College presidents speaking out (?)

Slowly--Christopher Eisgruber (Princeton); Danielle Holley (Mount Holyoke); Michael Roth (Wesleyan); Lee Bollinger (formerly Michigan and Columbia). Should we draw anything from three of this group being law professors? University pushback may be wrapped in the (perceived) hierarchy of higher education. Wesleyan and Mount Holyoke are elite institutions. But they are not THE elite institutions, because of their size and their missions. Many university leaders must respond. But the responding group must include the elite-of-the-elite. Eisgruber is a start. Who from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, et al. will follow? Penn is down for the count--it reportedly working to cede to the Administration's demands around the $ 400 million in funding, including "doing more" about antisemitism (read: sanctioning students who express otherwise-protected views about Israel and Jews), empowering campus police,* centralizing university discipline, and placing academic departments in receivership.**

[*] My future colleague Vanessa Miller writes about the rise and regulation of campus police departments. She picked a good time to write about these things.

[**] And, like clockwork, Penn learns how appeasement works when the Administration comes after for allowing a trans-woman to compete on its women's swim team--three years ago.

In the midst of the protests and encampments in Spring 2024, my temple hosted a panel discussion on campus antisemitism; panelists included Julio Frenk, then-University of Miami president and now-UCLA chancellor. Frenk argued that the Nazis destroyed German universities by driving out Jewish faculty and students and that they never recovered--no German universities are among the top universities in the world. His point was that American universities will destroy themselves if they do not get campus antisemitism under control.

It is ironic that the Trump Administration is attempting (and may succeed) in destroying American universities by defunding research, destroying academic freedom, and detaining faculty and students who hold distasteful view--all in the name of stopping antisemitism. I doubt Frenk and others cheering the Administration's efforts around antisemitism (which may include the powers-that-be in my temple) recognize that irony.