What’s New
More than 200 academic leaders have signed on to a statement denouncing the Trump administration for its “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” in higher education. The statement, organized by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, and released Tuesday, is signed by presidents of Ivy League institutions, state flagships, and small liberal-arts colleges, among others, as well as the leaders of scholarly associations. It marks college presidents’ largest collective rebuke of the White House’s actions to date.
The Details
Titled “A Call for Constructive Engagement,” the statement warns of “the price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education,” including threats to the economy, social mobility, local communities, and scientific and medical progress. While the signatories write that they are “open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight,” they say they oppose “intrusion” in the lives of those on campus. “We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding,” the statement reads.
The statement goes on to make a commitment to academic and intellectual freedom for everyone on campus, including, by implication, international students, hundreds of whose visas have been revoked by the Trump administration. “Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation,” the statement reads.
Signatories include representatives of several institutions that have been targeted by the administration. Harvard’s president, Alan M. Garber, signed on, as did the current leaders of Brown, Columbia, Northwestern, and Princeton Universities, as well as the University of Pennsylvania, all of which have been subject to funding freezes.
I do not feel this was a risky thing to do. I feel this was a thing that it was my duty to do.
Some leaders of institutions that haven’t faced direct threats have been hesitant to speak out, said Alison Byerly, president of Carleton College, in Minnesota. “If you weren’t yourself as an institution being directly impacted, it wasn’t clear what venue you had to speak out about the potential impact of these actions on all of higher education,” Byerly said. The statement, which Byerly endorsed, offers those leaders an avenue to do so, and provides strength in numbers for those “not wanting to stand too alone on the cliff.”
Byerly acknowledged that institutions face very disparate political circumstances, and that she therefore was in no position to judge a president’s decision whether to sign the statement. “In some ways,” she said, “I actually felt maybe more responsibility to be visible or speak out on these issues, because I felt I was in a position where I could do so.”
Grant Cornwell, president of Rollins College, in Florida, said he also felt compelled to sign. “If a president can’t defend and explain the core principles of teaching and research, then the whole system is broken and under siege,” he said. “I do not feel this was a risky thing to do. I feel this was a thing that it was my duty to do.”
It was an unusual step for Cornwell, who said he is “not a big fan” of statements and that he subscribes to the Chicago principles and the idea of institutional neutrality. “But even if you read those principles strictly, it allows for presidents to use their voice when the issue at hand addresses the mission and purpose of the college,” he said. “In this case, the business of this statement is our business. This isn’t a group of presidents opining broadly on international affairs or even national politics.”
Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, president of Oakland University, in Michigan, also signed the statement, and said she hopes other leaders will do so in the coming days. “You don’t always join every fad, but in this case, I think there will be a lot of peer pressure” to join, Pescovitz said, particularly given many faculty members’ eagerness for support from their leaders. Several Oakland professors contacted her Tuesday to thank her for signing on.
The Backdrop
Conversations about a collective statement arose last week at a meeting of college leaders hosted by the AAC&U and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at a conference at Rollins College, said Lynn C. Pasquerella, president of the AAC&U. There was, Pasquerella said, “widespread consensus” among those present that “a line had been crossed in terms of the actions that had been taken against these institutions” and that a collective statement was warranted.
But there was no clear threshold of signatories at which “they would feel safe” doing so, she said. Many leaders also said they’d need permission from their boards to join such a statement; others worried about donors withdrawing their support or about being targeted by the administration for speaking out.
In a follow-up meeting of many of those leaders on Monday, discussion of risk was prevalent. “We’re all at risk of being a target, and we have two choices. We can either let that risk render us voiceless, or we can use our voices to speak out against these attacks on higher education,” Pasquerella said.
In the meantime, Pasquerella said she’s pleased at the range of institutions represented — including, she noted, those in red and blue states. Online interest in the statement was high on Tuesday, with the AAC&U website crashing several times because of traffic.
The public statement marks a change in higher ed’s response since Trump’s inauguration. College leaders had largely avoided publicly criticizing the administration’s actions, opting instead, some said, for backroom conversations and “quiet resistance,” as Marjorie Hass, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, wrote in Higher Ed Dive. That left higher-ed associations, such as the Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education, and the American Association of University Professors, to file lawsuits and speak out against policies such as the proposed indirect-cost cuts at the National Institutes of Health.
But in recent weeks more institutions have spoken up. Harvard on Monday sued the administration for freezing billions of dollars in research grants, becoming the first institution to challenge a direct funding cut in court. As individual institutions have been hit with funding freezes, and students and scholars across the nation have seen their visas revoked, more leaders have condemned Trump’s actions. Meanwhile, faculty senates at a handful of institutions have endorsed resolutions calling for the creation of “mutual-defense compacts” among groups of institutions, such as those in the Big Ten.
What to Watch For
While the AAC&U closed its initial call for signatures at 9 p.m. Monday, Pasquerella said the statement is intended as a “living document” that leaders can choose to endorse later. While the statement was initially released on Tuesday with about 190 signatories, that number had grown to 238 late in the day. “Everybody is not in the same position in terms of being able to respond to these calls immediately, so it will take some people longer than others to support such a statement,” she said.
Pasquerella added that the leaders who gathered Monday also spent time discussing next steps — including possible collaborations with industry, K-12 educators, and local communities — and how to “maintain momentum” in the wake of the statement’s release.
