In a campus speech on Thursday, former President Barack Obama urged universities to resist federal attacks that violate academic freedom.
He also said that schools and students should self-reflect on their audio environment on their campus.
“If you're a university, you might have to understand, are we actually doing something?” he said in a conversation at Hamilton University in upstate New York. “In fact, did we violate our own values, our own code, and in some way we violated the law?”
“If not, you're just being blackmailed.
Obama's comments came as the Trump administration threatened universities with massive cuts. In March, he took Columbia University from a $400 million grant and contract. He later suspended $175 million at the University of Pennsylvania and said it was reviewing an arrangement of about $9 billion this week with Harvard and its affiliates.
At Harvard, where the university has made an effort to address Republican criticism and concerns from Jewish students and faculty, more than 800 faculty members have signed letters urging leaders to resist more forcefully and defend higher education more widely.
The university has been criticised from all sides, including people outside of leadership, and says it should do more. However, the interests are high, and the majority of donations are often allocated for specific causes that immerse them in them to become difficult as funding on rainy days. Johns Hopkins, for example, has made significant contributions, but has fired 2,000 workers following federal cuts.
Many universities seem to be at a loss as to what to do. But some presidents, including Presidents Brown and Princeton, are said to have millions of grants cancelled federal grants, and have fought back with the administration, and sometimes framing it as a fight for academic freedom.
Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgluber called Columbia University's targeting “the biggest threat to American universities since the red scare of the 1950s.”
Obama's advice to lean on donations and rely on principles in the face of threats was also approved by his former Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, in a guest essay for the Times. “Trust me, the former president of Harvard University,” Summers wrote.
One reason Trump is attacking higher education is that many on the right, and even some on the left, universities have been politically weakened.
In his remarks Thursday, Obama also called on law firms facing threats from the Trump administration.
Obama told the crowd, including college students, that everyone should stand up to the rights of others.
“The idea is to cancel speakers who are trying to come to campus and try to get them to scream,” and according to his medium account transcript, “Even if they think their ideas are offensive, they're not just something that the university should do, they're not American.”
To applause, he says, “You let them talk and tell them why they're wrong. That's how you win the argument.”
