The “shock and awe” approach to governance continues unabated by the executive branch in the United State. Added to this is intentional uncertainty about future planned actions and a steady stream of policy reversals and/or court challenges that happen in very short order. I imagine that many people, no matter their political views, are experiencing disruption. This precarity may be a new experience for some but it is age old for others, and it is exhausting.
Institutions of higher education are not immune and indeed have become another focus of executive action. Many, many leaders of colleges and universities have been struggling with financial precarity for a long time, but the experience might be relatively unfamiliar for places like Harvard University which has become the high-profile target in debates about education, scholarship, research, academic freedom and responsibility, and the role of the federal government in maintaining the conditions needed for all of these to flourish for the common good. The punitive actions have included dramatic reductions in research spending, the arrest and deportation of students (especially those who have sought to raise awareness about the violence in Palestine), the cancellation of federal contracts, changes to the availability and administration of financial aid, and a prohibition on enrolling international students. As I write there are reports that the Secretary of Health and Human Services is considering a prohibition on the publication of NIH funded research in the world’s leading journals including the Lancet, Journal of the American Medical Association, and New England Journal of Medicine in favor of government sponsored publications.
The 2023 Supreme Court decision dismantling affirmative action (which involved Harvard and the University of North Carolina as defendants in cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions, Inc.) has paved the way for a February 14, 2025 Dear Colleague Letter from the Department of Education that threatens the loss of federal funding for any institution that does not comply with the letter of the ruling and with the administration’s position on the diversity, equity, and inclusion more broadly. The letter denies the existence of systemic anti-Black racism, but claims that racial discrimination in our schools is rampant and implies that its primary victims are white.
The Dear Colleague Letter has been bolstered by a March 20, 2025 executive action titled, Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities which states,
the Secretary of Education shall ensure that the allocation of any Federal Department of Education funds is subject to rigorous compliance with Federal law and Administration policy, including the requirement that any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology.
The Dear Colleague Letter and the executive action encompass not only raced-based discrimination in admissions, which was the primary focus of the Supreme Court case, but also programs that educate around issues of racism and gender discrimination. Universities with offices that address these issues fall out of compliance. Our colleagues doing this important work became even more vulnerable to loss of livelihood. The letter and the action impact not only the access and experience of marginalized people who study, live, and work in our institutions but also take aim at the content of what we teach, thereby increasing the vulnerability of individual faculty as well as academic departments whose teaching and research focus on race and gender, and those whose basic sense of academic integrity requires that they provide the best information and evidence regarding these subjects.
Collective Responses
On April 22, 2025 a number of college and university presidents along with leaders of learned societies organized by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, issued a public statement titled A Call for Constructive Engagement. By the end of May over 650 higher education leaders had added their signatures, representing some of the most well-known and prestigious universities in the world, along with small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, technical colleges, conservatories, public and private institutions, religiously affiliated and secular institutions. The Call reads in part,
America’s system of higher learning is as varied as the goals and dreams of the students it serves.
Yet, American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom. Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.
Because of these freedoms, American institutions of higher learning are essential to American prosperity and serve as productive partners with government in promoting the common good.
Faculty members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, which includes 18 institutions and over 600,000 students, also proposed concrete collective action in the form of a Mutual Academic Defense Compact in Defense of Academic Freedom, Institutional Integrity, and the Research Enterprise. While their plan is not endorsed by the Alliance as such, these faculty ask their institutions to provide “meaningful funding to a shared or distributed defense fund. This fund shall be used to provide immediate and strategic support to any member institution under direct political or legal infringement.” They further call on institutions to “make available, at the request of the institution under direct political infringement, the services of their legal counsel, governance experts, and public affairs offices to coordinate a unified and vigorous response, including but not limited to: Legal representation and countersuit actions; strategic public communication; amicus briefs and expert testimony; legislative advocacy and coalition building; related topical research as needed.”
The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which represents 1700 private, non-profit institutions including members of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) and the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) has also called for dialogue, though the ACCU website and newsletter does not address these current events. Neither does the website for the USCCB Secretariat of Catholic Education highlight any related response on the part of the U.S. Bishops except those that praise the administration for its rejection of “gender ideology” and its embrace of school choice. Some of my colleagues, who might otherwise be reluctant to lean into the Catholic identity of my institution, have called upon the college to argue for religious freedom to address racism and protect undocumented students. Unfortunately, the US Church’s position on religious freedom has instead been employed to argue in favor of the right to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ persons in housing, employment, education, and adoption.
In a recent statement, that may be more accurately described as a taunt, the President suggested that the money siphoned from higher education could be redirected to TRADE SCHOOLS (his caps). Support for vocational and trade schools is necessary and laudable. There is nothing preventing the administration and the Department of Education from providing funding, facilities, and instruction that matches the dignity of that work. There is nothing preventing the administration from educating skilled workers about their rights and about the complex, global economy that frames their wages and working conditions so that they can be engaged participants in corporate and political decisions that impact them.
The taunt in all caps, however, is intended to further the animosity toward higher education in the liberal arts and sciences. Elitism is a real problem perpetuated by many colleges and universities that needs to be critiqued and corrected. The administration could pursue education policies, which are desperately needed, that would expand possibilities for all people, especially young people, to pursue knowledge and vocation by addressing the cost of higher education and bolstering commitments to inclusive excellence in preparation, admissions, and curricula on the one hand, and pursuing economic policies that would provide a genuine livelihood, security, and mobility for skilled and unskilled work. Instead, the policies are misguided, short-sighted and, paradoxically, disdainful of both intellectual and other forms of skilled and unskilled work for the common good.
A Call to Personal and Collective Action
In light of the dispiriting news and my tendency to think that there is nothing I can do in the face of the federal government, I have set myself a challenge and hope you might do the same:
Show up with a growth mindset for an inclusive scientific enterprise and for the scientists striving within it.
Show up with a growth mindset for inclusive disciplines in the humanities.
Show up for affinity spaces and yield to affinity spaces.
Show up for and in accessible spaces.
Show up for academic freedom and responsibility.
Show up for pre-K through postsecondary public education as a common good; these are the university students of tomorrow.
Show up for schools who are not on your institution’s “aspirant” list.
Show up for one another:
for students and colleagues who are low-income or the first in their families to attend college.
for international students and colleagues.
for students and colleagues who are undocumented and/or members of mixed-status families.
for students and colleagues harmed by any form of gender-related discrimination, harassment, or violence.
Show up at lectures, artistic events, rallies, protests, vigils, organizational meetings, in the pages of journals and media outlets, online. Show up with energy, ideas, skills, curiosity, and funds if you have them. Give our students and colleagues, institutions, local, state, and federal governments, and our places of worship ample evidence that we value the work we do together across difference.
Works Cited
Andrés Acebo et al. “A Call for Constructive Engagement.” April 22, 2025, American Association of Colleges and Universities, https://www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-call-for-constructive-engagement
Mistick, Barbara K. “NAICU Hill Letter.” May 20, 2025. National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, https://ajcunet.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/NAICU_HillLetter_Reconciliation.pdf
Rutgers University Faculty Senate. “Resolution to Establish a Mutual Defense Compact for the Universities of the Big Ten Academic Alliance in Defense of Academic Freedom, Institutional Integrity, and the Research Enterprise.” N.a., n.d., https://senate.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Resolution-to-Establish-a-Mutual-Defense-Compact-for-the-Universities-of-the-Big-Ten-Academic-Alliance-in-Defense-of-Academic-Freedom-Institutional-Integrity-and-the-Research.pdf
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023).
Trainor, Craig. “Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in Light of Students for Fair Admissions.” February 14, 2025. United States Department of Education. https://www.ed.gov/media/document/dear-colleague-letter-sffa-v-harvard-109506.pdf
Trump, Donald J. “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities.” March 20, 2025. Whitehouse.gov, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/improving-education-outcomes-by-empowering-parents-states-and-communities/.