This is pretty rich coming from an administration that has cracked down on education institutions for lacking loyalty to Trump, installed student monitoring programs and snitch lines, and waged lawfare on any institutions that didn't immediately conform.

Academic freedom works because it's very hard, if not impossible, to predict what curiosity driven research that everybody currently thinks is a waste of time will lay the foundations for new fields and future industries. If U.S. research is refocused on private enterprise chasing the latest trends and commercializable things at the expense of institutions that perform fundamental research, the U.S. will forever be behind the tech curve. New fields will always emerge someplace else.