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CBS News
3 days ago
- General
- CBS News
Transcript: Michael Roth, Wesleyan University president, on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," June 1, 2025
The following is the transcript of an interview with Michael Roth, Wesleyan University president, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on June 1, 2025. MARGARET BRENNAN: And we're turning now to the President of Wesleyan University, Michael Roth, who joins us from Monterey, Massachusetts. Good morning to you. WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT MICHAEL ROTH: Good morning. Good to be with you. MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to pick up on something we were just discussing with the congressman, and that is this instruction to have new scrutiny of Chinese students, but also, more broadly, Secretary Rubio said all U.S. embassies should not schedule any new student visa application appointments at this time. About 14% of your students are international. Are you concerned they won't be able to come back to school in September? ROTH: I'm very concerned, not only about Wesleyan, but about higher education in the United States. One of the great things about our system of education is that it attracts people from all over the world who want to come to America to learn. And while they're here learning, they learn about our country, our values, our freedoms. And this is really an act of intimidation to scare schools into toeing the line of the current administration. It really has nothing to do with national security or with anti- antisemitism. This heightened scrutiny is meant to instill fear on college campuses, and I'm afraid it is working. MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, it is noticeable, sir, that you know, at a time when so many higher education institutions, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, have had federal funding revoked because of their policies, we find heads of universities are fearful of speaking out. Why are you not afraid of speaking critically? ROTH: Oh, I am. I'm afraid too. But I just find it extraordinary that Americans are afraid to speak out, especially people who, you know, run colleges, universities. Why- this is a free country. I've been saying it my whole life. I used to tell my parents that when I didn't want to do something, I would say it's a free country. And this idea that we're supposed to actually conform to the ideologies in the White House, it's not just bad for Harvard or for Wesleyan, it- it's bad for the whole country because journalists are being intimidated, law firms are being intimidated, churches, synagogues and mosques will be next. We have to defend our freedoms. And when we bring international students here, what they experience is what it's like to live in a free country, and we can't let the president change the atmosphere so that people come here and are afraid to speak out. MARGARET BRENNAN: But there are also some specific criticisms being lodged by members of the administration. Do you think that higher education has become too dependent on federal funding, for example, or money from foreign donors, are there legitimate criticisms? ROTH: There are lots of legitimate criticisms of higher education. I don't think overdependence on federal funding is the issue. Most of the federal funding you hear the press talk about are contracts to do specific kinds of research that are really great investments for the country. However, the criticisms of colleges and universities that we have a monoculture, that we don't have enough intellectual diversity, that's a criticism I've been making of my own school and of the rest of higher education for years. I think we can make improvements, but the way we make improvements is not by just lining up behind a president, whoever that happens to be. We make improvements by convincing our faculty and students to broaden our perspectives, to welcome more political and cultural views, not to line up and conform to the ideology of those in power. But yes, we have work to do to clean up our own houses, and we ought to get to it. But to do it under the- under this- the gun of an aggressive authoritarian administration that- that will lead to a bad outcome. MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you define some of the protests that even Wesleyan had on its campus that were, you know, critical of the State of Israel, for example, regarding the war against Hamas in Gaza, do you consider them to be xenophobic by definition, antisemitic or anti-Jewish? ROTH: Oh no, certainly not by definition. There are lots of examples of antisemitism around the country, some of them are on college campuses. They're reprehensible. When Jewish students are intimidated or afraid to practice their religion on campus, or are yelled at or- it's horrible. But at Wesleyan and in many schools, the percentage of Jews protesting for Palestinians was roughly the same as the percentage of Jews on the campus generally. The idea that you are attacking antisemitism by attacking universities, I think, is a complete charade. It's just an excuse for getting the universities to conform. We need to stamp out antisemitism. Those two young people just murdered because they were Jewish in Washington, that's a great example of how violence breeds violence. But the- the attack on universities is not an- is not an attempt to defend Jews. On the contrary, I think more Jews will be hurt by these attacks than helped. MARGARET BRENNAN: President Roth, thank you for your time this morning. We'll be back in a moment.
Boston Globe
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
More than 170 higher education leaders condemn ‘undue government intrusion' into campus affairs
'As leaders of America's colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,' the statement reads. 'We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.' The statement added that higher education leaders must 'reject the coercive use of public research funding.' New England college and university leaders who signed the statement include the presidents of Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Wellesley College, Tufts University Amherst College, Brown University, Holy Cross, Williams College, Smith College, Clark University, Wheaton College, Mount Wachusett Community College, Wesleyan University, Bowdoin College, Bates College, and Colby College. Advertisement Up until recently, 'What's at stake here is freedom,' Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan, said in a recent interview. 'If you give up your freedoms to someone who wants more power, they're going to take more of your freedom.' Last week Garber became the unexpected leader of higher education's resistance movement against the federal government when Harvard, the nation's oldest and wealthiest university, 'No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,' Garber said in a letter last week. On Monday, the university sued the Trump administration, arguing the government's use of research funding cuts as leverage to 'micromanage' Harvard's affairs represents an unconstitutional abuse of federal power. Tuesday's joint statement from the American Association of Colleges and Universities said although the nation's higher education sector includes a diverse set of institutions with varied student populations, all US colleges have one thing 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,' the statement reads. '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.' Advertisement The statements also defended the role of universities as economic engines, research hubs, and important pillars of democracy. The letter calls for 'constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic.' 'The price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society,' the statement says. Hilary Burns can be reached at
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Courage can be contagious, even if it's in really small doses': Universities begin to push back
This week, Harvard University refused to agree to the Trump administration's demands, leading to a freeze in federal funding. 'The overreach. Was much too far,' says Wesleyan University President Michael Roth, but he warns that the 'chaotic operation in the White House' really does 'provoke fears in civil society.' 'This is a tactic we've seen from every authoritarian regime,' says GW Law's Mary Anne Franks, author of 'Fearless Speech,' but 'courage can be contagious,
New York Times
16-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
If You're Boycotting Columbia, Your Priorities Are All Wrong
Many of us at Columbia University had lost hope in our struggle with the Trump administration. At the beginning of February, the federal Department of Education announced the school was under investigation. A month later, the Trump administration started canceling the grants and contracts that fund our research labs and medical trials, without producing evidence of wrongdoing. To fend off the White House, Columbia then announced a series of changes, many of which had been long in the works. Then came the circular firing squad. By mid-April, 2,000 people and more than 75 organizations, most of them faculty groups, had signed onto a boycott of our events, and said they would refuse to work with Columbia scholars, like myself, a vice dean, who hold administrative positions. It is easy to kick people when they are down. I'm a historian, and two of my government grants, which funded a program to help archivists and scholars maintain records that would otherwise be lost to history, have just been canceled. Columbia has collectively trained thousands of professors and research scientists, including some of the people now refusing to associate with us. Where were these petition signers when we needed help defending First Amendment rights and our vulnerable students and staff members? Why did they not call on leaders of educational institutions to demand that the Trump administration stop overriding the rule of law? Only a handful of university leaders chose to speak out, notably Wesleyan's president, Michael Roth, out of some 4,000 American colleges and universities. One of the main organizers of the boycott, the City University of New York anthropologist Gary Wilder, has struggled to explain this strange form of solidarity. He says he took it upon himself to act even though 'Columbia faculty are exhausted, besieged, demoralized and threatened.' It is true that we are besieged and threatened. It is also true that Columbia professors and students have been calling on others to stand with us. Boycott organizers insisted Columbia was 'fully capitulating to the conditions imposed by the Trump administration.' In fact, many of the actions the Columbia administration announced on March 21 are similar to those originally proposed last August by more than 200 faculty members. Some of my colleagues were troubled by what the agreement appeared to portend. Others thought it entirely reasonable — in fact, long overdue — to enforce rules governing how protests happen on our campus. Disrupting classes while wearing masks to avoid any consequences, a tactic of some Gaza war protesters, is hardly conduct to be defended at all costs. Would we tolerate such behavior by MAGA-hatted Trump supporters? Columbia would not allow any government to deny professors their rightful role in personnel decisions or to dictate the content of our curricula. Nor would we collaborate with government agents intent on deporting our students and faculty members simply because they exercised their First Amendment rights. At no point did our leadership concede any of these essential principles, which is surely why Columbia has been under Department of Justice investigation 'for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus.' The boycotters' allegation that Columbia 'participated in an authoritarian assault' might better fit the universities that have chosen to comply even without an explicit order, such as by shuttering diversity offices and canceling events that might provoke controversy. Shall we now boycott one another? Why stop with refusing to attend events? Will we refuse to read one another's scholarship and scientific research? Will the boycott include university hospitals and lifesaving medical trials? Will we also punish one another's graduates, just as pro-Israel critics of Columbia vowed to do last spring? An earlier boycott came about because Columbia was accused of being too lenient toward protesters of the war in Gaza. So now we have been boycotted by both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian debate. Both have treated Columbia — indeed, higher education as a whole — as collateral damage in the Middle Eastern conflict. It would be bizarre were it not so serious. After all, nearly 14,000 international students and over 3,000 faculty members and researchers at Columbia depend on government-issued visas and green cards. Now that Harvard University has decided to defy the Trump administration, the stage is set for an epic struggle, one that has already defied the expectations of cynics on both sides. After being presented with new demands, Columbia is refusing to comply. No thanks to our fair-weather friends, our acting president, Claire Shipman, has vowed to reject any agreement in which 'the government dictates what we teach, research or who we hire' as well as one that would 'require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution.' Columbia alumni are rallying in support. The greatness of American universities is at risk because anti-intellectuals are undermining the foundation of academic excellence: the ability of teachers and researchers to work without political micromanagement in the pursuit of truth, even when these truths are unpopular. Colleges and universities should join a mutual defense pact, as faculty members at several universities, including Rutgers and Indiana University have proposed. If we speak with one voice, we can better articulate the essential importance of universities to the American way of life. As Dwight Eisenhower, who was a Columbia president, argued: 'The true purpose of education is to prepare young men and women for effective citizenship in a free form of government.' Eisenhower knew that universities are vital to national defense and economic prosperity. Columbia alone has more than 500 students who are military veterans, more than the rest of the Ivy League. Just one Columbia department, biomedical engineering, produced more than 140 inventions in the past five years that lead to over 30 industry licenses. Altogether, 87 Columbia researchers, faculty members and alumni have won Nobel Prizes. We have now seen that the Trump administration manages the economy with the same expertise and competence it manages higher education, and as a result we might begin to rally the American people. If, instead, academics choose to boycott colleagues rather than stand with them, they become accomplices in the very assault on academic freedom they wish to oppose.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New York Helicopter Tours shuts down after Hudson River crash that killed 6: FAA
The Big Apple sightseeing company involved in the Hudson River helicopter crash that killed six is shutting down its operations 'immediately,' the Federal Aviation Administration announced Sunday night, three days after the deadly disaster. A chopper operated by New York Helicopter Tours plunged into the frigid waters off Manhattan Thursday — killing a Siemens executive, his wife and their three young children who were visiting from Spain and the pilot, who was a Navy veteran. 'New York Helicopter Tours — the company involved in the deadly crash on the Hudson earlier this week — is shutting down their operations immediately,' the FAA tweeted. 'We will continue to support NTSB's investigation. Additionally, the FAA will be launching an immediate review of the tour operator's license and safety record.' The FAA did not make clear if the business would be shut down permanently and did not return an email seeking clarity late Sunday. When reached by phone, New York Helicopter Tours CEO Michael Roth confirmed that his company was ceasing operations at the demand of the federal agency. 'It wasn't my choice, the FAA did that,' he told The Post. When asked if there was a chance of returning to operations, Roth replied, 'Maybe, I don't know.' A day earlier, a company representative said the business was 'not operating until further notice.' New York Helicopter Tours said it was 'fully cooperating' with the federal officials probing the crash in a statement on its website. 'New York Helicopter Tours is profoundly saddened by the tragic accident and loss of life that occurred on April 10, 2025, involving one of our helicopters in the Hudson River. At New York Helicopter Tours, the safety and well-being of our passengers and crew has always been the cornerstone of our operations,' the company said. 'Our immediate focus is supporting the families and their loved ones affected by this tragedy, as well as fully cooperating with the FAA and NTSB investigations.' The doomed helicopter was on its eighth flight of the day and lacked a flight recorder before it broke apart in the air and came crashing down into the Hudson, the National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday. The last inspection date for the chopper was March 1, the agency said. The Spanish tourists, Augustin Escobar, his wife Merce Montal, and their three children — Augustin, 10; Mercedes, 8; and Victor, 4, all perished in the crash. 'I want to say they left together, they left without suffering, and they left with a smile on their faces, and that is important to us,' Montal's brother, Joan Camprubí Montal, said Saturday. The pilot who perished was identified as 36-year-old Sean Johnson, who had recently moved to the Big Apple. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who called for a swift shutdown of the company earlier Sunday, applauded the move by the FAA. 'It is good news that the FAA heeded the call and shut down New York Helicopter's flights because they were a danger to the public,' Schumer, New York's senator, said in a statement. 'But much work remains to be done.' He said the FAA must conduct more inspections of tourist helicopter companies and consider other questions about the industry going forward. A Schumer spokesperson also said it was not clear how long the company would be sidelined.
