Ideas

The New Dark Age

The Trump administration has launched an attack on knowledge itself.

First published in The Atlantic on May 27, 2025

by Adam Serwer, The Atlantic
May 29, 2025 | reading time: 20 Min.

The warlords who sacked Rome did not intend to doom Western Europe to centuries of ignorance. It was not a foreseeable consequence of their actions. The same cannot be said of the sweeping attack on human knowledge and progress that the Trump administration is now undertaking—a deliberate destruction of education, science, and history, conducted with a fanaticism that recalls the Dark Ages that followed Rome’s fall.

© SZ - You can acquire rights to the article here.