The Trump administration's swift initial rollout of orders seeking more control over universities left schools thunderstruck. Fearing retribution from a president known to retaliate against his enemies, most leaders in higher education responded in February with silence.
But after weeks of witnessing the administration freeze billions in federal funding, demand changes to policies and begin investigations, a broad coalition of university leaders publicly opposing those moves is taking root. The most visible evidence yet was a statement last week signed by more than 400 campus leaders opposing what they saw as the administration's assault on academia.
Although organizations of colleges and administrators regularly conduct meetings on a wide range of issues, the statement by the American Association of College and Universities was an unusual show of unity considering the wide cross-section of interests it included: Ivy League institutions and community colleges, public flagship schools and Jesuit universities, regional schools and historically Black colleges.
"We speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education, " the statement said.
Although it contained no concrete action, and what's next was unclear, the collective stance reflected a group more galvanized than ever to resist.
"When we are teaming up with higher ed across the broad, it's more than just about what the elite think," Richard Lyons, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, said in an interview after the school signed on. "At some level, that really disparate, wide-angle, wonderful group of colleges and universities that signed the message, I find quite heartening."
The joint statement from university leaders, many of them energized by Harvard University's confrontation with the Trump administration, emerged even after higher education associations and a handful of universities field lawsuits fighting cuts to funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Energy Department. And heads of colleges had been talking and meeting with one another more frequently than they had since the COVID-19 pandemic, with some engaged in discussions in Washington.(Stephanie Saul and Alan Blinder)
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