The opposite of authority is reason.

Authoritarian regimes hate disobedience. Coming up with your own ideas or rejecting what your priest, parent, or politician says is very disobedient.

Reasoning about the world is a threat to authority. Studying the history of something and keeping records about what is happening in order to attribute disastrous policy accurately is equally threatening. That de-legitimizes authority and justifies disobedience. This administration has worked to delete graphs that would require action or that show bad policy decisions rather than to take action or change policy.

Authoritarians need to subordinate institutions that ground themselves in reality and devote themselves to reason. Universities are the natural enemies of authoritarians.

As much as I disagree with Marcus whenever he opens his mouth on AI, I wholeheartedly agree with him on this:

A functioning democracy requires that academics, journalists, and law firms remain independent of the state.

There is an argument for ending federal support of private universities. States are better set up to resist the federal government.