Trump and his allies are betting that their assault on academia will bring a political win, no matter the economic pain or courtroom outcomes. Based on the polls, they may be right. Last year, according to Gallup, only 36 percent of Americans said they had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education—down about 20 points since 2015. It’s important not to romanticize the intellectual’s status in the shadow of  God and Man at Yale  and Joseph McCarthy’s fulminations . But