'First, they came for Columbia'

The To-Read list, university edition

Consider this post to be a placeholder, a warning in advance: universities in America are about to be put under pressure of a kind that no one who studies or teaches in America has ever experienced before. As the Harvard Crimson has just written (and I have borrowed their headline, for which they deserve full credit) this is not an accident.

Autocrats — both left-wing and right-wing — always attack universities. The public rationale varies. Some, like Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, reportedly accuse universities or students of supporting terrorism; others, like pro-government outlets in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, accuse them of working for foreign interests; still others, like Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, accused universities of supporting “neoliberalism” and corruption.

But these are pretexts. Universities are independent centers of ideas and often prominent centers of dissent. Autocrats are allergic to sources of dissent, so they almost invariably seek to silence, weaken, or control them.

The Trump administration is no different. Its claim to be fighting campus antisemitism rings as hollow as Ortega’s reported claim to be fighting terrorism in Nicaragua’s leading Jesuit-run university. The administration has weaponized the fight against antisemitism as a means to another end: punishing and weakening universities.

For those who don’t know the background, the administration has arbitrarily cancelled some $400 million in grants to Columbia University, on the pretext that they are investigating Columbia for “anti-Semitism.” They also arbitrarily arrested a Columbia student, for exercising his right to free speech. Then they announced similar investigations of several other universities, including Johns Hopkins, to which I am affiliated.

There are many more nuances, explored in the articles below. But the most important thing to understand about both the investigations and the arrest is that they are part of propaganda campaigns. The prosecution of Khalil Mohammed, who advocates for an unpopular cause, is designed to make people argue about that cause, rather than about the free speech violations that his case represents. And if they successfully prosecute him, then they will come for others.

The attacks on Columbia, along with the assault on other universities, have an even broader purpose: They are designed to intimidate hundreds of other academic institutions in America. The point is to make every university afraid to offend the administration; to make academics self-censor; to make students wary too, concsious that something they might say on campus could trigger a MAGA social media campaign or cuts to their university’s funding.

I have myself written about the damage that the policing of speech did in universities, back when that was just something academics were doing to one another. Now that the government will be policing speech, the consequences will be worse. I expect government pressure on university curricula, on faculty decisions, even on student behavior to change the way that people teach, write and think on campuses. Some universities have banded together to pursue lawsuits, including one that challenged Elon Musk’s arbitrary decision to cut funding for medical research. But real success will require all universities, public and private, in red and blue states, to work together. I am not sure that all of them are prepared to do so yet.

For a better understand of how autocrats and would-be autocrats use absurdity as a weapon, how they use the law as a tool, and how they use investigations as propaganda, do listen to my podcast, Autocracy In America, a five part series that came out last autumn. This is the Apple podcast link, but you can also listen on Spotify.

I will probably have more to say about universities in due course, but for the moment, I am sending several articles that explain what is happening.

To-Read List, University edition

• My colleague Adam Serwer argues that the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia student, is a trial run for whether freedom of speech or freedom of Trump-approved speech is the law of the land.

• Rose Horowitch, also at The Atlantic, writes that the Trump administration’s anti-DEI directives have sown chaos among US universities – leaving them unsure of whether to run, fight, or counterattack.

• In case you missed it, I encourage you to read Georgetown Law School dean William Treanor’s defense against acting US attorney Ed Martin’s unconstitutional interference into the school’s curriculum. This is one of the first important examples of a university pushing back against intimidation.

• Trump’s assault on universities is just one component of his administration’s attack on freedom of speech, happening on at least ten fronts, as Rachel Goodman and Shalini Goel Agarwal of Protect Democracy explain.

• Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, says Khalil’s detention was “obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech.” The organization, which has joined Khalil’s legal team, will have a full plate the next four years.

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