Daily Briefing

Good morning, and welcome to Wednesday, April 16. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Transitions. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

Fight fiercely, Harvard!

Many of higher ed’s backers might as well be singing Harvard University’s fight song, even as the Trump administration seems poised to escalate its crackdown.

Praise rolled in for Harvard after the country’s wealthiest university on Monday said it wouldn’t meet Trump-administration demands that leaders believe infringe on Harvard’s rights as a private, independent institution.

• Barack Obama: “Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions … Let’s hope other institutions follow suit,” the former U.S. president posted on social media.
• The Association of American Universities: “I’m sure this was not an easy decision,” President Barbara R. Snyder said in a statement.
• The American Council on Education: Harvard “made great arguments for why this kind of federal overreach is beyond the pale,” Ted Mitchell, ACE’s president, said on a Tuesday webinar. Steven Bloom, assistant vice president for government relations, later added: “Courage is contagious.”
• The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression: “Standing up to the federal government’s strong-arming takes courage,” the free-speech group wrote. “We’ve long been critical of Harvard’s inability to fairly protect the free speech of all students and faculty, but we must not allow the government to coerce, extort, or capture our colleges.”

President Trump responded by threatening Harvard’s tax-exempt status. “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” he posted on his social-media platform on Tuesday.

Columbia University continued its cleanup-and-clarity efforts. Though they’ve been much derided as trying to appease the White House, Columbia’s leaders suggested they’d have done the same thing as Harvard’s, if only they’d been presented the same list of demands:

• Claire Shipman: “Though we seek to continue constructive dialogue with the government, we would reject any agreement that would require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution,” the university’s acting president wrote.

The bigger picture: Higher ed’s defenders have a little more bounce in their step, even if the sector is in for a marathon, not a sprint.

A past president speaks up

Last week, 43 former college presidents signed a letter calling on the Trump administration “to end the destructive attacks” on colleges and start a “constructive dialogue” about educational guidelines and governance. Amy Gutmann, a former president of the University of Pennsylvania who was the Biden administration’s ambassador to Germany, helped draft it. She also enlisted signatures for a Tuesday letter supporting institutions that refuse demands like those Harvard University rejected on Monday.

Gutmann spoke to the Daily Briefing on Tuesday. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Why was it important to make a statement?

It’s incredibly important that as many people as possible speak out, and leaders need to take the lead. We have to show that we are terribly troubled at these unprecedented attacks on freedom. If we don’t, how can we expect others to do so?

There is a tremendous amount of reasonable fear out there, and we have to do things that help us overcome the fear. I find the way to do that is to take action. Action begins by speaking out with others.

Do you have any insight into why so many institutions didn’t reject demands from the Trump administration?

I don’t know for sure, because I’m not sitting in their position. I think it is important to act quickly and speak up quickly. At the same time, you have to be sure you’re standing behind what you say. It’s really important to support presidents who do speak up.

One detail I think is important is there is nothing wrong, and there is a lot right, with universities negotiating with the government about things that universities should want to do in any case, like combat antisemitism, racism, and bigotry on campus.

For decades universities have partnered with the federal government productively. And we take some regulations we would rather not have that are cumbersome. But here’s the key: They don’t cut to the core of what makes us valuable institutions: the defense of academic freedom, the ability to admit students, to hire faculty, to pursue the truth wherever it will lead us.

Those things you can’t compromise on without losing the core value of your university to society. The core value of our universities is that they do have freedom to pursue knowledge. And knowledge sometimes takes you away from what the current administration believes.

Threats to withhold federal research funding highlighted just how much some institutions rely on government grants. Should institutions diversify their funding streams to have a better chance of maintaining independence in the future?

Absolutely. When I was president, from the very early years, we worked to diversify, and we did diversify our funding streams. Even before this destructive assault on higher-education funding from the federal government, there were slowdowns like the Great Recession and the pandemic.

That said, there will be no substitute for government support for research. That funding has helped enable universities to make massive contributions to prosperity, the economy, and something as resonant with the public as life-saving health care. It was a partnership.

If it’s lost, will the universities that get the largest amounts of this funding survive? Yes, but will they be able to do as much for the American public as they did before? No.

You mention resonance with the public. So much discourse about Ivy League institutions seems to feature the politics of grievance.

They’ve faced calls to admit more students. Headlines noted you received $23 million in compensation for your last year as Penn’s president. Does the sector face issues about its contributions to the public good or communicating about them?

I’m the first in my family ever to graduate college. I grew up not understanding the research mission of colleges and universities. What I did understand is what college could do for individuals. And I think that’s what resonates most with people who care about colleges and universities: the opportunity.

There is a lot broken in our society about that opportunity. I think it’s very reasonable for people to want colleges and universities to graduate more students. There’s nothing new about the public not understanding the research part of colleges and universities.

I think the public can understand the value of having free institutions in our society. In the book Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville looked at the U.S. and saw it as a place where lots of independent associations and organizations thrived and were not subservient to a centralized government and the repression that a centralized government can bring.

This question is the right question because it is the question about whether, ultimately, universities can be the source of opportunity for individuals and the source of creativity and innovation for our society. If the answer is “no,” it’s going to really harm all Americans. For the answer to be “yes,” I think we need to stand up as many people as possible for the freedom of universities and colleges to educate students, to hire faulty, to do research, and to pursue knowledge wherever it will bring us. It’s academic freedom, but you could just call it freedom.

Quick hits

• More Education Department appointees: The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday announced seven appointees, including some names higher ed will recognize from the first Trump administration. Paul Moore is returning as chief investigative counsel after he held the same role in the first Trump administration, leading investigations into allegations that colleges didn’t properly disclose sources of foreign funding. Michael Brickman is back as senior adviser after previously leading work on accreditation, distance education, competency-based education, and partnerships between employers and educators. (U.S. Department of Education, The Chronicle)
• Founder of Palestinian student group arrested: Mohsen Mahdawi, who co-founded Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union, was detained in Vermont on Monday when he attended a naturalization appointment in pursuit of U.S. citizenship. Mahdawi, who had permanent U.S. residency, co-founded the student group with Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder who has been fighting deportation since he was arrested in March. (Politico)
• College presidency ends quickly: Leslie McClellon has resigned from Arkansas Baptist College after just five months as president. The institution’s board chair said it “must immediately change the trajectory” if it is to survive financial challenges and enrollment declines. Some employees reported in December that they hadn’t been paid in months. (KARK)
• Already on leave, community-college president resigns: Charles Lepper left Grand Rapids Community College, in Michigan, a month after he was placed on paid administrative leave and subject to a contract review. The institution didn’t explain his departure. Lepper was announced as a finalist for the presidency of a Wisconsin technical college in March. (WOOD)
• Admissions industry turns bullish on grad school: Admissions consultants report high interest in graduate-school applications amid slow hiring of entry-level workers and spiking economic uncertainty. Such dim conditions have traditionally caused more young people to seek advanced degrees. But it’s not yet clear whether a generation of prospective students that’s highly debt sensitive will follow through at a time of rampant speculation that artificial-intelligence tools could disrupt white-collar work. (Bloomberg)

Transitions

• Tricia Chastain, chief business officer at Kennesaw State University, has been named executive vice president for administration and finance and chief business officer at Georgia Institute of Technology.
• Manohar Singh, interim president of Western Connecticut State University, has been named chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com. You can also find Transitions online here.

Footnote

A decade ago, the College Football Playoff unveiled a towering new national championship trophy.

A 26.5-inch-tall gilded cone “features a focused football at the center of the base that rises to form an actual-size ball.” It’s perched atop a foot-high bronze pedestal finished in a “hand-rubbed black patina.” Together, the pieces amount to more than five-dozen pounds of bragging rights for the young men who emerge victorious from college athletics’ preeminent televised spectacle.

“Rarely do you have the opportunity to create an identity and shape it into an iconic object that will be embedded with so much pride and meaning,” Michael Gericke, a partner at Pentagram, the design consultancy that created the trophy, said at the time.

The trophy breaks into two parts so that the national champions can hoist it. But Vice President J.D. Vance didn’t account for that during a Monday ceremony on the White House’s South lawn, which honored his alma mater, Ohio State University, for winning the title in January.

Vance tried to hoist the entire 65-pound monstrosity at once. The base plunged to the ground. The vice president stooped and scrambled for it. Running back TreVeyon Henderson saved the top from crashing down.

“I didn’t want anyone after Ohio State to get the trophy so I decided to break it,” Vance later posted on social media.

Searching for symbolism in Vance’s butterfingers? Consider the current state of major college athletics, where squabbling over pay-for-play has left fans, policymakers, and even some players unhappy.

College sports pretends to offer a romantic promise: Institutions of vastly differing financial heft can compete on a level playing field with amateur athletes who want nothing more than to live the high-minded ideals of sportsmanship. In reality, however, all but those at the top are at risk of crashing down because administrators couldn’t resist building bigger and bigger trophies for themselves, and policymakers failed to understand how it all fits together.