A movement among schools in the Big Ten athletic conference to band together in a “mutual defense compact” to resist efforts by the Trump administration to influence colleges is making headway, The New York Times reports.
The White House sent a warning last month to more than 50 colleges and universities warning them about an inquiry into their efforts to protect Jewish students from discrimination.
This, combined with the Trump administration’s decision to cut funding to Columbia University even though the school agreed to the government’s demands, promoted two professors at Rutgers University to draft a “mutual defense compact” that would act as a statement of solidarity for schools in the Big Ten conference.
“An infringement against one member university shall be considered an infringement against all,” it reads, adding that “under this compact, all participating institutions shall commit meaningful funding to a shared or distributed defense fund. This fund shall be used to provide immediate and strategic support to any member institution under direct political or legal infringement.”
Similar resolutions have since been adopted by the faculties of more than a dozen schools, including Michigan State, the University of Michigan, Ohio State, and the University of Washington, and several schools outside the Big Ten, including the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the State University of New York.
“We needed to write something that had some meat,” said David Salas-de la Cruz, chemistry professor and director of Rutgers University-Camden’s chemistry graduate program who co-wrote the initial resolution.
“Higher education, as an entity, is definitely worth fighting for,” added co-writer Paul Boxer, a psychology professor at Rutgers University-Newark.
“The idea of a country where generative research gets cut down to the point where it’s under the thumb of the federal government,” he added, “is contrary to everything I believe in.”
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