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Of all the awful things that have happened in recent months as the Trump Administration has laid siege to free speech rights on college campuses, one of the most awful may be what happened in mid-March at New York University.<\/p>\n
Dr. Joanne Liu, the former international head of Doctors Without Borders, was scheduled to give a talk on challenges in humanitarian crises. The night before the planned event, she\u00a0got a call<\/a>\u00a0from an NYU official who fretted that images Liu intended to show dealing with the casualties in Gaza and Trump\u2019s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development \u201ccould be perceived as antisemitic\u201d and \u201canti-governmental.\u201d<\/p>\n Liu, who had already traveled to New York City from Montreal, Canada, where she is a pediatric emergency physician at a local hospital and a professor at McGill University, offered to amend her presentation, but NYU decided that the risk was just too great. Her talk was canceled, and a university spokesperson essentially blamed Liu by saying that \u201cguest speakers at our institution are given clear guidelines at the outset\u201d and \u201cper our policy, we cannot host speakers who don\u2019t comply.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a demonstration not of the authoritarian predilections of the Trump Administration, which are everywhere in evidence, but rather of the cowardly capitulations of people in academia who are supposed to protect freedom of thought, speech, and inquiry. And it is this sort of self-censorship\u2014this \u201cobeying in advance\u201d that historian Timothy Snyder has\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0about\u2014that may, in the end, cause the gravest damage.<\/p>\n Make no mistake: Donald Trump, unburdened of the restraint that supposedly marked his first term in office, poses a danger to institutions of higher learning that is real, present, and existential. The President and his henchpeople have\u00a0launched<\/a>\u00a0investigations into dozens of universities and colleges, using the threatened loss of federal funding and other sticks to pummel them into submission. And they are scooping up international students and sending them to detention facilities in other states.<\/p>\n The first such abduction happened on March 8 in New York City, when Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia University who had completed work on a master\u2019s degree, was\u00a0arrested<\/a>\u00a0by federal agents in front of his wife, a U.S. citizen then eight months pregnant. Khalil was targeted solely because of his leadership role in protests against Israel\u2019s savage war in Gaza\u2014a war which has\u00a0caused the deaths<\/a>\u00a0of more than 50,000 people, about a third of them children.<\/p>\n On March 25, R\u00fcmeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk, a Turkish national working on a doctoral degree at Tufts University, was\u00a0snatched<\/a>\u00a0off the street in Somerville, Massachusetts, by masked, plainclothes federal immigration agents who handcuffed and placed her under arrest. Her offense? Having co-authored an\u00a0op-ed<\/a>\u00a0last year in the student newspaper criticizing the university\u2019s response to the carnage in Gaza.<\/p>\n As of mid-April, the Trump Administration had\u00a0revoked<\/a>\u00a0the visas of more than 1,000 international students, putting them at risk of immediate deportation\u2014sometimes for years-old minor offenses including traffic tickets, sometimes for no reason at all.<\/p>\n As this issue of\u00a0The Progressive<\/em>\u00a0went to press, the fates of Khalil, \u00d6zt\u00fcrk, and others remained tied up in litigation. Khalil was\u00a0barred from\u00a0<\/a>attending the birth of his son. \u00d6zt\u00fcrk was\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a0after six weeks of detention on May 9 and\u00a0returned<\/a>\u00a0to Massachusetts the following day, but a deportation procedure against her remains ongoing.<\/p>\n It remains unclear whether and to what extent the courts\u2014particularly the U.S. Supreme Court, with its conservative supermajority\u2014will provide an effective check on Trump\u2019s wholesale and flagrant abuse of executive power. What is certain is that his chances of success magnify greatly if his overreach is met with fear, cowardice, and submission.<\/p>\n But that, unfortunately, is what happened at Columbia University.<\/p>\n On March 7, the day before Khalil\u2019s abduction, the Trump Administration\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that it was immediately canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia due to its alleged \u201ccontinued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students,\u201d a charge for which there is a notable paucity of evidence. The announcement made clear that this would be, as one Justice Department flack put it, \u201conly the beginning\u201d of such actions at campuses across the country.<\/p>\n Having thus been identified as a test case for a much broader assault on academic freedom, Columbia responded with a pitiful display of acquiescence. It\u00a0agreed<\/a>\u00a0to ban face masks on campus, to expand the authority of campus security to arrest protesters, and to\u00a0effectively<\/a>\u00a0put<\/a>\u00a0its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department into academic receivership\u2014that is, outside control, presumably so it can teach in accordance with what Trump wants.<\/p>\n Columbia\u2019s interim president, Katrina Armstrong,\u00a0resigned<\/a>\u00a0a few days later,\u00a0writing<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe freedom of universities is tied to the freedom of every other institution in a thriving democracy,\u201d without offering a specific critique of what had just occurred. It was yet another blown opportunity to stand up to the bully in the White House and his tyrannical agenda.<\/p>\n Clearly this was a battle Columbia could have won, had it been up for a fight, which no doubt scores of pro bono lawyers would have gladly taken on. And even if it wasn\u2019t able to claw back the $400 million, the university, established in 1754, probably could have weathered the storm, given its\u00a0$14.8 billion<\/a>\u00a0endowment.<\/p>\n The anger over Columbia\u2019s surrender is considerable\u2014and justified. \u201cWe are appalled that Columbia\u2019s leadership has colluded with the authoritarian suppression of its students by fully capitulating to the conditions imposed by the Trump Administration,\u201d declares a\u00a0petition<\/a>\u00a0calling for a boycott of the university. \u201cWe call on Columbia University to reinstate disenrolled, suspended, and expelled students, and reverse all changes made in compliance with the Trump Administration\u2019s harmful and illegitimate demands.\u201d If only.<\/p>\n Trump and his minions, apparently emboldened by Columbia\u2019s spinelessness, ramped up their attacks. They\u00a0halted<\/a>\u00a0$210 million in research grants to Princeton University on the vague accusation that it was somehow condoning \u201cantisemitic harassment.\u201d They\u00a0yanked<\/a>\u00a0$175 million from the University of Pennsylvania for having allowed a transgender swimmer to compete in 2022. They\u00a0froze<\/a>\u00a0$1 billion in federal funding to Cornell University and $790 million to Northwestern University.<\/p>\n And then came Harvard.<\/p>\n On Friday, April 11, Trump Administration officials sent a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to Harvard University President Alan Garber, demanding changes in how the school makes admissions, hiring, and governance decisions, including the eradication of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and\u00a0saying<\/a>\u00a0that almost $9 billion in grants and contracts were at risk. The next day, about 300 protesters\u00a0gathered<\/a>\u00a0on the Cambridge Common for a \u201cStand Up, Harvard!\u201d rally urging the university to not give in without a fight.<\/p>\n The following Monday, the fight was on. The university\u2019s lawyers\u00a0responded<\/a>\u00a0to the officials, saying, \u201cHarvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.\u201d In a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0that same day to the Harvard community, Garber drove this point home: \u201cThe university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its Constitutional rights,\u201d he wrote. \u201cNo government\u2014regardless of which party is in power\u2014should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.\u201d<\/p>\n Sure, Harvard\u2019s\u00a0$53.2 billion<\/a>\u00a0endowment does give it some breathing room, but there is more going on here than just cost-calculating. Harvard, founded in 1636, seems to be standing on principle for all the right reasons, including that this is what the public wants.<\/p>\n Prior to Harvard saying no to Trump\u2019s extortion, a number of groups representing college professors and university diversity officers had\u00a0sued<\/a>\u00a0the Trump Administration. But, as\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0noted<\/a>, \u201cthe pushback from institutions themselves has been minimal.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump, predictably, reacted to Harvard\u2019s defiance with\u00a0fresh threats<\/a>, including\u00a0prodding<\/a>\u00a0the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the university\u2019s tax-exempt status. But Harvard\u2019s response has also generated standing-ovation levels of popular support and served to strengthen the spines of others in academia. Even Columbia\u00a0made some noise<\/a>\u00a0about how it would henceforth \u201creject any agreement that would require us to relinquish our independence.\u201d Harvard also pushed back,\u00a0suing<\/a>\u00a0the government for the canceled research grants.<\/p>\n Among those applauding from the sidelines is Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, who\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in a statement, \u201cFederal funding for universities must not depend on a loyalty oath.\u201d Roth has\u00a0long called<\/a>\u00a0on institutions of higher learning to fight the Trump Administration\u2019s censorious agenda. Indeed, he\u2019s described it as their obligation.<\/p>\n