October 20, 2025 • 22 mins
In this episode of One Thing Trump Did, we look at the growing pressure campaign that the Trump Administration is exerting on a number of higher education institutions across the country. Jeremy is joined by Joy Connolly, president of the American Council of Learned Societies. #Trump #HigherEd #Education #Harvard #Columbia #IvyLeague #College #LindaMcMahon #tuition
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to one thing Trump did, available exclusively on the
Middle podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson, and here's something you
may not know about me. I am the child of academics.
I grew up on the campus of the University of Illinois,
which gave me a first hand look at how incredible
our universities are across this country. Public ones, private ones,
big ones, small ones. They are in fact the envy
(00:36):
of the world. But right now President Trump is trying
to use every lever of the federal government to gain
more control over universities in this country, threatening to withhold
federal funding if they don't do what he wants, which
includes more diversity of opinion on campuses that means more
conservative opinion on campuses, fewer international students, and adopting the
(00:58):
administration's definition of those are just a few of the
things the president wants now. Some universities, including Columbia and Brown,
have settled with the administration and paid huge sums of
money and agreed to things like adopting the Trump administration's
gender definitions. Others, like Harvard University, have refused to settle,
(01:19):
at least so far, and now the administration is asking
a number of universities to sign a compact in exchange
for federal funding or the possibility of federal funding. So
for this week's One Thing Trump did, I am joined
by Joy Connolly, who's the president of the American Council
of Learned Societies, which represents dozens of scholarly organizations. Joy,
(01:39):
it's great to have you here.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Jeremy and I assume I was supposed to say that
like that learned not learned societies, correct, So okay, good,
I want to make sure I sound smart with this crowd. Okay,
So let's set the stage here. How important is federal
funding for colleges and universities.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's enormously important. And the government knows that the amazing
system that you described at the beginning is possible because
of a historic seventy five year old partnership between the
government and colleges and universities across the country that have
used federal funds to open up access to schools for
undergraduates who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to go,
(02:20):
and who have used federal funds in amazing ways to
find cures for disease, to open up angles on history
and culture all over the world. We would never otherwise
be able to explore to change public policy by producing knowledge.
None of this would be possible, and the system would
not be the global force that it is a force
for good that it is without federal funds.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
And in the past, are there typically strings attached when
a university gets federal funding.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
There are, And that makes sense. And for the White
House or anyone in the administration to suggest in the
binary terms they so often use to suggest other wise,
is you know, to suggest that academics are saying we
want this money with no strings. It's ridiculous. And everyone
understands that the government that any funder, has conditions, has expectations.
(03:12):
That makes sense. The difference here is that differences of
opinion about regulations and how they should be enforced are
typically worked out in the courts through rules, through moderated discussions,
through deliberation. It takes time, but there are rules and procedures,
and that's the way a good robust democracy should work.
(03:35):
So I think about to use an example, if we
want to jump to that, the North Carolina bathroom ban
of twenty sixteen. You know, you might remember the Obama
administration sent a letter to colleges and universities saying they
should open up bathrooms to all people, regardless of I mean,
according to the identity of the person. Yeah, they could
(03:57):
use the bathroom that they want to use. And at
that point, of course, Republicans in North Carolina screamed that
it was government overreach and it was an improper intrusion
into schools and into you know, education and self government
and sexual autonomy. But how has it worked out. It
was worked out in the courts, and it's still being
worked out in the courts. That's the way. That's the
way the conversation has run in the past.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
So were the universities caught off guard when the Trump
administration started going after certain universities and threatening to withhold
federal funding.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
That's a good question. I want to say yes and no.
We all read Project twenty twenty five, or the pieces
of it having to do with higher education. We knew
what was coming. This is the playbook. It's also a
playbook that's familiar from Eastern Europe, the Communist bloc, you know,
other repressive and authoritarian governments, and so in a certain sense,
maybe from thirty thousand feet up universities and colleges knew
(04:50):
what was in the cards. I think the effectiveness of
the administration and moving fast, the kind of carpet bombing
strategy or the name of your own podcast, you know,
is a good indicator of that something's happening every day,
and especially the success of the divide and conquer strategy.
(05:10):
That's really what this administration likes to do. It pushes
a simple story, in the case of the story about
higher education, a very misleading one, but it pushes it
very hard. And then it looks at the sector and
it divides and seeks to conquer through that division by
exploiting the competition that is typically a healthy part of
(05:32):
American higher education. This administration exploits and turns into division
and conflict well, which.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Gets to the what's been happening here, which is it's
like they'll go after one school and then they'll go
to another school, and it's like, why are they picking
these ones in particular? And then how come this list?
And we'll get to the compact later, but how come
it is like these ten schools? So let's talk about
some of the early stuff that happened. Columbia settled with
the white House agreed to pay two hundred million dollars
(05:57):
and do some policy changes. Brown paid fifty million dollars
and did some policy changes. But other universities, including Harvard
and UCLA have sued the administration. Have the schools that
settled been left alone since then? And have the schools
that sued been harmed in other ways?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I doubt that the schools that settled have been left alone.
I'm not in those offices, and my job, and the
job of any outside observer, you know, is not to
point fingers and scold or blame. At this point, these
universities are under immense pressure. We all understand that. But
there are many associations that these universities that did settle
(06:40):
are part of. Conversations are ongoing, They're lively, they connect presidents, provosts,
general counsels. So no, I don't think they've been left alone.
And there's sympathy and a desire to stand up and
be stronger together that you'll hear. For example, Chris Heisgrouper,
the president of Princeton. He has been calling for for
(07:00):
months the schools that haven't settled, which is the vast majority.
Of course, there are thousands of institutions of higher education
across the country. They're going about their business in a
state of confusion, but attempting to forge on, i would say,
and doing a pretty heroic job of it. One of
the challenges of dealing with this administration is the lack
(07:22):
of feedback and lack of certainty. So someone you know,
you're a provost or a scientist at a university in
this country, you read in the paper that your university
has lost billions in funding. You think, how will this
affect me? It's very difficult to find out in fact,
so there's paralysis, there's confusion. Can scientists higher lab assistance?
(07:44):
Can programs be mounted, you know, with the same funding
and same staff that they had last year? These questions
are really difficult to answer in a lot of universities. So,
as I say, they forge on, but it's been a challenge. Well.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
The interesting thing also is that the administration not only
has withheld funding or pulled back funding that's already been
given to universities, it also doesn't want them bringing in
so many foreign students, which is where they get a
lot of money as well, and it doesn't want them
to raise tuition, which is obviously where they get money
as well, so it's kind of like hitting in many
different ways at the funding sources of of these colleges
(08:21):
and universities.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, I live in a city in New York City
where one of the candidates, the leading candidate for mayor,
this young, young candidate for mayor, Mom Donnie, is getting
attacked by the right and people in the center too
and called a kami because he's proposing government controls on
buses and grocery stores. This is an attempt to do
(08:44):
price controls on the whole American system of higher education
from Washington, d C. It's the inconsistency and hypocrisy is
pretty staggering.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So we mentioned this compact. This is the newest part
of this. The administration is trying to get a number
of universities society in a compact asking colleges to voluntarily
agree to overhaul or abolish departments that purposefully punish, belittle,
and even spark violence against conservative ideas. That's a quote.
It also asks universities to commit to not considering transgender
(09:15):
women to be women and to reject foreign applicant's quote,
who demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or
its values. What is this really about.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Do you think it is not about? What Mark Rowan
said in the New York Times recently, and I mentioned
him because he was responsible for writing the compact most
of it. He's a billionaire who got interested in higher
education for reasons I won't speculate about because I don't know.
I don't know the man. But this administration's not interested
in reform, they're not interested in critique, they're not interested
(09:46):
in improving higher ed as it currently exists. And this
may sound like what a left wing academic always says,
very stereotypical, but let's remember that this is what the
administration actually is saying. They want you undermine, They want
to destroy higher education. JD. Vance, the Vice President, said
(10:06):
a few years ago, if any of us want to
do the things we want to do for our country
and the people who live in it, we have to
honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country. This
is another step in that attack. So I want to
make no mistake about that.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
It's just another power center that you think that they're
just going after for that reason. And you've said the
university should not sign this compact. Do you think any will.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
It's possible for all manner of reasons. You've already mentioned
universities that made settlements earlier, so it hasn't been the
United Front, and that fact complicates the situation for people
making these decisions. Now perfectly possible that some universities may sign.
I hope not, but it's possible.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I will stay with us because we're going to talk
more about that compact and the long game here with
Joy Connolly, the ACLUS President. We will be right back
with more of One Thing Trump Did. Welcome back to
(11:27):
One Thing Trump Did exclusively on the Middle Podcast Feed.
I'm Jeremy Hobson, and this episode we're talking about the
Trump administration's pressure campaign against universities and what that means
for the overall landscape of higher ed in this country.
I'm joined by Joy Connolly, president of the American Council
of Learned Societies, So Joy, the compact started with Vanderbilt, Dartmouth,
(11:49):
University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, MIT, University of Texas, Austin,
University of Arizona, Brown University, and University of Virginia. As
of now, as we're recording this podcast, Brown and MIT
have said, no, they're not interested. But why do you
think these schools were selected as the first ones.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It's difficult to know, and a big part of my
brain tells me that the almost random feel of it
is part of the attack, that the dangling of this
puzzle is designed to distract us. One thing I will
note about all these universities that all your listeners will
know too. They're large, they're wealthy, they're influential, and they're
(12:32):
exactly the kind of universities that benefit and do great
good because of federal funding.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And there are a mix of public and private too.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Correct, they're a mix of public and private. Although I
can't resist the chance to point out that those labels
are very misleading. The amount of public so called funds
that a university like the University of Michigan depends on
is in the single digits. Now you know, the vast
majority of so called public universities funding actually from private sources.
(13:01):
It's worth reminding people that these labels are are more
complicated than they seem.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah, MIT, as we said, rejected the offer. So did Brown,
but MIT said it would limit free speech on campus.
The administration also claims this is about free speech and
not allowing conservatives to be heard at the nation's hire
rad institutions. What do you think about that that both
sides are saying this is about free speech.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
It I think the important thing to remember here is
that universities already have long established procedures and rules to
to consider, reflect on, and then evaluate speech on campus.
So again, I wouldn't be distracted by this compact as
an effort to reform. There are already rules in place.
(13:46):
Despite what the administration says. They may not like exactly
how they're being enforced all the time, but you know,
campuses are not a wilderness of people crying out, you know,
with with with no accountability. And I think when we
stop to think about how the government would enforce what
they're calling for, it gets pretty scary pretty fast. So
(14:09):
imagine you're you know, you're a faculty member. You want
to teach a class because you're you're a French professor,
and you want to teach a class about Francophone African culture, right,
and you're a student who is a first gen college student,
and you're really excited about going into business and one
of the growth areas on the planet, which is Africa,
(14:31):
and you need to you know, you need to learn French. Well,
this administration is proposing regulating the inner workings of a
university such that students and departments uh students that want
to study languages or culture that that lead to degrees
that don't lead to the high salaries in the greatest
(14:54):
numbers that the administration is looking for, those fields will
be underfunded, those classes won't be available, and the faculty,
if they're teaching literature that criticizes conservative ideas, may find
themselves or you know, will find themselves under threat and
may find themselves shut down. So even you know, as
soon as you start thinking about the mechanisms of enforcement
(15:15):
people government officials without accountability, looking at syllipuses, looking at
book assignments, looking at who gets hired and what gets taught.
I mean, what country are we living in here?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Well, and you think about a place like the University
of Texas Austin, which is on this list with the compact.
It's in a state. It's a public university, state university
that's in a state that is run by Republicans who
have a big, big majority in the legislature. So if
you're a professor at ut Austin and you do something
that they don't think aligns with the administration's priorities. You're
(15:49):
not going to really have people that have your back
at the state level who control, you know, the university
at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Correct, And we have to remember, and this is an
administration that appointed you know, the head of the Worldwide
Wrestling Foundation is the Secretary of Education, and you know,
an anti vaxer Linda McMahon. Correct, and an anti vaxer
critic of vaccines, and someone who opines on science with
no science background as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
So today it's the scientist, you know, teaching vaccines who
(16:21):
might be under government scrutiny in a place like like Texas.
Tomorrow it could be someone teaching evolution. It's a slippery slope.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Okay, So let's look at this from the president's perspective.
Universities have gotten very expensive, that is true. Universities have
relied on foreign students who pay full freight to attend,
maybe at the expense of American students. Do you agree
with those critiques by the administration?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Every academic I know thinks that college and university tuition
is too high. And this is a problem the sector
works on continues to work on. Go back to my
example of the complications of government imposing price controls and
something so complicated on a system that's incredibly diverse. So
the problem of high tuition is a real problem. As
(17:14):
for the solution, though, it's going to have to come
from within the system. The heavy hand of a uniform
government control is not the answer.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
And what about foreign students?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
On foreign students, the United States is a beacon of
global talent, and it's a beacon of global talent, and
it attracts people to come and settle here. It attracts
people to come here to study that then go back
to their country with relationships and commitments to the United
States that bolster our national security, that make the world
a safer place to live in, that improve the state
(17:45):
of knowledge. The blinkers here on administration officials who want
to shut out the best talent in the world that
comes to the United States, precisely because of the sexual autonomy,
because of the academic freedoms that we enjoy. It's almost
impossible to contemplate it would do immense damage to shut
(18:08):
out the best talent.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Right, But you also don't want to have a situation where,
especially a state university doesn't have enough slots to accept
in people from that state because there are too many
people coming in from outside and willing to pay more
to go to the university. And I think too, you know,
I interviewed many years ago Jerry Brown, the former governor
(18:31):
of California, who would talked about how back in his day,
you know, it costs like a dollar to go to
UC Berkeley. It's like, are we ever going to be
back in a moment like that where you know, Americans
living in their state can go really cheaply to their
state school.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Now there would be a good investment of public funds.
My parents are in the same situation. They were able
to go to what was then Little Tech and Little
Teachers College State College now part of the Universe Massachusetts
for very close to free which they needed. They wouldn't
have been able to go to college without that support.
And they were able to do it because of an
(19:09):
incredible extraordinary investment that the government started making in the
forties with the GI Bill in the fifties and the
sixties into the early seventies. Only rolled back in the
eighties when Reagan started saying that government was the problem,
But for a brief period we had a flowering of
access to higher education thanks to an abundance of government funding.
(19:31):
So I got the solution of the problem, and that's
more government funding, not less.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
What about the issue, Joy Connolly of anti Semitism? There
was certainly evidence of that on campuses during the gaz
of protest Jewish students that many major institutions felt unsafe
going to class. Did the universities, as the administration says,
do a bad job in protecting them?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I come at it this way, and I'm not trying
to evade your question, and I come back to it,
but I want us to focus on the solution that's
be being proposed for these incidents that I'm not going
to deny. Some are caught on video people calling names,
hateful slurs. But for the behavior of individuals on some campuses,
(20:14):
are we going to bring the full force of the
American government to make historic changes in the ways universities
and colleges run themselves. No, I don't think so. It
doesn't make sense. But to come back to your question,
this is a work in progress. American campuses are places
where young people are growing. Not just young people, everyone
(20:37):
who walks onto a campus is entering into a space
of personal development, of experimentation, and humans are humans. So
I'm not dismissing or belittling or setting aside this issue.
But it's also something that faculty, students, and staff and
(20:58):
administrators on every campus that I've ever seen think about
every day and are always trying to improve. So I
would push back on the idea that universities, either administration
members or faculty ignored or dismissed this in general.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
So do you think that as we look at what's
going on right now with this compact, and I wonder,
you know, is this just the beginning? Or are we
going to see dozens more schools be asked to sign
the compact going forward, and maybe some of them say no,
and some of them say yes, and some of them
sue and all of that. Is this just the beginning
or six months from now, are we going to look
(21:35):
back at this and say, oh, this is like when
Trump said he wanted to take over Greenland and then
he just stopped talking about it when it obviously was
not going to happen.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
I think in the circles that I'm moving in, I
think that the hope is that with the United Front
and the continuing the continuance of the saying of no
will create too much static for this administration, and they
will turn to something they think is easier, a task
that comes easier to the hand.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Well, we shall see. Joy Connolly, the President of the
American Council of Learned Societies, thank you so much. I've
been great talking to you.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Thank you, Jeremy. It's been a pleasure and an honor
to be on the show.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And thanks you for listening to One thing Trump did.
It was produced by Harrison Patino. Our next middle episode
is coming into your podcast feed later this week, and
if you like this podcast, please rate it wherever you
get your podcasts and write a review. Our theme music
was composed by Noah Haidu. I'm Jeremy Hobson and I
will talk to you soon.
Welcome to one thing Trump did, available exclusively on the
Middle podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson, and here's something you
may not know about me. I am the child of academics.
I grew up on the campus of the University of Illinois,
which gave me a first hand look at how incredible
our universities are across this country. Public ones, private ones,
big ones, small ones. They are in fact the envy
(00:36):
of the world. But right now President Trump is trying
to use every lever of the federal government to gain
more control over universities in this country, threatening to withhold
federal funding if they don't do what he wants, which
includes more diversity of opinion on campuses that means more
conservative opinion on campuses, fewer international students, and adopting the
(00:58):
administration's definition of those are just a few of the
things the president wants now. Some universities, including Columbia and Brown,
have settled with the administration and paid huge sums of
money and agreed to things like adopting the Trump administration's
gender definitions. Others, like Harvard University, have refused to settle,
(01:19):
at least so far, and now the administration is asking
a number of universities to sign a compact in exchange
for federal funding or the possibility of federal funding. So
for this week's One Thing Trump did, I am joined
by Joy Connolly, who's the president of the American Council
of Learned Societies, which represents dozens of scholarly organizations. Joy,
(01:39):
it's great to have you here.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Jeremy and I assume I was supposed to say that
like that learned not learned societies, correct, So okay, good,
I want to make sure I sound smart with this crowd. Okay,
So let's set the stage here. How important is federal
funding for colleges and universities.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's enormously important. And the government knows that the amazing
system that you described at the beginning is possible because
of a historic seventy five year old partnership between the
government and colleges and universities across the country that have
used federal funds to open up access to schools for
undergraduates who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to go,
(02:20):
and who have used federal funds in amazing ways to
find cures for disease, to open up angles on history
and culture all over the world. We would never otherwise
be able to explore to change public policy by producing knowledge.
None of this would be possible, and the system would
not be the global force that it is a force
for good that it is without federal funds.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
And in the past, are there typically strings attached when
a university gets federal funding.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
There are, And that makes sense. And for the White
House or anyone in the administration to suggest in the
binary terms they so often use to suggest other wise,
is you know, to suggest that academics are saying we
want this money with no strings. It's ridiculous. And everyone
understands that the government that any funder, has conditions, has expectations.
(03:12):
That makes sense. The difference here is that differences of
opinion about regulations and how they should be enforced are
typically worked out in the courts through rules, through moderated discussions,
through deliberation. It takes time, but there are rules and procedures,
and that's the way a good robust democracy should work.
(03:35):
So I think about to use an example, if we
want to jump to that, the North Carolina bathroom ban
of twenty sixteen. You know, you might remember the Obama
administration sent a letter to colleges and universities saying they
should open up bathrooms to all people, regardless of I mean,
according to the identity of the person. Yeah, they could
(03:57):
use the bathroom that they want to use. And at
that point, of course, Republicans in North Carolina screamed that
it was government overreach and it was an improper intrusion
into schools and into you know, education and self government
and sexual autonomy. But how has it worked out. It
was worked out in the courts, and it's still being
worked out in the courts. That's the way. That's the
way the conversation has run in the past.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
So were the universities caught off guard when the Trump
administration started going after certain universities and threatening to withhold
federal funding.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
That's a good question. I want to say yes and no.
We all read Project twenty twenty five, or the pieces
of it having to do with higher education. We knew
what was coming. This is the playbook. It's also a
playbook that's familiar from Eastern Europe, the Communist bloc, you know,
other repressive and authoritarian governments, and so in a certain sense,
maybe from thirty thousand feet up universities and colleges knew
(04:50):
what was in the cards. I think the effectiveness of
the administration and moving fast, the kind of carpet bombing
strategy or the name of your own podcast, you know,
is a good indicator of that something's happening every day,
and especially the success of the divide and conquer strategy.
(05:10):
That's really what this administration likes to do. It pushes
a simple story, in the case of the story about
higher education, a very misleading one, but it pushes it
very hard. And then it looks at the sector and
it divides and seeks to conquer through that division by
exploiting the competition that is typically a healthy part of
(05:32):
American higher education. This administration exploits and turns into division
and conflict well, which.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Gets to the what's been happening here, which is it's
like they'll go after one school and then they'll go
to another school, and it's like, why are they picking
these ones in particular? And then how come this list?
And we'll get to the compact later, but how come
it is like these ten schools? So let's talk about
some of the early stuff that happened. Columbia settled with
the white House agreed to pay two hundred million dollars
(05:57):
and do some policy changes. Brown paid fifty million dollars
and did some policy changes. But other universities, including Harvard
and UCLA have sued the administration. Have the schools that
settled been left alone since then? And have the schools
that sued been harmed in other ways?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I doubt that the schools that settled have been left alone.
I'm not in those offices, and my job, and the
job of any outside observer, you know, is not to
point fingers and scold or blame. At this point, these
universities are under immense pressure. We all understand that. But
there are many associations that these universities that did settle
(06:40):
are part of. Conversations are ongoing, They're lively, they connect presidents, provosts,
general counsels. So no, I don't think they've been left alone.
And there's sympathy and a desire to stand up and
be stronger together that you'll hear. For example, Chris Heisgrouper,
the president of Princeton. He has been calling for for
(07:00):
months the schools that haven't settled, which is the vast majority.
Of course, there are thousands of institutions of higher education
across the country. They're going about their business in a
state of confusion, but attempting to forge on, i would say,
and doing a pretty heroic job of it. One of
the challenges of dealing with this administration is the lack
(07:22):
of feedback and lack of certainty. So someone you know,
you're a provost or a scientist at a university in
this country, you read in the paper that your university
has lost billions in funding. You think, how will this
affect me? It's very difficult to find out in fact,
so there's paralysis, there's confusion. Can scientists higher lab assistance?
(07:44):
Can programs be mounted, you know, with the same funding
and same staff that they had last year? These questions
are really difficult to answer in a lot of universities. So,
as I say, they forge on, but it's been a challenge. Well.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
The interesting thing also is that the administration not only
has withheld funding or pulled back funding that's already been
given to universities, it also doesn't want them bringing in
so many foreign students, which is where they get a
lot of money as well, and it doesn't want them
to raise tuition, which is obviously where they get money
as well, so it's kind of like hitting in many
different ways at the funding sources of of these colleges
(08:21):
and universities.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, I live in a city in New York City
where one of the candidates, the leading candidate for mayor,
this young, young candidate for mayor, Mom Donnie, is getting
attacked by the right and people in the center too
and called a kami because he's proposing government controls on
buses and grocery stores. This is an attempt to do
(08:44):
price controls on the whole American system of higher education
from Washington, d C. It's the inconsistency and hypocrisy is
pretty staggering.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So we mentioned this compact. This is the newest part
of this. The administration is trying to get a number
of universities society in a compact asking colleges to voluntarily
agree to overhaul or abolish departments that purposefully punish, belittle,
and even spark violence against conservative ideas. That's a quote.
It also asks universities to commit to not considering transgender
(09:15):
women to be women and to reject foreign applicant's quote,
who demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or
its values. What is this really about.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Do you think it is not about? What Mark Rowan
said in the New York Times recently, and I mentioned
him because he was responsible for writing the compact most
of it. He's a billionaire who got interested in higher
education for reasons I won't speculate about because I don't know.
I don't know the man. But this administration's not interested
in reform, they're not interested in critique, they're not interested
(09:46):
in improving higher ed as it currently exists. And this
may sound like what a left wing academic always says,
very stereotypical, but let's remember that this is what the
administration actually is saying. They want you undermine, They want
to destroy higher education. JD. Vance, the Vice President, said
(10:06):
a few years ago, if any of us want to
do the things we want to do for our country
and the people who live in it, we have to
honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country. This
is another step in that attack. So I want to
make no mistake about that.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
It's just another power center that you think that they're
just going after for that reason. And you've said the
university should not sign this compact. Do you think any will.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
It's possible for all manner of reasons. You've already mentioned
universities that made settlements earlier, so it hasn't been the
United Front, and that fact complicates the situation for people
making these decisions. Now perfectly possible that some universities may sign.
I hope not, but it's possible.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I will stay with us because we're going to talk
more about that compact and the long game here with
Joy Connolly, the ACLUS President. We will be right back
with more of One Thing Trump Did. Welcome back to
(11:27):
One Thing Trump Did exclusively on the Middle Podcast Feed.
I'm Jeremy Hobson, and this episode we're talking about the
Trump administration's pressure campaign against universities and what that means
for the overall landscape of higher ed in this country.
I'm joined by Joy Connolly, president of the American Council
of Learned Societies, So Joy, the compact started with Vanderbilt, Dartmouth,
(11:49):
University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, MIT, University of Texas, Austin,
University of Arizona, Brown University, and University of Virginia. As
of now, as we're recording this podcast, Brown and MIT
have said, no, they're not interested. But why do you
think these schools were selected as the first ones.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It's difficult to know, and a big part of my
brain tells me that the almost random feel of it
is part of the attack, that the dangling of this
puzzle is designed to distract us. One thing I will
note about all these universities that all your listeners will
know too. They're large, they're wealthy, they're influential, and they're
(12:32):
exactly the kind of universities that benefit and do great
good because of federal funding.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And there are a mix of public and private too.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Correct, they're a mix of public and private. Although I
can't resist the chance to point out that those labels
are very misleading. The amount of public so called funds
that a university like the University of Michigan depends on
is in the single digits. Now you know, the vast
majority of so called public universities funding actually from private sources.
(13:01):
It's worth reminding people that these labels are are more
complicated than they seem.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah, MIT, as we said, rejected the offer. So did Brown,
but MIT said it would limit free speech on campus.
The administration also claims this is about free speech and
not allowing conservatives to be heard at the nation's hire
rad institutions. What do you think about that that both
sides are saying this is about free speech.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
It I think the important thing to remember here is
that universities already have long established procedures and rules to
to consider, reflect on, and then evaluate speech on campus.
So again, I wouldn't be distracted by this compact as
an effort to reform. There are already rules in place.
(13:46):
Despite what the administration says. They may not like exactly
how they're being enforced all the time, but you know,
campuses are not a wilderness of people crying out, you know,
with with with no accountability. And I think when we
stop to think about how the government would enforce what
they're calling for, it gets pretty scary pretty fast. So
(14:09):
imagine you're you know, you're a faculty member. You want
to teach a class because you're you're a French professor,
and you want to teach a class about Francophone African culture, right,
and you're a student who is a first gen college student,
and you're really excited about going into business and one
of the growth areas on the planet, which is Africa,
(14:31):
and you need to you know, you need to learn French. Well,
this administration is proposing regulating the inner workings of a
university such that students and departments uh students that want
to study languages or culture that that lead to degrees
that don't lead to the high salaries in the greatest
(14:54):
numbers that the administration is looking for, those fields will
be underfunded, those classes won't be available, and the faculty,
if they're teaching literature that criticizes conservative ideas, may find
themselves or you know, will find themselves under threat and
may find themselves shut down. So even you know, as
soon as you start thinking about the mechanisms of enforcement
(15:15):
people government officials without accountability, looking at syllipuses, looking at
book assignments, looking at who gets hired and what gets taught.
I mean, what country are we living in here?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Well, and you think about a place like the University
of Texas Austin, which is on this list with the compact.
It's in a state. It's a public university, state university
that's in a state that is run by Republicans who
have a big, big majority in the legislature. So if
you're a professor at ut Austin and you do something
that they don't think aligns with the administration's priorities. You're
(15:49):
not going to really have people that have your back
at the state level who control, you know, the university
at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Correct, And we have to remember, and this is an
administration that appointed you know, the head of the Worldwide
Wrestling Foundation is the Secretary of Education, and you know,
an anti vaxer Linda McMahon. Correct, and an anti vaxer
critic of vaccines, and someone who opines on science with
no science background as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
So today it's the scientist, you know, teaching vaccines who
(16:21):
might be under government scrutiny in a place like like Texas.
Tomorrow it could be someone teaching evolution. It's a slippery slope.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Okay, So let's look at this from the president's perspective.
Universities have gotten very expensive, that is true. Universities have
relied on foreign students who pay full freight to attend,
maybe at the expense of American students. Do you agree
with those critiques by the administration?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Every academic I know thinks that college and university tuition
is too high. And this is a problem the sector
works on continues to work on. Go back to my
example of the complications of government imposing price controls and
something so complicated on a system that's incredibly diverse. So
the problem of high tuition is a real problem. As
(17:14):
for the solution, though, it's going to have to come
from within the system. The heavy hand of a uniform
government control is not the answer.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
And what about foreign students?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
On foreign students, the United States is a beacon of
global talent, and it's a beacon of global talent, and
it attracts people to come and settle here. It attracts
people to come here to study that then go back
to their country with relationships and commitments to the United
States that bolster our national security, that make the world
a safer place to live in, that improve the state
(17:45):
of knowledge. The blinkers here on administration officials who want
to shut out the best talent in the world that
comes to the United States, precisely because of the sexual autonomy,
because of the academic freedoms that we enjoy. It's almost
impossible to contemplate it would do immense damage to shut
(18:08):
out the best talent.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Right, But you also don't want to have a situation where,
especially a state university doesn't have enough slots to accept
in people from that state because there are too many
people coming in from outside and willing to pay more
to go to the university. And I think too, you know,
I interviewed many years ago Jerry Brown, the former governor
(18:31):
of California, who would talked about how back in his day,
you know, it costs like a dollar to go to
UC Berkeley. It's like, are we ever going to be
back in a moment like that where you know, Americans
living in their state can go really cheaply to their
state school.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Now there would be a good investment of public funds.
My parents are in the same situation. They were able
to go to what was then Little Tech and Little
Teachers College State College now part of the Universe Massachusetts
for very close to free which they needed. They wouldn't
have been able to go to college without that support.
And they were able to do it because of an
(19:09):
incredible extraordinary investment that the government started making in the
forties with the GI Bill in the fifties and the
sixties into the early seventies. Only rolled back in the
eighties when Reagan started saying that government was the problem,
But for a brief period we had a flowering of
access to higher education thanks to an abundance of government funding.
(19:31):
So I got the solution of the problem, and that's
more government funding, not less.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
What about the issue, Joy Connolly of anti Semitism? There
was certainly evidence of that on campuses during the gaz
of protest Jewish students that many major institutions felt unsafe
going to class. Did the universities, as the administration says,
do a bad job in protecting them?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I come at it this way, and I'm not trying
to evade your question, and I come back to it,
but I want us to focus on the solution that's
be being proposed for these incidents that I'm not going
to deny. Some are caught on video people calling names,
hateful slurs. But for the behavior of individuals on some campuses,
(20:14):
are we going to bring the full force of the
American government to make historic changes in the ways universities
and colleges run themselves. No, I don't think so. It
doesn't make sense. But to come back to your question,
this is a work in progress. American campuses are places
where young people are growing. Not just young people, everyone
(20:37):
who walks onto a campus is entering into a space
of personal development, of experimentation, and humans are humans. So
I'm not dismissing or belittling or setting aside this issue.
But it's also something that faculty, students, and staff and
(20:58):
administrators on every campus that I've ever seen think about
every day and are always trying to improve. So I
would push back on the idea that universities, either administration
members or faculty ignored or dismissed this in general.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
So do you think that as we look at what's
going on right now with this compact, and I wonder,
you know, is this just the beginning? Or are we
going to see dozens more schools be asked to sign
the compact going forward, and maybe some of them say no,
and some of them say yes, and some of them
sue and all of that. Is this just the beginning
or six months from now, are we going to look
(21:35):
back at this and say, oh, this is like when
Trump said he wanted to take over Greenland and then
he just stopped talking about it when it obviously was
not going to happen.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
I think in the circles that I'm moving in, I
think that the hope is that with the United Front
and the continuing the continuance of the saying of no
will create too much static for this administration, and they
will turn to something they think is easier, a task
that comes easier to the hand.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Well, we shall see. Joy Connolly, the President of the
American Council of Learned Societies, thank you so much. I've
been great talking to you.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Thank you, Jeremy. It's been a pleasure and an honor
to be on the show.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And thanks you for listening to One thing Trump did.
It was produced by Harrison Patino. Our next middle episode
is coming into your podcast feed later this week, and
if you like this podcast, please rate it wherever you
get your podcasts and write a review. Our theme music
was composed by Noah Haidu. I'm Jeremy Hobson and I
will talk to you soon.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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