President Donald Trump’s war on higher education during the past year features multiple civil rights lawsuits and deals with universities over federal funding. The American Association of University Professors opposes the Trump administration, characterizing his actions as extortion. The Trump administration sees the university campus as a “factory of woke ideology”, and it stands against “liberal indoctrination”, “affirmative action admission programs”, “inclusion initiatives” like definitions of genders outside of reproductive functions, and “antisemitic conducts” like student demonstrations against the war on Gaza (Chappell, npr). In this current political climate, the university campus is thus observed, analyzed, and revisited in discussions about academic freedom and federal funding. Studying depictions of university campuses in the campus novel offers a window into fictional individual experiences of both student and staff members in their interactions on campus. While these narratives utilize and inhabit the university campus in similar ways as part of the genre’s traditions, they also explore the physical experience of being on campus beyond academics. The campus as a physical space can thus be seen as a microcosm of society with its green areas, living and workspaces; it can be a place for crimes like murder and sexual harassment, but it also encourages personal blooming and transformation. Campus novels showcase rich examples of the plurality of readings that can be made about the university campus, and how as a literary and social arena it continues to denounce and problematized simplistic views about the campus. These narratives are especially important at the rise of anti-intellectualism and the current political climate in the United States.