Unsurprisingly, I am not alone. A sampling:
• Brian Rosenberg (former President of Macalester College) in the Chronicle. Takeaway: Higher ed lacks the resources, power, and political capital to withstand government attacks on its own.
• Jonathan Zimmerman (History & Ed at Penn, Columbia alum) in the Chronicle: In response to Claire Shipman’s insistence that the school did not “waiver” from its “north star” of maintaining control over academic speech: ” Please. We didn’t just waver from it; we threw it under the bus. Shipman’s letter popped into my inbox last night because I’m a proud graduate of Columbia University. Forty years ago, it taught me how to think. I can recognize sophistry when I see it.”
• Suresh Naidu in NYT: This will not stop future attacks.
• James Grimmelmann (Cornell): Pledging to do not work or service with Columbia. (I wish I could make the same pledge, but they were never going to invite me to anything).
• Franklin Foer in The Atlantic: His closer: “Universities are desperately in need of reform. The paucity of intellectual pluralism in the academy undermines the integrity of the pursuit of knowledge. Failure of university trustees and presidents to make these changes on their own terms has invited government intervention. But the government has a new toehold in faculty rooms, not just at Columbia but at every private university in the country.” (Ed: Like others, Foer cannot help all-but-stating that the university had this coming).
• Will Creeley (FIRE) quoted in Inside Higher Ed:
The reforms themselves require Columbia students to commit to laudable values like free inquiry and open debate,” Creeley wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “But demanding students commit to vague goals like ‘equality and respect’ leaves far too much room for abuse, just like the civility oaths, DEI statements, and other types of compelled speech FIRE has long opposed.
Like Foer, Creeley cannot help throwing shade at the left and defending the right’s supposed free-speech commitments. “Free inquiry and open debate” are laudable, while “equality and respect” are subject to abuse a la “civility” and “DEI statements.” Putting aside that open debate for the Trump Administration means right-wingers saying whatever offensive stuff they want and lefties being arrested and expelled. A government requirement that students commit to values cannot turn on whether those values are “laudable” or ripe for “abuse”–government cannot compel that commitment or jawbone a private actor to compel that commitment. Creeley and FIRE know that and probably believe it. But they cannot help themselves.
• As things play out, I fear differences developing across roles and institutions. Scholars who depend on federal funding for their research may accept and support deals such as this more than those who do not–they need the money that the government released as part of the deal and a limited surrender of academic control may be worth the ability to do their work. Ditto for university administrators. Shipman feared losing billions of dollars that would destroy a big part of the university’s work; the head of a liberal arts college (Rosenberg or the ubiquitous Michael Roth) are not worried about losing similar amounts.*
[*] For the moment. The government’s next attack will target endowments and student loans, on which liberal arts and less-scientifically oriented institutions rely.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on July 26, 2025 at 04:53 PM