Universities are among the most invaluable of our institutions. They are the center of research, of new ideas, the place where we endeavor to understand the past and shape the future.  They are a moral place – a breeding ground of activism and truth-seeking – of religious study and of secular scientific discovery, of radical ideas and of unifying values. Universities are where free speech is celebrated, where free conscience is most freely practiced. They are living, breathing monuments to the promise of humanity.

These unique values are only heightened in the case of public universities, where education and truth are democratized and collectivized for the public good. State universities pool the resources of communities to further the pursuit of knowledge and open doors to all who seek it.

But public universities are under attack from a new wave of “fiscally responsible” governors right here in the Midwest, the latest budget-balancing warriors in the war on “Big Government.”

In Wisconsin, Republican governor Scott Walker recently unveiled a new budget proposal that cuts state funding for Wisconsin universities by $300 million over two years. The cut is a massive blow to the state’s university system and a direct assault on the university as an institution of knowledge and truth. The scale is unfathomable; the $20 million cut from UW-Milwaukee, for instance, is the equivalent of wiping out its schools of public health, information studies and social welfare combined.

But Walker’s proposal doesn’t only target university finances; it also goes after an intellectual mission.

The University of Wisconsin is one the state’s crown jewels, with the world-renowned flagship campus in Madison one of its most potent symbols. At its core is what Badgers fans call the “Wisconsin Idea,” which takes the public utility of the university a step further.

The Wisconsin Idea, which functions as the university’s mission statement, holds that “the boundaries of the University are the boundaries of the state.” It maintains that “basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth,” and that its academic pursuits are a “public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition.” A lofty mission statement, no doubt, and one that only a university can make a legitimate claim to.

Walker’s attack on the university goes farther than spending cuts to invaluable programs; it seeks to undermine the entire purpose of the university itself.

Walker’s original budget proposal edited the noble Wisconsin Idea and added a new mission, “to meet the state’s workforce needs.” Amid national political pressure and predictably bad press, Walker eventually reinstated the original language of the Idea, but not before his designs against the university were made clear.

Unfortunately, the full-court press on institutions of higher learning has extended into Illinois, where understandable concern over the state’s fiscal situation has ballooned into an assault on the Illinois university system. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who campaigned both on balancing the state budget and strengthening the commitment of the state to public universities, recently announced almost $400 million in cuts to state funding for the university system.

The timing of Rauner’s cuts could not be worse. Only last month, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees enacted a tuition freeze to stem the exploding costs of tuition. Now, a dramatic cut to revenue will force the difficult decision between raising tuition and digging into the worn pockets of the Illinois middle class, and cutting programs and undermining the quality and output of the university.

The cuts to these public universities are part and parcel of a new wave of conservative ideological purification that sees an existential threat in all things deemed “liberal” — including colleges and universities where ideas are supposed to be liberated from political realities, where academic pursuits and data-backed facts are always supposed to trump confirmation-biased ideology.

It is an ideology that often shirks the truth, and in some cases even disdains it. The case studies of the latter are numerous. Take Oklahoma, for instance. Facebook newsfeeds were filled last week with posts about the Oklahoma legislature’s delusional attempts to sugarcoat American history in order to foster an image of America — morally incorruptible, ordained with a God-given destiny — that so many modern conservatives pine after.

Or take the case of James Inhofe, senator from the Sooner state, who just last week brought an actual snowball to the Senate floor as evidence against global warming, while postulating, “It’s very cold out. Very unseasonable.” Inhofe, the author of a science-less book on climate change called “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future,” is the Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. The Republican chairman of the Senate committee that oversees environmental policy literally used a snowball as a scientific argument on the Senate floor.

This new wave of conservative ideological purification would be merely laughable if it were harmless, but its not. It wields the potential to inflict serious, long-term damage on the institutions that matter most, like our universities and colleges.

Budget cuts and changes to mission statements undermine the university’s basic premise and its ability to educate, to research, to call into question and to enact change. These attacks must not go unchallenged; the university is too important and its value to society too great.

William Kirkland is a Weinberg junior. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].