Universities are
sending Trump a dangerous message
Higher
education is under attack. Drop the appeasement.
Yesterday at 7:15 a.m.
EST
By Arne Duncan
and
David Pressman
Arne Duncan, founder of the community violence intervention
group Chicago CRED, was U.S. education secretary from 2009 to 2015. David
Pressman, a national security and human rights lawyer, was U.S. ambassador to
Hungary from 2022 to 2025.
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If there were ever a time to question the wisdom of the
academy, it is now. Just not for the reasons President Donald Trump has
suggested.
This month, the chancellors of Vanderbilt University and
Washington University in St. Louis will convene a summit of university leaders
to discuss how to “restore trust in higher education” by addressing a laundry
list of concerns from the president and his administration, including
allegations of discriminatory practices and political bias.
Remarkably, however, there is little comparable effort
among university leaders to coordinate a political response to attacks on academic independence by
the administration. Whatever the organizers’ intentions, the signal sent — to
the president and to other university leaders — is that appeasement is being
coordinated while resistance is not.
For decades, universities have cast themselves as guardians
of free inquiry and intellectual independence. Yet when confronted with
political coercion aimed squarely at those values, too many have revealed a
troubling gap between rhetoric and practice.
We have each represented the United States in prominent
roles — one as secretary of education, the other as U.S. ambassador to Hungary.
The parallels between what happened in Hungary and what we now see unfolding at
home are unmistakable. The early responses were the same. And if left
unchecked, the outcome will be as well.
In Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungary, a kleptocratic
and illiberal political movement began not with tanks in the streets, but with
pressure, “compacts” and quiet accommodation. Storied institutions of higher education and research were
slowly captured, their leaders coerced through financial threats and political
pressure.
There, university rectors told themselves that going along
was the best way to protect their institutions and their work. But they were
wrong. Accommodation did not moderate the regime; it emboldened it, signaling
weakness and inviting further demands.
Today, American universities likewise face a threat to
their independence unmatched in modern U.S. history. By conditioning federal research grants on
ideological conformity — and threatening investigations, funding freezes and
intrusive oversight — the Trump administration has turned money meant to cure
disease and advance knowledge into political ransom. Yet with only a handful of
notable exceptions, the academy’s leadership has responded with timidity,
silence or preemptive concession.
If America’s university presidents believe that their
foremost responsibility is simply to keep their institutions operational —
collecting tuition and protecting endowments — they are mistaken. Much as
lawyers are guardians of the rule of law, presidents and chancellors are
stewards of intellectual freedom and democratic norms. When institutional
self-preservation replaces moral leadership, universities abandon their core
mission. This is a striking abdication of responsibility — particularly from
leaders entrusted with educating the next generation of citizens.
What’s needed is not complicated. It does, however, require
courage.
First, universities must begin to treat political extortion
as something more than legal challenges to be sorted out in court. Instead of
confronting extralegal attacks with lawyers, America’s universities would do
well to muster a political response. When legal caution displaces moral
leadership, universities surrender before a fight even begins.
One university leader recently reported that her
institution avoided collaborating with peers because its office of general
counsel warned of possible antitrust concerns. If that’s the advice
universities are receiving from their lawyers, their lawyers are part of the
problem. Recent congressional hearings — in which
university presidents delivered lawyered, evasive answers to basic moral
questions — demonstrate the cost of substituting legalism for leadership.
Second, universities must collaborate openly and publicly.
Solidarity is leverage. Higher education leaders know how to do this. When
Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, universities across the country
offered displaced students housing and tuition-free enrollment. If universities
can cooperate in the face of a natural disaster, they can cooperate in the face
of a political one. We know that the federal government wields enormous power —
but universities are engines of innovation. Working together, they can blunt
the impact of financial retaliation and protect faculty and students.
Third, universities must abandon the comforting illusion
that accommodation will bring this conflict to an end. Authoritarians do not
stop when met with flattery or compliance. Some leaders seem to believe that if
they keep their heads down, this moment will pass. It will not. This ends only
when the administration believes the costs of further escalation outweigh the
benefits.
Fourth, universities should embrace a principle long
understood by NATO: An attack on one is an attack on all. If sovereign nations
can pledge collective defense, so too can American universities. Public, mutual
commitments to support institutions targeted for retaliation — financially,
academically and reputationally — would fundamentally alter the
administration’s cost-benefit calculus.
Fifth, faculty members themselves have agency. Just as it
is hard to understand how Democratic Party leaders remain partners at captured
law firms, profiting off of their firm’s decision to succumb to the president,
so too is it difficult to understand the acquiescence of professors remaining
passive as their institutions bend to the demands of the administration. We
recognize the real constraints many professors face, but institutions would
make different choices if they believed compromise could cost them their most
respected scholars. So long as universities believe their most respected
faculty will stay regardless of capitulation, accommodation remains cheap.
Finally, there is hope if universities choose to act.
Nothing about this moment is inevitable. The independence of higher education
is worth defending. When chancellors and presidents accepted their roles, they
assumed responsibilities larger than raising money and protecting endowments.
They are being watched — by their students, by their faculty and by the public.
Silence is not neutrality; it is permission. The record
that university chancellors, presidents and trustees create in this moment —
who spoke, who acted and who stayed silent — will be studied long after today’s
political actors are gone. The decisions made now will define their individual
legacies and, in no small measure, the future of American democracy.
