In the days following Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016, dozens of college leaders sent messages to their campuses, seeking to address widespread shock at the electoral upset and offer support to worried students and faculty members.
Now, as a second Trump presidency looms, campus leaders have so far been more restrained. Some find themselves bound by new institutional-neutrality policies, many of which were put in place following backlash to pointed statements from some presidents about protests over the war in Gaza. It’s been less than a day since the election was called for Trump, so other leaders may speak out in the coming days, as happened in 2016.
Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University, is among the few college presidents to have spoken out. A critic of institutional neutrality, Roth said he wanted to defend the mission of higher education and not make partisan talking points. In his message, he named Trump and some of the threats he’s made against higher education, like mass deportation of undocumented students and dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
Roth viewed his statement as an “intervention in the conversation” his campus is already having about the election’s results. He wanted to give students something to reflect on and remind them to uphold the democratic values of the university. “What I hope it accomplishes is that it shows people that the leadership of the institution cares about the public sphere,” he said.
The presidents of American University, Emerson College, in Boston, and Morgan State University also made statements, though all three were more muted than was Roth’s, stopping short of naming Trump or the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.
At Morgan State, David K. Wilson commended those who voted or volunteered. “While the outcome may not reflect the choice many of you hoped for, I want to remind you that democracy, like life, is a journey. It is a process, not a single moment or decision,” Wilson wrote. “Sometimes, we experience outcomes that align with our hopes and values, while at other times, the results challenge us to dig deeper, recommit, and continue advocating for the change we wish to see.”
Jonathan R. Alger, at American, acknowledged sentiments on his campus might be split. “Many may be experiencing feelings of grief, and many may be experiencing feelings of optimism,” he wrote. “It is important and healthy for each of us to give space to those feelings and to acknowledge that others are working through their own feelings and reactions.”
And Jay M. Bernhardt, at Emerson, affirmed his institution’s “commitment to inclusion, respect, and support for each and every Emersonian,” noting, “We embrace and are enriched by our diversity of backgrounds, beliefs, identities, abilities, and experiences.” Bernhardt was not made available for an interview in time for publication. An Emerson spokesperson told The Chronicle that “the message sent to Emerson’s internal community today was one of support.”
Many of the statements made by college leaders in 2016 struck a similar tone. Presidents told The Chronicle at the time that they found themselves walking a fine line. “I tried to be as nonpartisan as possible,” James L. Gaudino, then the president of Central Washington University, said at the time. “I checked with staff and asked them, Is there any way that someone could point to a sentence or a word and say that’s anti-Trump or that’s pro-Clinton? I really just tried to focus it on the process and the rhetoric.”
The 2016 statements were largely symbolic, “saying, essentially, we know that this is a difficult time,” said Liane I. Hypolite, an assistant professor of educational leadership at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona who’s a co-author of a paper analyzing several dozen messages sent by presidents and senior administrators at the time. Many leaders offered lists of available mental-health resources on their campuses, but they didn’t indicate whether they would expand those services or take other actions in response to Trump’s election, she said. “There really wasn’t any letter that we read that it felt like they were providing any different and additional resources that students might need, or an explicit call to the fact that this was going to be a harmful time to particularly minoritized communities.”
A major exception came about a week and a half after the 2016 election, when more than 100 presidents took a stronger stance in a joint letter to Trump, saying, “We urge you to condemn and work to prevent the harassment, hate, and acts of violence that are being perpetrated across our nation, sometimes in your name, which is now synonymous with our nation’s highest office.” (By that time, a rash of racist and antisemitic incidents had gripped the sector.)
Prior to 2016, Hypolite said, it was rare for presidents to weigh in on national election results. But because of the pitched nature of that election cycle on campuses — many of which saw rallies and controversial speakers — leaders may have been compelled to make statements to preempt possible unrest on their campuses, and to address the unexpected nature of Trump’s victory, she said.
At least one president, Ana Mari Cauce of the University of Washington, nodded to her own background in acknowledging the perceived threats of a Trump presidency. “As an immigrant, Latina, lesbian, I can understand why some in our community may be feeling marginalized, threatened, or afraid,” Cauce wrote the day after the 2016 election. (As of Wednesday afternoon, Cauce has not issued a statement on the 2024 results, though she encouraged community members to vote in a message earlier this week.)
Given the increasing adoption of neutrality policies, Hypolite said she isn’t surprised by the paucity of statements in the immediate wake of the 2024 election. That could change, she said, if a wave of campus protests crop up in the coming weeks, as they did in response to the war in Gaza in the fall and spring. “That would be the circumstance under which we’d see a lot of statements telling people, Don’t do this and don’t do that, or there will be these consequences,” Hypolite said.
