The conversation between the two Rutgers University professors who were ignited in a higher education circle in the US lasted only about ten minutes.
The professor teaches chemistry in Camden, New Jersey, but said he is dissatisfied with the sudden cuts to study funding and the efforts to determine policy on some campuses.
They were also troubled by the lack of a unified response by university leaders.
“We had to write what we had meat,” said David Salas de la Cruz, who directs the Graduate School of Chemistry program at Rutgers University Camden. He compared the effort to the North Atlantic Treaty Agency (NATO, a military alliance of 32 countries).
“It's not just about money,” he said. “This is about the essence of education.”
Late last month, Professor Salas de La Cruz and Paul Boxer, professors of psychology at Rutgers University's Newark, drafted the one-page “Mutual Defense Compact.” This was all solidarity statements of solidarity across schools at the Big Ten Athletic and Academic Conference. “Invasion of one member university,” they wrote, “is considered an invasion of everyone.”
Participating schools are asked to commit to “uniform and active responses” when member universities are “under direct political or legal infringement.” For example, teachers may be asked to provide legal services, strategic communications, or expert testimony.
Currently approved by faculty members of more than a dozen university, the compact has no commitment from school administrators to provide financial support for the Joint Defense Fund, and detractors have criticized the initiative as barely teething.
Still, Rutgers' resolution and the professor's efforts to promote collective responses reflected a change in strategy.
“A higher education as an entity is definitely worth fighting for,” Professor Boxer said.
“The idea of ​​a country where generative research will be reduced to a point under the federal thumb,” he added. “It's against everything I believe.”
Throughout March, elite universities were targeted one by one, one by one, as the Trump administration began researching diversity policies and whether administrators were doing enough to protect Jewish students from harassment. Federal immigration agents began moving to send international students who opposed Israeli war in Gaza.
Under President Trump, the National Science Foundation has cancelled more than 400 awards that are generally fuelled by university research. According to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group, the National Institutes of Health, a major source of biomedical research funding in the United States, has concluded approximately 780 grants.
Rutgers itself was one of 60 universities that received warnings in March that federal officials began an investigation into whether they violated the civil rights of Jewish students by not protecting them from discrimination.
The school was struggling to navigate broadside when Columbia University agreed to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and the Middle East Research Division, as it attempted to avoid protest policies, security practices, and a $400 million federal cut in funding for Trump.
Contrary to this background, Senators Rutgers from Flagship State University in New Jersey gathered to vote for a rushed drafted resolution.
Members of Senator Rutgers have never publicly criticized the compact before it was approved on March 28th by votes of 62-17, Professor Boxer said. However, in the email, some employees expressed concern that there is a risk that Rutgers is a bigger target for the Trump administration.
“We had to accept it,” Professor Boxer said.
Since then, nine additional big 10 schools, including the University of Michigan, Michigan, Ohio and the University of Washington, have passed roughly the same resolution as Rutgers adopted.
Outside the Big Ten, the University of Massachusetts Amherst University, New York State University, and at least three New York University schools (Hunter, Host and City College) have adopted similar statements of solidarity. Faculty Senators from several other universities are expected to vote in the coming weeks.
Some teachers are skeptical that resolutions make a big difference.
“In most universities, faculty senators have little power, if any,” said Keith Lyles, a physics professor who is one of the 214 Michigan employees who voted against the school's compact. “I don't think these moves will have a big impact on what the administration will do.”
And he said he doesn't believe Trump's criticism of higher education is completely wrong. Professor Lyles said he has long been opposed to university recruitment policies based on diversity, equity and inclusive goals.
“Pick your fight and your allies wisely,” he urged his colleagues before the Michigan faculty vote began on April 17th. “Dieting on Day Hill with a legal mutual suicide agreement is not a very healthy strategy.”
Approximately 2,760 of his colleagues opposed, and the resolution passed with 93% support.
Rutgers' Jonathan Holloway said he supports the “spirit” of the initiative but failed to provide additional support as he resigned at the end of the school year, according to Rutgers Student News Outlet.
In a statement this week, a university spokesperson said Dr. Holloway's “thanks for the resolution,” saying Rutgers continues to support efforts “to reverse federal actions that are harmful to our mission.”
Without obvious buy-in from administrators, supporters said the clear goals Rutgers teachers laid out at the beginning have already helped to help change the tone of public debate.
Last week, Harvard sued the Trump administration over billions of dollars in proposed cuts, rather than meeting the president's demands. And after months of silence, more than 500 university administrators now signed a statement saying “government overreach and political interference are putting American higher education at risk.”
Cuny's faculty Senate President John Verzani believed that Rutgers played a “huge” role in the evolving story.
“To create this kind of alliance, it definitely hurried off within the faculty senator,” Professor Verzani said.
Journalism professor Todd Wolfson leads the Rutgers teachers union. He is also the president of the National Association of University Professors, a national organization.
He said he saw efforts to protect academic freedom and independence of research institutions as an existential battle.
“As Ed gets higher,” Professor Wolfson said, “So does the United States.”
Michael Yarbrough, who contributes to a website called We Are Higher ED, which tracks university responses to the Trump administration, said staff from community colleges, large research universities and Ivy League schools are sharing information in a group chat of 60 people.
Professor Yarbrough, who teaches law and society at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, compared the value of group chat. And it is now formed in line with sociological theory known as “weak ties strength” among teachers at distant schools where mutual defence compacts are currently located.
“I understand that some people may be afraid,” Professor Yarbrough said. “But what we did is focus on something that is within our control.
