Tenured professors at Harvard pledge 10 percent of pay to fight for ‘academic freedom'
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Harvard filed a lawsuit last week
In the meantime, research has been halted, hiring freezes have been put in place in several departments, and enrollment of graduate students has been curtailed, the letter said.
'The financial costs will not be shared equally among our community,' the faculty wrote. 'Staff and students in many programs, in particular, are under greater threat than those of us with tenured positions.'
Therefore, 83 tenured professors have pledged to commit 10 percent of their paychecks for a year, or less if warranted, 'to the university's financial resources while it legally contests these attacks,' the professors said.
'This signals our commitment as faculty members to use means at our disposal to protect the university and, especially, staff and students who do not have the same protections,' the tenured faculty wrote.
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'We view this initiative as only one of the various ways in which we can express solidarity around the university,' they added.
Professor Dani Rodrik, who helped organize the faculty initiative, said he has learned from experience that it is important to take a stand when academic freedoms are at risk.
'I grew up in Turkey and have seen the disastrous consequences of the slide into authoritarianism and the steep price that universities have paid as a result of the regime's attacks on academic freedom,' Rodrik said in an email Wednesday.
'So, I consider it very important that leading universities like Harvard stand up and resist unlawful demands from the Trump administration,' said Rodrik, who teaches international political economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. 'And it is important that senior faculty share in the financial sacrifice that will be necessary.'
'We have to put our money where our mouth is,' Rodrik added.
Harvard leaders have alleged that the goals and actions of the Trump administration are 'to exert improper influence over the school as part of a sweeping crackdown on elite universities to squelch ideological dissent, a violation of schools' First Amendment rights.'
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Tonya Alanez can be reached at
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