Peter Walks for Democracy

We have a four-alarm fire for higher education. President Trump is abusing Columbia University. As the son of an English professor and a college adviser, an award-winning teacher and engaged scholar at a major university, a resident of a college town, and someone who’s held leadership in NGO’s and elected and appointed office for ten years, I have to speak up. These words are my own.

The Associated Press reports that the Trump regime is seeking to oust Columbia’s leadership in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.” This follows the rescinding of $400 million. Meanwhile, Trump’s apparatchiks continue to withhold (or threaten to withhold) funding from colleges and universities in myriad ways while discrediting and damaging DEI initiatives, research, infrastructure investment committed under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, and by removing federal agency staff who collaborate with universities. It is truly unprecedented.

The action against Columbia, though, is truly megalomaniacal. “Even during the McCarthy period in the United States, this was not done,” Joan Scott, a historian and member of the academic freedom committee of the American Association of University Professors, is quoted as saying (see more here).

While Trump may hold a particular ire for Columbia because of its high-profile protests, there is no guarantee that any university is safe from assault. His pattern of behavior with NATO, Greenland and Denmark, Ukraine and Palestine, the United Nations, USAID, the treatment of veterans, the elderly, and kids, Los Angeles, Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris makes it clear: Trump will always and relentlessly attack anyone and anything he doesn’t like or wants. 

The AP reports that U.S. Attorney Ed Martin recently tried to bully Georgetown Law into abandoning DEI initiatives. Dean William Trainer responded to the bizarre and unprecedented threat, writing, “Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution.” Additionally, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights letter sent a letter to 60 universities. I have no material basis for evaluating these claims, but understand it as a pattern of behavior to use a (good) norm and taboo against antisemitism in an (awful) Orwellian and politically expedient fashion to accumulate power, exert control, and pave the way for violence against opponents.

The Constitution guarantees us protecion. Faculty, staff, students, and all Americans are guaranteed the right to free speech and assembly. No President has a place in classrooms other than as an object of research, a topic for discussion, or as an invited guest. Certainly, he has no right to interfere with speech, inquiry, dress (including masks) or assembly. There is a bitter irony that the Trump regime wishes to ban masks on Columbia’s campus, given the large number of January 6th violent  insurrectionists were masked. Much like the above-mentioned Title VI complaint, this inversion of rules, expectations, and language is par for the course from authoritarian regimes. They flip language to abuse those who oppose them. Universities and the towns and cities in which they live must not give in.

We must resist actions that would “obliterate the boundary between institutional autonomy and federal control,” as Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, says. There is a course to chart where we empower the municipal and higher education institutions of this nation, protect the values they embody, and advance the interests of citizens, residents, and visitors. We should:

1. Agree to protect our residents, students, staff, faculty, and visitors who engage in non-violent protests and organizing;
2. Universities should plan to join Columbia and other institutions of higher education in class actions, on amicus curiae, or other collaborative and cooperative actions that defend university’s rights;
3. Municipal and city governments should join their higher education partners in this defense because our community, culture, and economic well-being are interdependent;; 
4. Create, join, or form within a multi-university and college-town/city consortium to resist these and similar actions; and
5. Advance a shared agenda that calls for more investment in research and action in areas that confront global risks, including health sciences, artificial intelligence, social media, climate change and environmental change, disinformation, and erosion of civil norms, democracy, and DEI.

It is incumbent on us to resist “supercharged censorship” and prolong and deepen the legacy of enlightenment, security, freedom, and dignity.