The following is a guest contribution and reflects the authors’ views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
Columbia University appears to have given in to the government’s anti-constitutional and autocratic attack on free speech and the rule of law. In the face of Project 2025-inspired demands from the Trump administration, Columbia expelled students and revoked degrees. On Friday, they announced further concessions, including, most concerningly to us, the removal of academic self-governance from the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.
After all of this, the restoration of $400 million in research grants, including lifesaving clinical trials and training grants for postdocs and students, is still not guaranteed. And as President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 has aptly put it, “once you make concessions once, it’s hard not to make them again.”
It may be easy to label Columbia’s actions as capitulation. However, when the full force of the U.S. government is set against any single institution, resistance is difficult.
But it’s not just Columbia. Princeton, along with 59 others, is on a list of universities targeted by the administration. President Eisgruber has started the pushback, standing up on behalf of academic freedom and saying that the Trump administration is attacking higher education. Professors, students, other universities, and the public should join him: When targeting one institution is a bald attempt to divide and conquer, as is the case with Columbia, it is essential for a coalition or group of institutions and individuals to stand up together.
Threats to university research directly affect student opportunity. Here at Princeton, students can work with world-class scientists and scholars, opening gateways to medical and graduate schools. If labs close, that opportunity shrinks: Students will have fewer opportunities to do research and build their futures.
The recent hiring freeze here at Princeton and at peer institutions such as Harvard and Penn is an early warning sign. Elsewhere, graduate schools are rescinding offers to college seniors. The damage threatens to encompass all fields including social sciences, engineering, and humanities, devaluing the degrees all students are working toward.
Do not be fooled by those who wish to use impassioned debates within higher education as a means of driving us apart. Last year Congressional Republicans used the war in Gaza and the ensuing student protests as a wedge. Now, inspired by strategists like Christopher Rufo, the administration is going after programs with words like “diversity.” They will continue to look for points of legitimate disagreement, then lean into those points to advance autocracy.
Some values transcend ideology or party. Colleges and universities have been a pillar of American strength throughout Democratic and Republican governments over the last hundred years. That pillar is now under threat as part of a broader attack on a law-based society, and as part of a larger assault on institutions, from Social Security to flight safety.
As Lee Bollinger, former president of Columbia and the University of Michigan, has put it, we are in the midst of an authoritarian takeover. In the midst of this, standing up for higher education is part of a larger defense of the whole nation’s well-being and the rules-based system that has allowed the nation to prosper.
Some may be apprehensive of speaking out in isolation. However, there is no reward for obeying in advance. A successful response requires action, together. In Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan’s work on nonviolent movements around the world, they found that if a movement spreads to even a few percent of the population, success becomes more likely than not. Furthermore, there are network effects: 10 times as many people can potentially make 100 times the impact. Just like individuals, when colleges and universities work together, they will be stronger.
Indeed, for maximum effect, higher education will have to find as many allies as possible. We can enlist everyone who has benefited from publicly-funded research, including treatments for cancer and childhood illnesses, batteries, HDTV, the Internet, weather forecasting, and more. We must remind the public that the discoveries of research translate basic science to health, prosperity, and security, touching billions. Without protection from the public, this accumulated capacity for greatness won’t survive the illegal assaults on our education system.
President Eisgruber wrote that Princeton and other institutions should engage in “forceful litigation.” But he has institutional responsibilities, both at Princeton and his role at the Association of American Universities, that limit what he can say or do. That is where the rest of us come in.
We scholars cannot let the government hold our work hostage. Science funding is being withheld in retaliation for protected free speech. We are passionate about science and its benefits to society, but we fear more what will happen if we do not help defend everyone’s fundamental rights. Freedom of expression and inquiry come first. If we lose these, we are at risk of losing not only science, but the entire educational enterprise — and broader freedoms in all society. In another sector, some big law firms are defending themselves. Like them, we must speak out for both ourselves and for society.
Finally: Students, we urge you to do your part. Use your critical thinking skills, and notice that institutions are letting us down. As faculty, our methods of communication involve paragraphs. Through new media like TikTok, you can craft compelling messages about science, learning, and freedom. Go in person to protest against the external threat. Use your freedom. Use your power.
We must not shrink from this moment. We hope that President Eisgruber’s example is amplified by all of us, for the sake of Princeton, Columbia, and the nation.
Sam Wang is a professor of Neuroscience. He can be reached at sswang[at]princeton.edu.
Andrew Leifer is an associate professor of Neuroscience and Physics. Jonathan Pillow, David Tank, and Ilana Witten are professors of Neuroscience.
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