The article argues that as of spring 2025, we should understand the developments in United States policy toward higher education as erasure as violence. This is different from traditional fears of bureaucracy. While we are used to thinking of governmental administration as burying citizens in inefficient processes and absurd procedures, the dismantling of administrative infrastructure is worse. This is the first stage of erasure as violence and concerns mainly the wrecking ball directed by DOGE and similar initiatives to tear down infrastructure upholding governance. The second stage concerns the individual level of research and teaching. Here, we have witnessed a deliberate campaign to make people in academia – students, teachers, researchers – insecure and afraid. The result is a second stage of erasure as violence in the form of self-censorship. Even as most actors in academia are not threatened directly by cuts in funding, discontinued courses, or demolished research initiatives, many feel the pressure to adjust as an act of survival. We have only begun to see the consequences of this forced behavior.