. The question is how to fight back now.

Digital Humanities is one of the strongest tools we have to resist.

Over the past decade, it has evolved from a niche discipline into an integrated, though sometimes contested, force within higher education. Once dismissed as a collection of flashy word clouds and data visualizations, Digital Humanities now includes community-based archives, large-scale text analysis, and AI-driven research that amplifies historically marginalized voices. These tools offer new ways to resist erasure, misinformation, and the authoritarian impulse to rewrite history in service of reactionary ideology. In an era where traditional academic disciplines are under attack, Digital Humanities is uniquely positioned to democratize knowledge, make scholarship more accessible, and serve as a counterforce against political and cultural regression.

The GOP’s War on the Humanities and the Legacy of Anti-Intellectualism

Despite overwhelming evidence that Trump 2.0 and the GOP are actively working to destroy the humanities, some academics and journalists still cling to the illusion that conservative politicians might become unexpected allies in their preservation. Last year, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a now-embarrassingly naive article titled "Will Republicans Save the Humanities?", which suggested that conservatives—who often claim to value classical education and intellectual tradition—might step in to support humanities programs that emphasize history, philosophy, and the Western canon. This argument was laughable at the time, and it is even more absurd now.

The belief that Republicans might suddenly become defenders of the humanities reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the historical trajectory of anti-intellectualism in American conservatism, a phenomenon Richard Hofstadter analyzed in his 1963 Pulitzer-Prize-Winning book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Hofstadter traced how right-wing movements in the United States have long framed intellectuals as threats to democracy, portraying expertise, scholarly inquiry, and critical thinking as elitist, corrupting forces that must be countered by the supposed "common sense" of the people.

From the John Birch Society’s conspiracy theories about universities in the 1950s, to Nixon’s demonization of intellectuals as coastal elites undermining "real America," to Reagan’s gutting of public higher education funding in California, to the Bush administration’s war on climate science and international expertise, the GOP has for decades used anti-intellectualism as a populist weapon. Trump 2.0 is not a break from this history but its logical and extreme culmination: the rejection of higher education as a public good, the vilification of expertise, and the assertion that universities must either serve state propaganda or be dismantled.

The belief that Republicans would "save" the humanities rests on the false assumption that they ever saw value in critical intellectual inquiry in the first place. They don’t. They see the humanities as a threat to their political dominance, precisely because the humanities train students to question, analyze, and resist.

Digital Humanities and the Fight Against Historical Erasure

One of the most immediate threats posed by the Trump 2.0 anti-humanities agenda is the deliberate erasure of inconvenient histories. Recent attacks on DEI in higher education are not just about gutting funding; they are about controlling what can be taught, researched, and preserved. In states where ethnic studies programs are being dismantled, where Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ histories are being excised from curricula, and where books are being banned at alarming rates, Digital Humanities offers an alternative: the creation of distributed, open-access archives that cannot be erased by political decree.

At the center of this censorship campaign is the war on Critical Race Theory, a term that has been deliberately distorted by right-wing politicians into a rallying cry against so-called "anti-white" bias. But Critical Race Theory is not an attack on white people. It is simply the historical and legal study of how racial inequality has been built into American institutions since the country’s founding. The GOP’s crusade against CRT is not about protecting children from “indoctrination”; it is about preventing any meaningful reckoning with the fact that the United States, despite its founding rhetoric of universal equality, was built on stolen land and human bondage. From the Constitution’s compromises on slavery to Jim Crow, redlining, mass incarceration, and voter suppression, systemic racism has been a defining feature of American history. CRT exposes this history, and that is precisely why MAGA has made it a scapegoat.

MAGA’s attack on CRT, DEI, and the humanities is not just an ideological battle—it is a campaign to restore an older, whiter version of America by force. This is not about discomfort in the classroom; it is about maintaining a sanitized, white nationalist narrative where slavery was a minor footnote, the Civil Rights Movement was unnecessary, and white Americans are the real victims of oppression. MAGA does not simply reject CRT as a legal framework; it rejects the idea that systemic racism exists at all. It thrives on nostalgia for a time when whiteness was an unchallenged source of power, and its legislative assaults on the humanities are an attempt to make that vision a reality again.

Digital Humanities is one of the few tools that can effectively counteract this revisionism. While school boards and state legislatures dictate which histories are permitted in textbooks, Digital Humanities ensures that the full historical record remains accessible. By digitizing archival materials, oral histories, legal records, and academic research, DH prevents whitewashing by preserving primary sources that cannot be erased by political fiat. If universities and libraries are forced to remove books on Black history or LGBTQ+ rights, Digital Humanities projects can continue making those materials widely available online. DH platforms can also use AI-driven textual analysis to track and expose the rhetoric of white nationalist movements, showing how they manufacture moral panics to justify censorship.

This fight is not just about academia. It is about the fundamental right to understand the past in order to shape a more just future. MAGA’s war on the humanities is a war on historical memory itself, a last-ditch effort to protect the myth of white American innocence. Digital Humanities ensures that the evidence of systemic racism remains in the public sphere, accessible to all who seek the truth. If the humanities are to survive in the Trump 2.0 era, they must do more than document oppression; they must actively combat its resurgence. Digital Humanities offers the infrastructure to do exactly that.

The fight for historical truth has never been more urgent. When state legislatures ban ethnic studies, Digital Humanities can preserve and circulate those materials beyond the reach of reactionary politicians. When school boards purge library shelves, digital archives can provide free and open access to censored books. When right-wing think tanks manufacture false narratives about CRT, data-driven analysis can expose their strategies in real time.

Unlike traditional archives, which can be defunded, restricted, or physically destroyed, digital archives can be decentralized and maintained across multiple institutions, making political suppression far more difficult. This model of distributed knowledge is crucial in a political environment where historical revisionism is one of the primary tools of authoritarian governance. In this way, Digital Humanities does not just document history—it defends it.

Conclusion: Building a Digital Humanities Firewall Against MAGA's Assault on Truth

Hofstadter warned decades ago that anti-intellectualism was deeply embedded in American conservatism, but the MAGA movement has escalated it into something more extreme than ever before. The Trump 2.0 era is not just about dismissing experts or mocking academics as "elites." It is about replacing knowledge with mythology, erasing history that contradicts the GOP’s white nationalist vision, and punishing those who refuse to comply. MAGA’s assault on truth has turned Trump into a pseudo-religious figure, elevated as a divine warrior against the supposed evils of intellectualism, cosmopolitanism, and historical accuracy.

Trump is now openly rewriting American history in real time, positioning himself as a Christian martyr and a messianic figure who alone can save the country from "woke" universities, globalist scientists, and treasonous historians. The embrace of Christian nationalism within the Republican Party has fused Trumpism with religious fundamentalism, making the attack on universities not just political but theological. In this framework, truth itself becomes irrelevant—what matters is faith in the leader, obedience to the movement, and the destruction of any institution that challenges its authority.

Digital Humanities provides a critical bulwark against this new authoritarianism, allowing scholars and activists to preserve historical truth, counter disinformation, and make knowledge accessible beyond the control of reactionary politicians. By harnessing the power of distributed digital archives, large-scale data analysis, and open-access scholarship, DH makes it harder for state-sponsored historical revisionism to take hold. It ensures that suppressed histories remain accessible, that misinformation can be systematically analyzed and debunked, and that the humanities continue to serve as a space for resistance, even in the face of state repression.

This is no longer about preventing the defunding of humanities departments. That ship has sailed. The question now is whether the humanities—along with academic freedom, intellectual integrity, and historical accuracy—can survive at all in the Trump 2.0 era. If they are to have any chance, Digital Humanities must play a central role in the fight. The MAGA war on knowledge is escalating. It is time for the humanities to stop retreating and start fighting back.