Should universities negotiate with the Trump administration?
Understanding the current turmoil requires holding in mind several distinct realities despite the tensions between them. First, higher education, particularly major research universities, is central to American preeminence in many scholarly and economic domains. Wildly exaggerated claims that they've been reduced to organizations promoting woke and Marxist indoctrination, are simply absurd, captured in the phrase '
That said, major problems in higher education have evolved to threaten our capacity to develop new knowledge and transmit existing knowledge to students and the broader society. Some fields within the humanities and social sciences have unfortunately evolved to resemble intellectual monocultures wherein engagement with legitimate alternative perspectives is rare, and a culture of self-silencing replaces vigorous engagement. Real and attempted
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These and other problems must be addressed, and this requires internally-driven reform, as difficult as that is in the complex and Byzantine culture and governance of higher education. Accelerated by problems identified in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023, progress on these matters has been made, though much more slowly than ideal.
In that setting, the second Trump administration announced a war on higher education and made clear its intention to employ all the financial and regulatory weapons at its disposal to profoundly transform the university in a direction far from one dedicated to truth-seeking, but rather subservient to its specific ideology. The federal government has enormous power in this regard, some of it wielded in a manner that should be rejected by the courts, a direction
that I fully support.
But a reality causing confusion to many is that some of the inappropriate and illegal federal demands do overlap with real problems previously identified by many of those promoting internal reform. Given the disruption and crisis caused by the government stopping awarded grants, taxing endowments, threatening accreditation and other actions, and the attention drawn to this conflict by those extreme actions, might a settlement that accomplishes desirable outcomes, while defending against interventions that are inappropriate and illegal be possible? That is indeed the key question.
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It is certainly possible that the pace of appropriate reform could be accelerated by the current moment of turbulence. Indeed, many of the external demands from the president, such as a policy of
But the integrity and sustained impact of those reforms would be undermined if they are seen as responses to demands — 'capitulation' — rather than appropriate and justified university actions. There are internal constituencies content with current realities and opposed to such reforms, and they are more than happy to proclaim any actions as capitulation. And the Trump administration would gladly claim victory for any internal reforms as well. Navigating a path to produce appropriate reform acceptable to both skeptical elements of the faculty and a combative Trump administration will be a formidable challenge to Harvard President Alan Garber's leadership.
Beyond the immediate reaction to a particular settlement, another issue looms. Is there good reason to believe that follow-up to such a settlement will not include additional demands and punishments based on claims that many vague negotiated terms have been insufficiently achieved? Should such reasonable concerns about the integrity of the other side cause a university like Columbia or Harvard to eschew negotiations, endure the profound punishment in the hope that the legal system comes to the rescue? This is not an entirely unreasonable position.
But it's not the path I currently support. Let's take Harvard, reported now to be in negotiations of some kind. I'd like to see university leadership identify issues in response to federal demands that they are prepared to support and defend
on their merits
. As described above, some of these have already been announced, others, such as a possible university-wide institute to promote open inquiry, have been in development and could be announced in this setting.
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If so, the reasons for taking such actions must be articulated and defended with great clarity as advancing core university values. And nothing beyond that should be agreed to. As in any negotiation, some issues will reside at the fuzzy border, requiring the judgment expected of strong leaders and for which they should be held accountable. But clear lines to protect academic freedom and institutional autonomy must be drawn and articulated.
The reality is that we are at a totally unanticipated moment of both opportunity and threat to higher education. The mounting need for reform is confronting demands from a powerful and illiberal government that is using real problems to justify interventions designed to bring the institutions under their control. The threats are real, and immediate. And so is the opportunity. With eyes open, and their deepest values held close, university leaders and the communities that support them should explore the boundaries for reform offered by this rare moment of opportunity, fully cognizant of the threats of both action and inaction. The world is watching.
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