More than 100 presidents of American colleges and universities have signed a declaration denouncing the unprecedented “government government of the Trump administration” of the Trump administration “on the government and political interference” with higher education – the strongest sign that American educational establishments form a unified front against the extraordinary government attack against their independence.
The declaration, published early Tuesday by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, comes for weeks in the administration’s assembly campaign against higher education, and a few hours after Harvard University became the first school to continue the government for threats to its funding. Harvard is one of the many institutions struck in recent weeks with huge financing reductions and requirements, they give up significant institutional autonomy.
The signatories come from major state schools, small colleges of liberal arts and institutions of Ivy League, including the presidents of Harvard, Princeton and Brown.
In the declaration, the presidents of the university, as well as the leaders of several learned companies, say that they speak with “one voice” and call a “constructive commitment” with the administration.
“We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose the legitimate surveillance of the government,” they write. “However, we must oppose an excessive intrusion by the government in the lives of those who learn, live and work on our campuses.”
Harvard’s trial comes after the administration announced that it would freeze $ 2.3 billion in federal funds, and Donald Trump threatened to revoke its tax exemption status, on the statements that the university has not protected Jewish students from pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The combination and the declaration, taken together, mark an increasingly muscular response of universities after what seemed to be a lukewarm approach.
While some university leaders have criticized in recent weeks and have indicated that they would not comply with their requests, the declaration marks the first time that the presidents have gone collectively on the issue. The joint condemnation follows more than 100 university leaders called by AAC & U and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences last week to “meet to express themselves at the moment of enormity,” said Lynn Pasquarella, president of AAC & U.
Pasquarella said that there was “a generalized agreement” in a variety of university institutions on the need to take a collective position.
“Many things have been written on this flood strategy that is used in current attacks against higher education, and it is a strategy designed to overwhelm campus leaders with a constant dam of directives, decrees and political ads that make it impossible to respond to everything at once,” she said, explaining why it was necessary so far for a joint response. “Campus leaders have had a lot to manage in recent months, and I think that is part of reason, but this is also the case that they are forced by the boards of directors, by multiple constituencies which often ask them to do things that are in contradiction with each other.”
The Trump administration has issued a damage to universities intended for universities that law described as “the enemy” – some under the guise of combating presumed anti -Semitism on campuses and others in an explicit effort to eradicate diversity and inclusion initiatives. Billions of federal funds are threatened unless universities comply with extreme demands, such as the abolition of university departments of teachers’ control, the “verification” of the points of view of students and teachers, and collaborating with the federal authorities while they are targeting international students for detention and deportation. With his actions against Harvard, He threatened and, in some cases, held millions of others in Cornell, Northwestern, Brown, Columbia, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
Columbia has largely accepted the requirements of the administration to restore funding,, Including the placement of a university department under external surveillance. Its president has not signed the collective declaration.
The measures against schools, which already upset university research, undermine long -standing partnerships between the federal government and universities, and contribute to an atmosphere of repression, notes the signatories of the declaration.
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“Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as open investigation centers where, in their pursuit of truth, teachers, students and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions on a full range of points of view without fear of reprisals, censorship or deportation,” they write.
Last week, the University of Harvard published the strongest reprimand to date of the requests of the administration, President Alan Garber triggering a confrontation with the White House by saying that the University would not make its independence or will not give up its constitutional rights “.
While the Harvard trial was the first of a university, Higher education associations and organizations representing teachers have deposited other Legal challenges on the cuts.
Professors of certain universities are also Organization to protect each other, with several members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, a consortium of some of the country’s largest state universities, by signing a resolution to establish a “mutual defense compact”.
During a second conception by AAC & U on Monday, some 120 university leaders also discussed the measures they could then take, including efforts to initiate their larger communities and the business world to defend academic freedom.
The joint declaration, added Pasquarella, was only the beginning and intended to “report to the public and assert us what is at stake here, what is in danger if this continuous violation of the Academy is authorized to continue”.
