Last week, the Trump administration crossed a red line in its unprecedented attack on American higher education. In a letter to Columbia University, the administration laid out a series of sweeping changes that the school must take to reverse the administration’s cancellation of $400 million in federal funding. The letter affirms that for the faculty and administrators at American colleges and universities, silence is no longer an option. They must speak out and act, both individually and collectively.
In canceling the grants earlier this month, the Trump White House accused Columbia of “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” The administration’s new letter details “immediate next steps that we regard as a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.” Each of those steps touches on the university’s core functions.
American colleges and universities are in uncharted territory, and they are temperamentally unprepared for confrontation.
Among other things, the federal government demands that Columbia change its admissions practices and its disciplinary process, including mandating the “arrest and removal of agitators who foster an unsafe or hostile work or study environment.” It requires the university to ban masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate others.” It even demands that the university put its Middle East, South Asian and African Studies Department in academic receivership.
Putting an academic department in receivership would remove governance of that department, including control over its curriculum, from its faculty. As The Associated Press notes, receivership “is a rarely used practice,” and only if a department cannot manage its own affairs. That is not the case with respect to this particular department. One can (almost) admire the Trump administration’s ingenuity in using receivership as a smoke screen for censorship.
Nonnegotiable preconditions like these more commonly come from hostage-takers or terrorists than officials in a democratically elected government. But that is where this country and its higher education institutions now find themselves.
If the government can single out an academic department at a college or university because of what it teaches or how it teaches, there would be nothing left of academic freedom. We have seen hints of this kind of attack on higher education in this country before, especially during the Red Scare of the early 1950s. But according to Joan Scott, a historian and member of the academic freedom committee of the American Association of University Professors, the Trump administration’s latest demands on Columbia are “an escalation of a kind that is unheard of. Even during the McCarthy period in the United States, this was not done.”
Before the administration’s latest letter to Columbia, in an article aptly titled “First They Came for Columbia,” Harvard University’s Ryan Enos and Steven Levitsky called on their university to express solidarity with its fellow Ivy League school. “Autocrats — both left-wing and right-wing — always attack universities,” they wrote. “Its claim to be fighting campus antisemitism rings ... hollow ... Autocrats are allergic to sources of dissent, so they almost invariably seek to silence, weaken, or control them.”
American colleges and universities are in uncharted territory, and they are temperamentally unprepared for confrontation. They still emphasize discussion over direction and consensus over coercion, particularly as these institutions become more corporate.
Colleges and universities have little time to get their bearings, but passivity is the wrong path.
As Enos and Levitsky explain, “Most universities — including Harvard — have responded to these attacks with strategies of self-preservation. They are lying low, avoiding public debate (and sometimes cooperating with the administration) in the hope of mitigating the coming assault.” Those schools not yet in the government’s crosshairs are keeping their heads down lest they replace Columbia as the White House’s top target.
Colleges and universities have little time to get their bearings, but passivity is the wrong path. They need to organize in defense of Columbia now. This defense should comprise more than just statements. College presidents should go to Columbia’s campus and be seen with its president, lobby on its behalf with lawmakers, mobilize their alums, and, where possible, offer financial support.
Failing to do so is, as Enos and Levitsky say, not only “morally objectionable,” but self-defeating. “Columbia’s leadership made repeated concessions to right-wing critics,” they point out, “only to be the first to come under attack.”
There is much to scrutinize and criticize about events at Columbia in the post-Oct. 7 period. But addressing those issues is not the federal government’s responsibility. All of us in higher education, not just university presidents, must say so.
As the New York Times’ M. Gessen noted last month, history teaches that “for people to be able to stand up (to authoritarianism), they needed the words.” That is why the administration’s attempt to bring Columbia and other universities to heel is so important, not just for the fate of higher education but for every American. Colleges and universities are in the business of fashioning the words and ideas needed to help people understand why standing up for democracy is so important.
All of us in higher education must get busy with that work. We can start by defending Columbia University. If we fail to do so, we will fail higher education and also the entire country.
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