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A University President Makes a Case Against Cowardice
New Yorker, archived.
https://archive.ph/eQQ5d
By Molly Fischer
April 3, 2025
Last Friday could have passed for a lovely spring day on the Connecticut campus of Wesleyan University. Students with books and laptops dotted a green hillside; flocks of admissions visitors trailed tour guides; baseball season had just begun, and practice was under way. It was almost possible to forget the grim straits of American higher education in 2025.
Colleges and universities have been early targets of the second Trump Administration. In the past month, the Administration has announced it will investigate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at more than fifty schools; cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from such institutions as Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania; and sought to deport international students involved in pro-Palestinian activism. Columbia received a letter from the federal government issuing demands—which included making changes to discipline and admission policies, and placing the department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies under “academic receivership”—to be met as a “precondition” for negotiating the restoration of four hundred million dollars in federal funding. The university agreed to these demands the following week; the week after that, the university’s president resigned.
Columbia’s capitulation was in line with a general trend toward circumspection. The memory of Congress grilling university presidents in 2023 seems to be fresh among leaders in higher ed: few want to risk either their jobs or their budgets by saying the wrong thing. A handful of exceptions have stood out; for example, President Christopher Eisgruber, of Princeton, who wrote a piece for The Atlantic about “The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia.” (This week, the Administration suspended dozens of grants to Princeton.) But perhaps none has been as voluble or persistent as Michael Roth, who has been president of Wesleyan since 2007.
Long, skip ...
What would you do if ice agents showed up at Wesleyan? Do you have a plan in place?
We are making sure that our students, faculty, and staff know their rights, as people who live in the U.S. and are owed due process. The university would ask any federal agents to check in with the Office of Public Safety—that’s the campus police. They would need to have judicial warrants. [Mahmoud Khalil has said that the agents who arrested him refused to produce a warrant.] We would want to make sure government officials are following the law. We will protect people who are on our private property from people who want to constrain their freedom. We’d offer whatever legal assistance we can.
We’re not going to obstruct the work of legally authorized officials—we want to make sure that they are, in fact, legally authorized.
Colleges and universities have been early targets of the second Trump Administration. In the past month, the Administration has announced it will investigate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at more than fifty schools; cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from such institutions as Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania; and sought to deport international students involved in pro-Palestinian activism. Columbia received a letter from the federal government issuing demands—which included making changes to discipline and admission policies, and placing the department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies under “academic receivership”—to be met as a “precondition” for negotiating the restoration of four hundred million dollars in federal funding. The university agreed to these demands the following week; the week after that, the university’s president resigned.
Columbia’s capitulation was in line with a general trend toward circumspection. The memory of Congress grilling university presidents in 2023 seems to be fresh among leaders in higher ed: few want to risk either their jobs or their budgets by saying the wrong thing. A handful of exceptions have stood out; for example, President Christopher Eisgruber, of Princeton, who wrote a piece for The Atlantic about “The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia.” (This week, the Administration suspended dozens of grants to Princeton.) But perhaps none has been as voluble or persistent as Michael Roth, who has been president of Wesleyan since 2007.
Long, skip ...
What would you do if ice agents showed up at Wesleyan? Do you have a plan in place?
We are making sure that our students, faculty, and staff know their rights, as people who live in the U.S. and are owed due process. The university would ask any federal agents to check in with the Office of Public Safety—that’s the campus police. They would need to have judicial warrants. [Mahmoud Khalil has said that the agents who arrested him refused to produce a warrant.] We would want to make sure government officials are following the law. We will protect people who are on our private property from people who want to constrain their freedom. We’d offer whatever legal assistance we can.
We’re not going to obstruct the work of legally authorized officials—we want to make sure that they are, in fact, legally authorized.