AAUP president Todd Wolfson issued the following statement today.
The Columbia University Board of Trustees’ concessions to the Trump administration are a disaster for Columbia students, faculty, and staff, as well as for academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the independence of colleges and universities nationwide. Never in the history of our nation has an educational institution so thoroughly bent to the will of an autocrat. The settlement will only fuel Trump’s authoritarian appetite to control other democratic institutions that could potentially rein him in. This settlement subverts our democracy and capitulates to the Trump plan to target the pillars of our democracy: the judiciary, the free press, and our education systems.
Allowing the government to monitor and ultimately dictate decisions about the hiring of faculty and admission of students is a stunning breach of the independence of colleges and universities and opens the door for the ideological control this administration so eagerly craves. This is an extremely dangerous precedent that will have tremendous consequences for the sector. Trump has already reached into community colleges, public state schools, small liberal arts colleges, and minority serving institutions to limit the free expression of students and workers. The Columbia settlement will embolden the administration to further clamp down throughout higher education.
An authoritarian bully will not be satisfied with just one trophy at Columbia University. For higher education to function, students, staff, and faculty must be free to think and speak their minds. All who care about higher education must stand up and fight back against this unprecedented continuing assault. To preserve our democracy, we have no choice.