To the Editor:
Re “Columbia Faculty Protests as Trump Officials Praise University’s Concessions” (news article, March 26):
As a graduate of the Columbia University business school, I write this letter with sadness and foreboding. In 1970, I was the student who organized the meeting where a majority of my fellow students voted for a strike that briefly closed the business school to protest the Vietnam War. The school, which was conservative for the time, had remained mostly open during the larger university protests in 1968.
There was not one official at the school who ever discouraged my actions. There were no recriminations. Amazingly enough, there was never a moment when I feared that any action would be taken against me or that any of my actions would be curtailed.
Universities like Columbia are the crown jewels of our civilization, advancing knowledge through freedom of thought. How disappointing to see this great university, a former bastion of free speech and expression, surrender its ideals to a president wielding the tawdry threat of money to tell it how to act and what to teach.
The surrender of the academy is an unmistakable step on the road to authoritarianism.
David Shactman
Sarasota, Fla.
To the Editor:
As the not so proud mother of three Columbia graduates, I applaud President Trump’s actions. I am neither anti-science nor politically conservative. The university has had over a year to stanch the wave of virulent antisemitism sweeping the campus and has done nothing on its own. Only when President Trump set draconian rules for reinstating grants did the Columbia administration enact measures to ensure the safety of Jewish students. Unfortunately, that is today’s climate.
Sharon Senderowicz
Great Neck, N.Y.
To the Editor:
As retired university officials, we believe in the mission and the accomplishments of American colleges and universities. And we are appalled at the administration’s threats to withhold valuable federal funds from universities unless they behave in ways the administration approves. Finally, we are concerned at the apparent capitulation of Columbia University to the administration’s demands and worried that others may follow.
We were students at Swarthmore College in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Congress had passed the National Defense Education Act, one purpose of which was to provide colleges and universities with funds for scholarships so that the United States could educate bright young people who would be able to help us compete with Russia during the Cold War. In order to receive those funds, however, the institutions needed to agree to administer a loyalty oath to scholarship recipients.
Courtney Smith, the president of Swarthmore at the time, helped to organize leaders of other major colleges and universities to oppose the administration’s policy as an unconstitutional assault on freedom of speech. The concerted opposition succeeded, and the Eisenhower administration backed off. The reasons for the current administration’s actions are different and so are the financial stakes — but the underlying issue is the same.
American colleges and universities must be free to operate independently as they did throughout the 20th century, when many became among the leading academic institutions in the world. That independence allowed them to produce countless numbers of talented graduates who became leaders in a multitude of fields and to conduct pathbreaking research that led to many important innovations.
The administration attacks universities one at a time, but history tells us that the institutions can succeed in overcoming those attacks if they act together.
Randolph G. Moore
Maurice Eldridge
Mr. Moore is a former regent of the University of Hawaii. Mr. Eldridge is a retired vice president of Swarthmore College.
To the Editor:
Come on, university presidents! Now is not the time to cower in your office suites! President Trump can pick you off one by one unless you organize and mobilize.
You have all sorts of resources at your hand: inter-university organizations, professional and academic associations, funders, donors, faculty, staff, alumni, students, supportive politicians and others.
You should be leading the offensive against the depredations of the Trump administration. Not only is it in your interest to oppose Mr. Trump’s vicious policies and political intimidation, but it is also your moral obligation to defend democratic institutions against autocratic control.
You and your administrative staff (chancellors, provosts, deans and academic chairs) can lead the resistance against Mr. Trump and his minions. As individuals, we are powerless; when we organize, we have power. Use it!
Ralph W. Larkin
New York
The writer is a retired professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.
#Opinion #Universities #Resist #Trumps #Tactics
