Heat from Trump administration puts higher education leaders in ‘terrible position’ with so much at stake

By Ray Sanchez, CNN

(CNN) — The University of California system and Princeton this week joined more than a dozen top schools – including Harvard, Duke and Stanford – in announcing hiring freezes following Trump administration spending cuts.

Johns Hopkins University said it was laying off more than 2,000 employees after it lost more than $800 million from US Agency for International Development funding amid White House efforts to reduce wasteful spending and downsize the federal government.

The drastic moves come as dozens of colleges and universities face federal investigations for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students during pro-Palestinian demonstrations that disrupted campuses across the country last spring over the war in Gaza.

And in the biggest salvo in the escalating war against elite universities, the Trump administration this month targeted Columbia University, canceling about $400 million in federal grants and contracts over allegations of antisemitism on campus. The university on Friday made apparent concessions, announcing a series of new policies, including restrictions on demonstrations, new disciplinary procedures and immediately reviewing its Middle East curriculum.

Washington’s unprecedented campaign against the Ivy League school has the attention of US higher education leaders, who must weigh whether to acquiesce or fight back against a series of onslaughts on issues from pro-Palestinian activism to diversity programs to transgender women competing in women’s sports.

The dangerous assault against the country’s leading universities, higher education leaders warn, has unfolded rapidly on multiple fronts – threatening not only America’s economic and technological strength but also its vaunted democratic system and traditions of academic freedom and free speech.

“It is, I think, the most serious intrusion into academic freedom, and the autonomy of universities,” said Lee Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar and Columbia’s president for more than two decades.

“We’re seeing a kind of effort to transform all parts of the government and all major parts of civil society to bring those into a partisan ideological conformity that is characteristic of emergent authoritarian regimes.”

The warning signs, Bollinger said, are evident: Attempts to gain greater control over traditional civil service sector and administrative agencies; the ignoring of the rule of law and judicial orders; the attacks on the media and law firms and universities; and the crackdown on equity and inclusion programs.

“The pattern of behavior here – the attacks on the courts, the attacks on the rule of law, on law firms, on media and now on universities – they’re part of a pattern of intimidation that is very alarming,” Bollinger said. “How universities respond will play into how other institutions respond.”

On Thursday, the White House delivered yet another blow, signing an executive order to begin dismantling the US Department of Education, which is responsible for administering federal funding for students with disabilities, along with federal Pell Grants for undergraduate students from low-income households.

“I think this is a whole ‘nother level,” Morton Schapiro, an expert on the economics of higher education and former president of Northwestern University, said of the series of moves. “This is certainly the greatest challenge I’ve seen.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai defended the moves.

“The Trump administration’s decision to pause federal grants to universities is linked to these institutions’ inability to address rising antisemitic violence and protect biological women on their campuses — factors that are also not conducive to intellectual inquiry and advancement,” Desai told CNN this week. “The Trump administration is committed to increasing transparency in our scientific research apparatus while cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.”

‘Effort to destroy and control Columbia’

In the second week of his second term, Trump signed an executive order promising to “combat antisemitism” on college campuses – by revoking visas and directing universities to “monitor” and “report” on the activities of international students and staff.

The order, Trump said, came in response to a surge of what the administration described as antisemitic incidents on college campuses that began following Hamas’ deadly October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

The last academic year saw widespread campus unrest, including pro-Palestinian protests and encampments, counterprotests, building takeovers, arrests and scaled-back graduation ceremonies. Columbia became the epicenter of the nationwide demonstrations.

Last spring, the student coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest demanded the school divest from its financial ties to Israel and call for a ceasefire in Gaza. After the university missed its deadline for an agreement on divestment, students and people unaffiliated with the school entered Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves inside. The university called the police to remove the protesters and more than 110 people were arrested, according to the NYPD.

“Columbia is a pretty obvious target, I think, if the government wants to set an example,” said Scott Bok, who stepped down as chairman of the University of Pennsylvania board of trustees in December 2023 – along with the school’s president – following a congressional hearing over the handling of antisemitism on campus. Multiple university leaders across the country resigned amid criticism over protest responses.

On March 8, the Trump administration upped the ante with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian refugee whose green card was revoked over his involvement in demonstrations at Columbia. The government cited his alleged “activities aligned to Hamas.” His detention was seen as having a chilling effect on college campuses, where students said they’re being forced to think carefully before exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech. A Columbia graduate, Khalil has not been charged with a crime.

Since then, two foreign-born academics with visas to work at other prominent universities – Georgetown and Brown – have been detained or deported over homeland security concerns. Another Columbia student and Fulbright scholar left the country after she was told she faced immigration action as part of Trump’s crackdown on international students.

The fallout from the targeting of international students has already begun.

“I hear anecdotally now all the time of people who are not coming to the United States as international students because of fears,” said Bollinger, Columbia’s president emeritus. “There is evidence of this in schools where applications are down considerably from various countries, with major consequences for the financial bottom line of various schools and departments, but also for the richness of our educational system.”

Columbia has nearly 24,000 international students.

“This is an effort to destroy and control Columbia University,” said a former president of a leading research university who asked not to be named.

“It is also aimed at making an example of Columbia, thereby intimidating others from joining to fight these measures. A big coalition is a key to resisting these attacks, but those who stand with Columbia will fear they are the next target of a government takeover and an effort to financially cripple or drop the university.”

Columbia, meanwhile, has said it expelled, suspended or temporarily revoked the degrees of students who barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall.

“Columbia continues to make every effort to ensure that our campus, students, faculty, and staff are safe,” the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said last week. “Columbia is committed to upholding the law, and we expect city, state, and federal agencies to do the same.”

‘A self-inflicted wound’

In its first months, the Trump administration has sought reductions in the overhead costs that research institutions can charge the government through the National Institutes of Health. Courts have placed some orders on hold. Researchers have said the moves would hurt the nation’s status as a global leader. The funds typically cover facilities, maintenance and staff. Research grants for graduate education have also come under the ax.

“We have built up an incredible machine of research and education around the commitment of the federal government for more than a half-century to be a primary funder of basic research and a lot of educational opportunities,” Bollinger said. “And to use that now as a means, as a tool, of trying to bring universities to heel on issues that cut to the core of institutional freedom and institutional integrity, that’s really unacceptable.”

Schools with large endowments could be targeted for increased taxation, according to university leaders. In 2017, the first Trump administration imposed a 1.4 percent tax on large private university endowments. Trump has talked about increasing the tax. Some schools rely on endowments to cover financial aid to students.

“I see the current situation as pretty tragic,” Bok said. “I think, unfortunately, the word existential is not an exaggeration. If you think about the combination of significant research funding being withdrawn and possibly an increased endowment tax. For a major research university, you can pretty quickly get to a billion dollars a year in lost funding. And there’s no university that has an endowment that could fill that gap.”

At Johns Hopkins, for instance, the bulk of the more than 2,000 layoffs affected international employees, the university said. A federal judge on Tuesday indefinitely halted the dismantling of USAID, saying Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency, exceeded his authority.

“Diminishing the US research enterprise in this country would be a self-inflicted wound; that system is one of our greatest strengths as a country,” said the former president of a top research university.

“That enterprise has produced new understanding and treatment of cancer, diabetes, heart disease; has deepened our knowledge of this planet; has unleashed new frontiers in the power of data. Our universities attract top-flight talent from all over the world as faculty and graduate students. If we hobble that, other countries will step into the breach and raid our talent in an effort to rob us of our acknowledged global leadership in research.”

Federal funds accounted for 55 percent of the total $109 billion universities and colleges spent on scientific research, with that share rising even higher for some highly specialized fields, according to a survey last year by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.

‘There are no good choices’

The effects of a flurry of executive orders from the White House and concerns about broader assaults have rippled through the world of higher education, leaving university leaders scrambling for ways to react without their schools becoming targets.

“If you’re a university president right now, you’re in a terrible position, and if you are a board chair or board member, you’re in a terrible position,” the former university president said. “Presidents and boards have to make the impossible strategic calls about what to do. And there are no good choices.”

Some university leaders are calling the escalating clash the largest assault on higher education since the McCarthy era. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy unleashed a political witch hunt to root out US college professors labeled as communists. Many were fired, their careers ruined.

“The gravity of this one is much more serious than anything we faced since the 1950s. But even then, the attacks were on particular individuals, not on institutions,” said Bollinger, who as president of the University of Michigan successfully defended affirmative action at the law school in a landmark 2003 case.

Grutter v. Bollinger long allowed consideration of race in admissions and particularly enhanced opportunities for Black and Hispanic students. It was the law of the land until 2023, when the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

“The outlines of how to deal with very aggressive attacks on universities are clearly there,” Bollinger said. “I would be shocked if universities fell into the trap, ultimately, of sacrificing their basic principles … I do think ultimately that it will be necessary to turn to the courts for assistance and protections.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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CNN’s Yash Roy, Ronald Brownstein, Andy Rose, Matt Egan, John Towfighi, Maria Sole Campinoti, Kevin Liptak, Sunlen Serfaty, Karina Tsui, Elizabeth Wolfe, Chelsea Bailey, Gloria Pazmino and Taylor Galgano contributed to this report.