Former US President Barack Obama called on universities to protect their academic freedom, taking a firm stand against political intimidation as the Trump administration continues to ramp up financial pressure on higher education institutions.
Speaking at Hamilton College on Thursday, Obama warned that universities must resist federal attacks that threaten their core values and independence. He also urged campuses to reflect on their own handling of free speech.
“If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right?” he told students during a campus discussion.
“Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?
“If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.”
His remarks amid Trump administration’s massive crackdown on elite universities, slashing millions in federal funding, accusing them of antisemitism and bias.
Columbia University lost $400 million in grants and contracts in March, while the University of Pennsylvania saw $175 million suspended. This week, the administration announced a review of some $9 billion in arrangements involving Harvard and its affiliates.
The funding clampdown has alarmed academics across the US. More than 800 faculty members at Harvard have signed an open letter calling on university leadership to take a stronger stand in defence of higher education and academic independence.
Meanwhile, presidents of Brown and Princeton, both of which are facing threats to their federal grants, have pledged to oppose the administration’s actions. Princeton’s president, Christopher L Eisgruber, described the targeting of Columbia as “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.”
Obama’s call to lean on university endowments was supported by his former treasury secretary, also a former president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers. Writing in The New York Times, Summers argued that even restricted funds could be repurposed in an emergency. Believe me, a former president of Harvard,” Summers wrote, “when I say that ways can be found in an emergency to deploy even parts of the endowment that have been earmarked by their donors for other uses,” he wrote.
Some believe Trump’s crackdown is a reaction to what he sees as political bias on campus and a lack of respect for conservative views. Obama also stressed the importance of open dialogue, even with those whose opinions may be offensive.
“The idea of canceling a speaker who comes to your campus, trying to shout them down and not letting them speak,” he said in on his Medium account, “even if I find their ideas obnoxious, well, not only is that not what universities should be about, that’s not what America should be about.”
“You let them speak, and then you tell them why they’re wrong. That’s how you win the argument,” he concluded.
Obama also had a message for law firms facing similar political threats, advising them stick to their principles, even if it costs losing business.
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