Last week, Harvard University filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after it froze over $2 billion in federal funding. Harvard also announced that it would not capitulate to the administration’s invasive demands, which included ending affirmative action in hiring, reforming admissions policies to screen for international students “hostile to American values” and closing all DEI offices and programming.
The administration is supposedly on a quest to “reclaim” higher education, which involves whitewashing the institutions’ history, destroying their initiatives to diversify the next generation’s workforce and stifling freedom of speech in the very venue where the First Amendment should be most championed.
By suing The Trump administration, Harvard is sending a powerful message: Bullying a top, private, research university will not be tolerated. Other universities should follow Harvard’s blueprint.
Like Harvard, Northwestern is one of several elite universities facing persecution from the Trump administration in an unprecedented and despicable attack on higher education.
Two weeks ago, The Daily reported that the federal government intended to freeze $790 million in funding without even notifying NU, raising questions about how research initiatives would be impacted.
University President Michael Schill responded with an email outlining NU’s plan to temporarily self-fund its research — an important step in circumventing the harm this administration will inflict on private universities.
However, NU’s response to the Trump regime has been deeply disheartening. Since Trump took office, the University has scrubbed evidence of DEI programming online and faculty in diversity roles have had their titles changed to vague alternatives.
These changes took place even before the federal government froze NU’s funding. Rather than standing true to its guiding principles of championing diversity and inclusion, the University has surrendered to cowardice.
The Trump administration has also targeted innocent and law-abiding permanent residents with deporations. Many of them have been college students at universities like Tufts University and Columbia University who were active in pro-Palestinian protests.
In a mass email from Provost Kathleen Hagerty, the University made its stance soberingly clear: Rather than offering to provide legal protection to its students, NU encouraged vulnerable students to “reach out to an immigration attorney.” Her email also said NU would “follow the law.”
A university with a $14.3 billion endowment should not bow down to predatory demands and petty intimidation from Trump.
In a time of political calamity, NU has the chance to show its true colors: Are we a university that cowers to bullies, sells our students short and turns a blind eye to our guiding values? Or can we pull up our sleeves and mobilize against The Trump administration?
This mobilization could take various forms.
On the one hand, we could follow in Harvard’s footsteps and sue the Trump administration. What I would love to see, though, is a collective action approach where elite universities — including NU, Columbia, Harvard, Cornell University, Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania — and other targeted schools take a calculated risk and stand up to Trump’s attacks on higher education.
A lawsuit from one university is one thing; but collective legal action from the top universities in the country would send an even more powerful message.
Now is the time for NU to stand up for its community. Now is the time to protect our international students, our marginalized students, our “DEI hires,” our student protesters exercising their constitutional right to free speech. Now is hardly the time for cowardice.
Gabe Hawkins is a Medill freshman. He can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
