Can the Ivy League band together to fight Trump's attacks on higher education?

Boston Globe

08-06-2025

Harvard University has suffered most of President Trump's blows, with the president stripping
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At other schools, university presidents are giving interviews and campus speeches critical of the White House. Professors are unionizing to advocate for their research and students. And many alumni groups are spearheading public awareness campaigns to pressure their alma maters to fight back against Trump.
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'The fight is going to be won among the public,' said Jon Fansmith,
vice president of the
nonprofit American Council on Education.
The Trump administration has arguied elite universities force-feed students leftist ideology and allowed antisemitism to run rampant since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023. The administration has announced investigations of colleges and universities allegedly discriminating against white people and cut off or threatened to cut federal funding to many schools.
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At Columbia University, leaders in March said they would comply with the administration's demands after officials froze hundreds of millions of dollars in funding because the administration said the school failed to protect Jewish students from discrimination. But that didn't seem to appease the White House, which announced last week it was targeting the school's accreditation, which could ultimately result in Columbia losing federal financial aid for its students.
In April, several Big Ten conference schools formally signed on to a
'The Trump administration has no intention of backing down, and the only thing that will work to oppose him is strong collective action where we have each other's backs,' said Lieberwitz, whose university had
Students on the campus at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., on March 7.
HANNAH BEIER/NYT
University presidents speak out
Ivy League university presidents have responded differently to allegations of antisemitism on campus and the Trump administration's attempts to control how they run their schools.
A
Eisgruber, a constitutional law scholar, has
been particularly outspoken, slamming
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'It's really important for conservative views to be welcome on a campus, but that's different from insisting on ideological balance on a campus,' Eisgruber told the host of The Daily this spring.
After Harvard lost billions in science funding in April, Eisgruber posted 'Princeton stands with Harvard,' on his LinkedIn profile.
At Brown University, the school's highest governing body recently extended president Christina Paxson's term through June 2028 in a show of confidence.
Eisgruber's and Paxson's long tenures put them in better positions to speak out, higher education advocates told the Globe this spring.
Other Ivies have recently been plagued by turnover among leaders, including high-profile oustings over responses to
pro-Palestinian protests and allegations of antisemitism. The presidents of Yale, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania were installed this spring.
'The other university presidents are not standing up for Harvard because they don't want to be the next one on Trump's list,' said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Presidents, a union.
University presidents are also strategizing with lawmakers in Washington D.C., professors told the Globe.
The largest public outcry from university presidents came on April 22, when hundreds signed a public statement with the American Association of Colleges & Universities against 'unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.'
Dartmouth president Sian Beilock was the only Ivy president to not sign, despite being urged to by professors and alumni, said Derek Jennings, an active member of the Native American Alumni Association of Dartmouth.
The school's director of media relations, Jana Barnello, said like other schools, Dartmouth has filed supporting declarations in lawsuits over the funding cuts.
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Professors rally to organize against Trump
While university presidents seem to be taking a more careful and calculated approach,
many professors rapidly organized this spring, forming union chapters in an attempt to defend their research.
'The level of increased faculty activism at Dartmouth is demonstrating that those of us who value the ideals and values of higher education are not waiting for administrators to lead on this,' said Bethany Moreton, who helped launch Dartmouth's chapter of the American Association of University Presidents in May 2024. Membership has since ballooned to 150, she said.
Across the Ivy League, researchers said they're best suited to publicly advocate for their work, describing their life-saving findings and discoveries at rallies and in letters to lawmakers, groups told the Globe.
While some observers warn of a potential brain drain among professors to Canada or Europe in response to Trump's cuts to research funding, some said Trump's attacks are creating more unity among colleagues than they've seen in years.
'If the intention was to divide faculty and pit us against each other with all the threats, it's really not working,' said Princeton English professor Meredith Martin. 'We care so much about our students that, if anything, this is bringing us together and making us stronger.'
During the recent school year, membership in AAUP surged to 50,000, from 42,000, with almost all of that after Trump's inauguration in January, according to the group, and is the largest spike since its founding a century ago.
Alumni stand up for schools
Alumni are also pushing administrators at their alma maters to do more to stand up for their schools'
autonomy.
Harvard's alumni campaign, Crimson Courage, met Friday in a packed auditorium on the Cambridge campus to discuss how it is 'reaching out beyond Harvard to build the campaign,' an event description said.
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The group Stand Up for Princeton and Higher Education amassed more than 9,000 alumni supporters in the past five weeks. Some held signs and wore buttons while walking the P-rade route on May 24. The group's
In Connecticut, the group Stand Up for Yale sent a
Similar alumni groups are taking shape across the Ivy League, with several urging university presidents to sign on to group statements, alumni told the Globe.
Schools must band together formally, experts say
Many graduates said their support is for all of higher education, not just their alma maters.
At the recent Princeton reunion after the P-rade, a Yale Divinity School student caught up with a University of Chicago Law School graduate over barbecue. Outside
nearby
Firestone Library, recent graduates of Yale's and Harvard's law schools enveloped in hugs.
'The education my peers and I received was life changing, and our schools know this and are not backing down on ensuring future students get the same opportunities,' said Joshua Faires, who has an undergraduate degree from Princeton and a master's degree in sociology from Columbia University.
HoSang, from Yale's AAUP chapter,
said Trump knows higher education institutions depend on each other and share one 'ecosystem,' and so a threat against one is a threat to all, he said.
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'There is no saving Yale, Harvard, or Princeton without standing up for all of higher education,' HoSang said.
Still, faculty and alumni need more support from administrators, some warned —all the way from the presidents at the top, said Wolfson, the national AAUP president.
'I think they need to be bold,' Wolfson said. 'And this is hard to do but I'll say it anyway: They need to put their institution second, and then need to put higher education — as a critical sector in US society — first.'
Claire Thornton can be reached at