Tell Your Alma Mater: Stand Up for Freedom of Expression and Academic Independence

By Gwen R.

Those of us with college degrees can help bolster institutional resistance to the Trump regime’s overreach by telling our alma maters: “Stand strong and stand together against the bullying. Be like Harvard.”

Harvard University made news this week by rejecting Trump’s demands that it relinquish its independence in admissions, hiring, and governance, and that it discontinue all DEI programs. Harvard’s president Alan M. Garber said in an open letter to the Harvard community, “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” In retaliation, the Trump administration froze over $2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts to the university. It followed that up by threatening to block the university from enrolling international students and calling for the revocation of Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

Harvard’s strong moral stance stands in stark contrast to Columbia University’s early capitulation to a similar list of demands. That said, Harvard’s statement seems to have emboldened Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman to clarify in an open letter to the Columbia community that Columbia will not negotiate on “overly prescriptive requests about our governance, how we conduct our presidential search process, and how specifically to address viewpoint diversity issues.”

It’s not just the Ivies and elite schools that are struggling to respond to the administration’s threats and demands. Public universities, too, are under immense pressure to dismantle DEI programs in exchange for government funding. Some academic leaders are beginning to speak out in collective defense of academic freedom and international students — and protests are growing at campuses around the country, including Thursday’s teach-in and rally at Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley.

Curious how my own alma mater, Yale University, is responding to the crisis, I was heartened to find this powerful open letter from the faculty to the university administration. This letter says, in part, “We stand together at a crossroads. American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now.”

I took it upon myself to write a letter to the university’s president, provost, and board of trustees, expressing my strong support of the faculty’s demands and Harvard’s statement of resistance. I encourage you to take the time to write a letter to the leadership of your own alma mater. Alumni have a powerful voice; we can influence our institutions to do the right thing — and the more universities that take the courageous path, the easier it becomes for others to stand in resistance, too.

You are welcome to borrow any part of my letter to use yourself:

Dear President McInnis, Provost Strobel, and members of the Board,

I am writing with an urgent request that Yale University stand clearly, strongly, and publicly in opposition to the Trump administration’s attack on academic freedom and free expression.

Harvard’s president Alan Garber has demonstrated this kind of courageous, uncompromising stand.

Yale’s own faculty has demanded that the University stand with Harvard and other colleges and universities in collective defense against illiberalism.

Columbia has taken the shameful path of appeasement. Do not follow Columbia’s example. Yale can and must demonstrate the moral clarity and fortitude these times call for.

Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

<My name>, Class of ’91