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campus protests
Harvard and Princeton Are the Latest Ivies to Have Their Funding Targeted By Trump
One critic wrote that an email from Harvard University's president about the Trump administration's funding review capitulated to the "bogus premise that this is about 'protecting' students against antisemitism."
Apr 01, 2025
This week, Harvard University learned that Trump administration is reviewing nearly $9 billion in federal grants awarded to the school and Princeton University has had multiple research grants suspended by multiple federal agencies—making the two institutions the latest in series of elite colleges to have their funding threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump.
In the case of Harvard, the scrutiny from the Trump administration is explicitly tied to Trump's pledge to crackdown on what he sees as rampant antisemitism on college campuses.
In the name of opposing antisemitism, Trump has vowed to target foreign-born students who have engaged in pro-Palestine protests, activities that the president has described as "pro-jihadist." Several students who have taken part in pro-Palestine activism have already been targeted for deportation.
According to a Monday statement from the U.S. Department of Education, multiple federal agencies are launching a comprehensive review of federal contracts and grants at Harvard as part of the ongoing efforts of the Trump administration's Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.
The task force will review over $255.6 million in contracts between Harvard, its affiliates, and the federal government, as well as $8.7 billion in multiyear grant commitments to the university and its affiliates to ensure "the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities."
"Harvard's failure to protect students on campus from antisemitic discrimination—all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry—has put its reputation in serious jeopardy. Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus," said Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a statement on Monday.
In a message that was denounced by multiple observers, Harvard's president Alan Garber wrote in a Monday message to the Harvard community that the school has devoted "considerable effort" to addressing antisemitism on its campus over the past 15 months, including by "enhancing training and education on antisemitism."
"We still have much work to do," wrote Garber. "We will engage with members of the federal government's task force to combat antisemitism to ensure that they have a full account of the work we have done and the actions we will take going forward to combat antisemitism."
"If this funding is stopped, it will halt lifesaving research and imperil important scientific research and innovation," he also wrote.
Researcher Hannah Gais, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, wrote on Monday that Garber's message "completely caves to the administration and its bogus premise that this is about 'protecting' students against antisemitism."
"What a disgraceful letter from Harvard president Alan Garber, surrendering entirely to Trump and the pernicious nonsense that America's universities, some of the greatest and most Jewish institutions in American life, are rife with antisemitism," wrote historian and editor Sam Haselby on X.
Meanwhile, the president of Princeton told the university community on Tuesday that several research grants to the university have been suspended by the federal government.
"The full rationale for this action is not yet clear, but I want to be clear about the principles that will guide our response," wrote Princeton president Christopher L. Eisgruber on Tuesday, according to The New York Times. "Princeton University will comply with the law. We are committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we will cooperate with the government in combating antisemitism."
In February, the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced that it would be investigating 10 universities, including Harvard and Columbia University—which recently had $400 million in federal grants revoked by the Trump administration. That list did not include Princeton, though Princeton was one of 60 colleges that received letters last month from the U.S. Department of Education that warned of potential actions against schools if the government found they had not done enough to protect Jewish students.
After the Trump administration stripped Columbia of the $400 million, the administration announced later in March that it was freezing $175 million in federal funds for the University of Pennsylvania, citing the university's policies on transgender athletes.
In March, Columbia announced a number of changes to the school that aligned with the wishes of the Trump administration as part of negotiations over the rescinded $400 million in federal grants—prompting a wave of criticism of the university.
In an opinion piece for Common Dreamspublished on Tuesday, Steve Striffler, the director of the Labor Resource Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston, argued that it is not wholly accurate to say that Columbia's changes were a "capitulation" to the Trump administration.
Instead, "it seems quite likely that Columbia's leaders accepted Trump's demands not so much because they were forced to (capitulate), or because they saw fighting as either futile or potentially disastrous, but because they welcomed the opportunity and political cover that Trump's order provided," he wrote.
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Capitulation or Complicity? Universities and the Trump Administration
Complicity gets us far closer to a useful explanation of recent actions by campus leaders than capitulation.
Apr 01, 2025
On March 7th the Trump administration announced the immediate cancellation of $400 million in government grants and contracts to Columbia University. Less than a week later, his administration followed up with a letter to Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, outlining the steps the university would have to take before negotiations to restore funding could even begin.
Although largely without precedent, Trump’s demands are entirely in line with an evolving authoritarianism that seeks to destroy possible sites of political opposition. The demands included suspending or expelling some of those who participated in pro-Palestinian protests; centralizing disciplinary power within the hands of the university president; banning mask wearing on campus; increasing the numbers and powers of campus police; and putting the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department under “academic receivership” (a rare move that places a department under external/administrative control, typically because it has become dysfunctional, but in this case because it was not sufficiently pro-Israel).
On March 21st, Columbia’s interim president agreed to the demands. Columbia would not put up a fight. Armstrong’s actions were widely condemned by advocates of higher education, academic freedom, and free speech—most of whom seemed genuinely surprised, even shocked, by Columbia’s decision to simply accept Trump’s terms. On March 28th Armstrong lost her job.
Trump is coming for us because so much of the best that university faculty, staff, and students represent—science, education, reason, knowledge, and informed political engagement—poses a real threat to his project.
It is tempting, as most commentators have, to understand the quick, total, and passive submission of Columbia and other university administrations to Trump’s assault through the lens of “capitulation,” “caving,” or “appeasement.” I get the impulse. Surely liberal institutions of higher learning, with time-honored commitments to free speech and academic freedom, would not possibly agree to Trump’s outrageous demands unless they had a financial gun pointed directly at them? Campus leaders must—so the logic goes—be churning on the inside, desperately wanting to fight back even as they reluctantly recognize that capitulation is the only alternative. Fighting back poses too great a risk.
Capitulation as an explanation, however, is far too generous and rests on the false premise that—when faced with a profound threat to democracy—core institutions such as universities have, currently are, or will fight to protect our basic political norms.
The question we should be asking ourselves—especially those of us who live in academia and should know better—is why would we expect universities, or more accurately the administrators who run them, to protect free speech, academic freedom, and dissent at all, especially during moments of crisis when doing so entails taking real risks? University administrations, from the 1960s through the present, have a very thin track record of doing so. The reality is that most have worked overtime, often at the behest of the trustees that control them, to limit or crush our freedoms with such consistency, and over such a long period of time, that it is baffling that anyone would expect anything different as we race towards authoritarianism.
Complicity gets us far closer to a useful explanation of recent actions by campus leaders than capitulation. We need only listen to Columbia’s interim president. In explaining the university’s acceptance of the Trump administration’s demands for restoring the flow of federal dollars, Armstrong noted in an open letter to the campus community that the university’s actions were in line with the path it had been following in the past year and were “guided by our values, putting academic freedom, free expression, open inquiry, and respect for all at the fore of every decision we make.” Armstrong is correct when she suggests that Trump’s demands coincide with university values as defined by top campus leaders. It’s just that those values do not include, and never really did, academic freedom and free expression.
Understood this way, it seems quite likely that Columbia’s leaders accepted Trump’s demands not so much because they were forced to (capitulate), or because they saw fighting as either futile or potentially disastrous, but because they welcomed the opportunity and political cover that Trump’s order provided—to get rid of “unruly” students, increase the university’s capacity to limit protest and discipline students, staff, and faculty, and (bonus!) gain control over a department that by its very subject matter might prove troublesome. That’s complicity, not capitulation. It’s also right in line with what we have seen from university administrations, including Columbia’s, in the recent and not so recent past. Indeed, the current era of complicity started under Biden with the draconian response to pro-Palestine protests from universities throughout the country in 2024 (and of course has a much longer history dating at least to the 1950s).
The speed with which university administrations have abandoned DEI policies and practices must be seen in this light as well. The administrative commitment to very limited sets of DEI policies was always paper thin, or about as deep as their commitment to academic freedom. It’s more a marketing ploy and opportunity for virtue signaling than any sort of real political commitment. The fact that many universities scrubbed websites and academic units, in some cases overnight, of almost any mention of DEI when the political winds shifted is hardly surprising.
This is not to say that most campus leaders like or fully embrace Trump’s gestapo-like tactics (though some seem to be getting quite comfortable with it). But it is also the case—especially after the 2024 campus protests around Palestine—that most were on board with some sort of “course correction,” not unlike the position one finds on the opinion pages of the New York Times, which essentially argues that student protests went too far, faculty are too liberal, universities need to rein it in, and Trump has a point (for a good example of this “commonsense” drivel, see Greg Weiner’s piece).
To be sure, we should not downplay the distinction between Trump’s authoritarianism, which tends to see those on college campuses as dangerous radicals who need to be removed, from the liberal “course correction” that pushes reforms to “take politics out” of higher education. And yet, as soon as one starts to accept Trump’s fascist tactics for getting there, which increasingly embraces a grab-them-off-the-streets approach reminiscent of Central America paramilitaries in the 1980s, the distinction probably feels a bit like splitting hairs to those on the wrong end of it. Complicity, not capitulation.
The silver lining, if there is one, is that although highly paid administrators officially speak for universities, and have considerable power over university policies, they are not “universities” any more than are the boards of trustees that control them. Katrina Armstrong, or whoever replaces her, is not Columbia University. The students, faculty, and staff who make up the institution, as well as the communities they serve, are “the university.”
Put another way, to suggest that there is no reason to expect university administrators to be natural defenders of free speech and political dissent, and that history tells us that many of them will in fact be complicit with Trump’s brand of fascism, is not to say that we should not try to hold them accountable or that the fight is over and universities have been politically neutered. It is to say that we—“the university”—have to continue the fight that so many of us are already engaged in. Trump is coming for us because so much of the best that university faculty, staff, and students represent—science, education, reason, knowledge, and informed political engagement—poses a real threat to his project. Campus leaders may opt for complicity. Let’s make sure we are neither complicit nor capitulate.
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Rutgers Senate Proposes Big Ten 'Mutual Defense Compact' to Block Trump's Campus Attacks
Universities "should be embodying the values of democracy," said one supporter. "And it really becomes clear in times like this how important that is."
Mar 31, 2025
A resolution passed by the Rutgers University Senate in response to the Trump administration's crackdown on First Amendment rights is "exactly the kind of model" needed in higher education, said one professor on Sunday as word spread of the document—which was approved amid outcry over other universities' capitulation to the White House's attacks.
"The public is crying out for leadership from somewhere," said Michael Yarbrough, a professor of law and society at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "Higher ed can provide that and catalyze something bigger. And in the process, we can remind everyone of our true value, something we desperately need to do."
The step toward leadership came in the form of a resolution to form a "mutual defense compact" with other schools that, along with Rutgers, make up the Big Ten Academic Alliance. Under the compact, the schools would "commit meaningful funding to a shared or distributed defense fund" that would provide "immediate and strategic support to any member institution under direct political or legal infringement."
The Rutgers Senate, which includes faculty, students, staff, and alumni, called on the New Jersey institution's president to "take a leading role in convening a summit of Big Ten academic and legal leadership to initiate the implementation of this compact."
The resolution, passed on March 28, was agreed to days after the Rutgers faculty union filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration to block its efforts to abduct, detain, and deport international students for expressing support for Palestinian rights, criticism of Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza and the West Bank, and taking part in pro-Palestinian campus protests over the past year.
Under Trump's executive orders to stop what it classifies as "antisemitism" and to deport foreign nationals who "espouse hateful ideology," immigration agents in recent weeks have detained people including Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student who led negotiations last year calling on the school to divest from companies that profit from Israel's policies; Tufts University Ph.D. candidate Rumeysa Ozturk, who co-wrote an op-ed calling for her school's divestment; and Georgetown University academic Badar Khan Suri, who was detained because "the government suspects that he and his wife oppose U.S. foreign policy toward Israel," according to his lawyers.
"We've all been trying to figure out how to solve this collective action problem. This seems like a very positive big step in the right direction."
"The First Amendment means the government can't arrest, detain, or deport people for lawful political expression—it's as simple as that," said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute, which is representing the Rutgers union and other faculty organizations in the lawsuit. "This practice is one we'd ordinarily associate with the most repressive political regimes, and it should have no place in our democracy."
Under the Rutgers resolution, members of the senate called on participating institutions to "make available, at the request of the
institution under direct political infringement, the services of their legal counsel, governance experts, and public affairs offices to coordinate a unified and vigorous response."
The response could include legal representation, countersuit actions, amicus briefs, legislative advocacy, and "coalition-building," according to the resolution.
"We've all been trying to figure out how to solve this collective action problem," said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a professor at University of Minnesota—another member of the Big Ten alliance. "This seems like a very positive big step in the right direction."
A Rutgers Senate member who asked to remain anonymous told Common Dreams on Tuesday that members of the university community have expressed "relief" and "joy" at the news that the body is taking a leadership role in fighting the Trump administration's attacks on higher education.
"People are just feeling like there's something they can hang their hats on that's hopeful," said the member, who was involved in pushing the resolution forward. "Individuals who are concerned about higher education, who are involved in it or connected to it—we're looking to something like this from a big university who can step out and say, 'Let's get something going here to blockade against these attacks.'"
Trump's assault on First Amendment rights are understood to be "existential" by many on university campuses like Rutgers, said the member.
"Proud to be a Rutgers faculty member today," said Michal Raucher, a professor of Jewish studies at Rutgers University—New Brunswick, regarding the passage of the resolution.
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, chair of the joint program in English and education at University of Michigan—another member of the Big Ten alliance—expressed support for the Rutgers Senate's leadership.
"I greatly admired our Rutgers colleagues' actions of solidarity during the recent waves of campus strikes," said Thomas. "My admiration has increased tenfold."
Last May, about 100 Rutgers faculty members prepared to form a protective circle around students' Palestinian solidarity encampment at the school's New Brunswick, New Jersey campus as a deadline set by administrators approached and officials threatened the students with arrest.
"We are an extremely diverse community," said the Rutgers Senate member. "And I think that we prize that about our community and about our state, because we know that we are elevated by it from the standpoint of having so many different perspectives, weighing on different kinds of issues."
"As the largest public university in the state, as the major land grant university, we take our commitment to the people of New Jersey and to the enterprise of public higher education very seriously," they added. "And we see these kinds of attacks for what they are."
In contrast to the resolution, Columbia administrators have faced harsh rebukes from First Amendment rights advocates for agreeing to the Trump administration's demands when the White House said it was canceling $400 million in government grants and contracts over the school's alleged "continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students."
In response, Columbia—which allowed New York City police to drag students out of a school building and arrest more than 100 people last year during the pro-Palestinian protests—suspended, expelled, and revoked the degrees of some students who had participated in the demonstrations and increased law enforcement presence on campus, among other steps.
The Rutgers Senate member said the body's chair is planning to meet with the university president, Jonathan Holloway, who is set to step down in June, to ask him to sign on to the resolution.
"I think he can make the choice to essentially become legendary in the field and take a strong stand like this and organize his colleagues," said the senate member.
Yarbrough said that Trump's crackdown on protesters, and the capitulation of some institutions, illustrates how education "is really crucial to democracy and to a healthy democracy."
"We should be embodying the values of democracy," said Yarbrough. "And it really becomes clear in times like this how important that is."
While some university administrators are "caving to the Trump administration," he said, "what I think of as the real university of faculty, staff, and students are actually pushing back. And I think that mirrors what we're seeing in the United States more broadly, where most elected leaders and officials are not pushing back the way we would like. But all kinds of people on the ground really are."
"That's what it takes to push back [against] these kinds of authorities and threats," said Yarbrough. "It comes back to the people."
Editor's note: This piece has been updated with additional comments from Michael Yarbrough and a Rutgers Senate member.
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