The Trump administration’s culture war on universities died this week—not with a bang, but with a whimper. How did the Trump administration go from cowing some of the world’s most powerful universities into submission, to gently pleading with academia as a whole? Undeniably, elite schools–Harvard and MIT, and to a lesser extent Princeton–played key roles in galvanizing universities’ successful resistance to the Trump pressure campaign by sticking their necks out first and providing cover for others to follow. Rather, school leaders were under intense pressure from the various constituencies they serve. But for now, at least at the prominent universities targeted by the Trump administration as bastions of radical ideology, stakeholders with other priorities are holding sway.