Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced the “immediate cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts” to Columbia University. The move came after Republicans began targeting the school almost a year ago in response to students’ protests in solidarity with Palestine, which party leaders recast as rampant campus antisemitism. “President Trump has been clear that any college or university that allows illegal protests and repeatedly fails to protect students from anti-Semitic harassment on campus will be subject to the loss of federal funding,” a White House task force said in a press release.
Columbia is not the only school the administration is targeting: On March 4, Trump announced on social media that any college, school, or university that allows so-called illegal protests “will STOP” receiving all federal funding. The post went on to threaten student protesters, too, with permanent expulsion, arrest, imprisonment, and deportation. And Trump is already following through on that warning: The day after he issued his threat against Columbia, Homeland Security agents abducted Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian-American grad student who helped lead Columbia’s Gaza solidarity encampment, and claimed his permanent resident status had been “revoked.”
The Trump administration’s actions show no recognition of the fact that protesting is a constitutionally protected right under the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” Yet the administration’s attacks on Columbia and its students make clear that it is trying to limit what can be taught and what can be thought—the culmination of a push to stifle constitutionally-protected activity by students and teachers, and bend academia to his will.
Image of people gathered outside of a New York court to protest the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
On February 14, for instance, the Trump administration set out to stop classroom conversations about race, declaring that “educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students” under the guise of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The letter instructed schools that they had 14 days to eliminate “DEI programs” or else they would “face potential loss of federal funding.” It did not explain what “DEI programs” are, leaving schools unsure of how to comply and forcing educators to gut their programming and curricula in order to avoid sanctions.
The Department of Education followed up two weeks later with a Frequently Asked Questions document asserting that “nothing” in its earlier letter “requires or authorizes a school to restrict any rights otherwise protected by the First Amendment,” but teachers disagree. The National Education Association filed a lawsuit on March 5 arguing that the administration’s prohibitions on “teaching certain disfavored ideas” illegally inhibit “core First Amendment rights of academics in the classroom and in broader research and writing.”
Next, on February 28, the Trump administration started mass-terminating research grants it claims are related to “transgender issues” or “DEI.” Under guidance issued by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, projects can only receive federal funds if they don’t “support any DEI activities” or use “DEI language,” which appears to mean any project that includes trans people at all or acknowledges their existence, cannot receive funding at all. The NIH has sent out at least 16 termination letters so far, and reportedly plans to send out hundreds more.
Scientists recognize these conditions as a threat to academic freedom and the First Amendment. “For all this talk about free speech, this is direct censorship of scientific research,” Dr. Liza Fazio told Nature. “How can the government decide what words a journal can use to describe a scientific reality?” asked Dr. Alfredo Morabia, the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Public Health, in The Week. “A constitutional right has been canceled.”
Finally, on March 3, the Trump administration went after law schools. Ed Martin, the interim federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., sent a letter to William Treanor, the Dean of Georgetown Law School, asking if Treanor had “eliminated all DEI” from the school and curriculum, and if he would promise to “move swiftly to remove” DEI if it were “found” in the school’s “courses or teaching in any way.”
Lest Treanor mistake this order for a request, Martin also made a threat: “You should know that no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship, or employment in our office who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered.” Basically, Martin told Georgetown that the law school had a nice employment rate, and it would be a shame if anything happened to it.
Treanor rejected Martin’s order in a response letter on March 6. “Given the First Amendment’s protections of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear,” he said.
Informally using government power to censor speech—threatening inquiries and financial harm to silence faculty, and pressuring schools to silence students on the government’s behalf—is known as “jawboning.” But the Supreme Court confirmed this is illegal just last year in National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, in which the Court unanimously held that New York violated the Constitution by discouraging companies it regulated from doing business with the NRA. “The First Amendment prohibits government officials from wielding their power selectively to punish or suppress speech, directly or (as alleged here) through private intermediaries,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The Trump White House is nevertheless trying to use schools as a middleman in its war on free speech, bullying schools into submission so they do the same to students and faculty.
Free speech takes on a special importance in academic institutions. It’s a prerequisite for the open exchange of ideas and creation of new ones. It strengthens the production of knowledge and quality of education. And it can help grow students’ ability to think for themselves and challenge the status quo. That’s why restrictions on public dissent and critical thinking are fundamentally at odds with a democratic society. And that’s why free thought is a danger to authoritarians like Donald Trump.
