Defending academic freedom, shared governance, the economic security, the rights of all those who teach or conduct research in higher education, advocating for the interests of the broader community, whether in Ithaca, Tompkins County, or beyond, and protecting higher education as a public good
For some of the legal context, you should check out some of Michael Dorf’s posts, on Columbia and on the AAUP filling the void left by Columbia’s capitulation.
See also the longer statement co-authored with other constitutional law scholars.
Under Title VI, the government may not cut off funds until it has
conducted a program-by-program evaluation of the alleged violations;
provided recipients with notice and “an opportunity for hearing”;
limited any funding cutoff “to the particular program, or part thereof, in which…noncompliance has been…found”; and
submitted a report explaining its actions to the relevant committees in Congress at least thirty days before any funds can be stopped.
These requirements aim to ensure that any withdrawal of funds is based on genuine misbehavior on the university’s part—on illegal toleration of discriminatory conduct, not just on allowance of First Amendment–protected expression. The requirements aim to make clear to recipients of federal funds just what behavior can form the basis for sanctions. And each of the requirements aims to make sure that the sanction fits the offense.
Yet here the sanction was imposed without any agency or court finding that Columbia violated Title VI in its response to antisemitic harassment or discrimination. Even to the extent that some protesters’ behavior amounted to illegal harassment of Jewish students, no agency and no court has concluded that Columbia illegally failed to reasonably respond to such discriminatory behavior—much less failed to act at a level justifying withdrawal of nearly half a billion dollars in funds. The government’s action therefore risks deterring and suppressing constitutionally protected speech—not just illegal discriminatory conduct.
Cornell AAUP chapter member Eric Cheyfitz has a fantastic piece in the Daily Sun, putting recent university developments within the longer history of the evisceration of meaningful faculty and shared governance at Cornell.
“By fiat, the Board of Trustees has just appointed Interim President Michael Kotlikoff as the 15th president of Cornell University. For the first time in my 22 years here as a tenured member of the faculty, there has been no national search for the university presidency. Such searches typically include faculty. So this suspension of a search is one more sign of the decline in faculty governance, which has been declining rapidly at Cornell … The increasing decline of faculty governance nationally has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of the corporate university, which, over a hundred years ago, Thorstein Veblen recognized in his 1918 book The Higher Learning in America. Today, by and large, university presidents play the role of CEO, taking their agendas largely from boards of trustees and donors rather than faculties. President Kotlikoff fits squarely in this mold at a time when the corporate model has become particularly toxic with the Trump administration’s assault on liberal education with its foundation in free speech and academic freedom. “
We share a few weeks back a wonderful series of articles detailing the arbitrary treatment of Momodou Taal by the Cornell administration.
Now it’s the turn of the federal government.
On March 15, Momodou as well as another Cornell student and a Cornell faculty member filed a lawsuit against Trump’s executive orders (14161and 14188) to the extent they authorize deportation or prosecution based on protected speech.
Early this morning, Momodou Taal was informed by the DOJ that “ICE has asked us to … invite Mr. Taal and his counsel to appear in-person … for Mr. Taal to surrender to ICE custody.”
The subject line of the email was “Momodou Taal et al v. Trump, 25-cv-335 (NDNY),” ie., Momodou’s pending case against the US government. As Taal’s lawyers put it, they are “not aware of any other instance in which the government has attempted to initiate service of an NTA [notice to appear] through the Department of Justice in response to the non-citizen filing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of presidential action.”
There is every reason to suspect that the order to surrender to ICE was done in response to the lawsuit. His lawyers further suspect that it is an effort to detain Momodou Taal so as to impede his lawyers’ access to him, and to unlawfully remove the case from the Court’s jurisdiction.
WHOA. On March 15, a Cornell PhD student with UK and Gambian citizenship, here on a student visa, filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn Trump's EO aimed at foreign students accused of "antisemitism.Last night, the DOJ emailed asking him to come to ICE to be detained and put into removal proceedings.
Statement from Harvard, MIT, UChicago, and Cornell AAUP Chapters Regarding Ongoing Crisis at Columbia University
We write to condemn in the strongest possible terms two recent and related federal attacks on Columbia University: the impoundment of some $400 million in research funds, and the targeting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement of Columbia students and alumni involved in pro-Palestine protests—in particular, the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, who is a lawful permanent resident of the United States.
To search for adequate precedent for these brazenly illegal and partisan actions requires looking to the worst days of the Red Scare or the Alien and Sedition Acts. Nothing in the Constitution permits a president to target his political opponents by defying laws passed by Congress or by detaining and threatening to deport people for their viewpoints. Yet the illegality of these moves is almost beside the point; their architects quite candidly describe them as part of a wider crusade against higher education, an attempt to impose top-down control on what Americans teach, study, and learn.
Columbia has borne the brunt of this onslaught over the past week. Yet we know that our own universities are next in the crosshairs. We do not need the crisis to reach our doors before we will rise to defend the academic autonomy of our research and teaching activities, the free speech rights and safety of our community members, and the essential scientific and humanistic contributions of universities to our society. We, the undersigned chapters of the American Association of University Professors, stand in full solidarity with our colleagues at Columbia.
More resources from CGSU-UE – the graduate student union endorsed by over 90% of the student body. The university administration has shared loudly and widely its perspective. Here’s the other side.
The current federal administration’s funding cuts pose an unprecedented threat to scientific research and the infrastructure of higher education. As stated clearly in the recent email from Cornell Leadership, “if the research capabilities of America’s universities are destabilized and undermined in this way, no institutions will be capable of filling the void of discovery and innovation as a public good.” We agree completely that this proposed removal of funding constitutes an existential crisis to research and teaching. The standards of excellence in research and teaching at Cornell are at risk, as are the livelihoods of the workers who maintain them.
During this moment of crisis, Cornell has the opportunity to play a defining role in protecting education and science against our current administration. We need it to rise to the occasion. If federal cuts to research funding proceed, we call on Cornell’s administration to draw on its considerable financial resources, including but not limited to its $10.7 billion endowment, to ensure that research and teaching continue uninterrupted.
We came to Cornell for its dedication to its mission to “discover, preserve and disseminate knowledge” and arrived committed to advancing human knowledge and higher education with our work.Cornell’s administration can honor the academic mission of this institution and the people who do this work by committing to offset any losses incurred due to federal funding cuts. Now is the moment for Cornell’s administration to embrace its responsibility as a leader in research and education. …
Cornell is a private institution with extensive financial resources. Expert financial stewardship has protected the University during troubling times, and, in recent years, ensured unprecedented investment returns. Cornell’s financial health must be maintained of course, and the value of the endowment must continue to grow — but not for the sake of growth alone, but for the sake of, in Ezra Cornell’s words, “the greatest good.” Cornell’s administration has reminded the University community of the endowment’s purpose repeatedly. It is a “perpetual and self-sustaining source of support for the University and its mission,” designed to protect and advance the University’s workings, especially during times of trouble, explained then-chief financial officer Joanne DeStefano MBA ’97 in 2020. We recognize these parameters. But, should the federal government continue wreaking havoc on the federal agencies that fund our research, the devastation to Cornell’s research community, and to the scientific progress writ large, will be enormous. To protect science against the most aggressive attack we’ve witnessed in decades, Cornell’s administration must draw on its extensive financial resources to ensure research continues uninterrupted. …
Cornell Chapter of the AAUP 