Fighting back

Finally, on April 14, something happened:
Harvard decided to resist in far more public fashion.

The Trump administration had demanded, as a condition of receiving $9 billion in grants over multiple years,
that Harvard reduce the power of student and faculty leaders,
vet every academic department for undefined "viewpoint diversity,"
run plagiarism checks on all faculty,
share hiring information with the administration,
shut down any program related to diversity or inclusion,
and audit particular departments for antisemitism,
including the Divinity School.

(Numerous Jewish groups want nothing to do with the campaign,
writing in an open letter that
"our safety as Jews has always been tied to the rule of law, to the safety of others, to the strength of civil society, and to the protection of rights and liberties for all.")

If you think this sounds a lot like government control,
giving the Trump administration the power to dictate hiring and teaching practices, you're not alone;

Harvard president Alan Garber rejected the demands in a letter, saying,
"The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.
Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government."

The Trump administration immediately responded by cutting billions in Harvard funding,
threatening the university's tax-exempt status,
and claiming it might block international students from attending Harvard.

Perhaps Harvard's example will provide cover for other universities to make hard choices.

And these are hard choices.

But Columbia and Harvard have already shown that the only way you have a chance at getting the money back is to sell whatever soul your institution has left.

Given that, why not fight?

If you have to suffer, suffer for your deepest values.

"Resistance" does not mean a refusal to change, a digging in, a doubling down.

No matter what part of the political spectrum you inhabit, universities
—like most human institutions
—are "target-rich environments" for complaints.

To see this, one has only to read about recent battles over affirmative action,
the Western canon,
"legacy" admissions,
the rise and fall of "theory" in the humanities,
Gaza/Palestine protests,
the "Varsity Blues" scandal,
critiques of "meritocracy,"
mandatory faculty "diversity statements,"
the staggering rise in tuition costs over the last few decades,
student deplatforming of invited speakers,
or the fact that so many students from elite institutions cannot imagine a higher calling than management consulting.

Even top university officials acknowledge there are problems.

Famed Swiss theologian Karl #Barth lost his professorship and was forced to leave Germany in 1935
because he would not bend the knee to Adolf Hitler.

He knew something about standing up for one's academic and spiritual values
—and about the importance of not letting any approach to the world ossify into a reactionary, bureaucratic conservatism
that punishes all attempts at change or dissent.

The struggle for knowledge, truth, and justice requires forward movement even as the world changes,
as ideas and policies are tested,
and as cultures develop.

Barth's phrase for this was
"Ecclesia semper reformanda est"
—the church must always be reformed
—and it applies just as well to the universities where he spent much of his career.

As universities today face their own watershed moment of resistance,
they must still find ways to remain intellectually curious and open to the world.

They must continue to change, always imperfectly but without fear.

It is important that their resistance not be partisan.

Universities can only benefit from broad-based social support,
and the idea that they are fighting
"against conservatives"
or "for Democrats"
will be deeply unhelpful.

(Just as it would be if universities capitulated to government oversight of their faculty hires or gave in to "patriotic education.")

This is difficult when one is under attack,
as the natural reaction is to defend what currently exists.

But the assault on the universities is about deeper issues than admissions policies
or the role of elite institutions in American life.

It is about the rule of law,
freedom of speech,
scientific research,
and the very independence of the university
—things that should be able to attract broad social and judicial support
if schools do not retreat into ideology.