Here in higher education, the capitulations will continue until morale improves. After Columbia’s shameful deal with the Trump administration last summer, I pledged not to donate to the university or to perform any service for it unless and until it repents and atones. Since then, several other universities have followed suit. I want to focus on two—Northwestern and Cornell—that raise similar enough issues to require a response on my part.
Start with Northwestern. Although its agreement includes a disclaimer that it does not give the “United States authority to dictate faculty hiring, University hiring, admission decisions, Northwestern’s curriculum, or the content of academic speech and research,” several provisions do in fact trade away core university principles of institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and openness to all. Among other things, the agreement requires Northwestern to disband one committee (§ 10) and create another (§ 15), prohibit nondisruptive acts of protest (§ 13), change its admissions (§ 21) and hiring (§ 25) in ways that make it harder to prevent invidious discrimination, prohibit diversity statements in hiring (§ 26), exclude trans women from female-designated athletic facilities (§ 28), and cease providing gender-affirming care to minors (§ 29). The university is also paying $75 million in what can only be described as protection money. I regret to say that Northwestern has compromised its fundamental values in the name of expedience, just as Columbia did.
As a result, I’m adding Northwestern to my pledge. I will not speak at conferences held at or organized by Northwestern. I will not publish with Northwestern publications or provide peer reviews for them. I will not provide outside tenure evaluations for Northwestern departments. I will not contribute in any way to the institution until everyone who is responsible for its shameful decision has resigned, retired, or been fired, and until Northwestern repudiates their catastrophic choice. If any other universities strike similarly repugnant deals, I will add them as well.
Now for Cornell. Things here are different in two ways. First, while its agreement is not good, it is nowhere near as bad as Columbia’s or Northwestern’s. Unlike their deals, there are no terms in Cornell’s that significantly compromise the academic freedom of the university’s affiliates or the university’s own institutional autonomy. My colleague Nate Foster and our local AAUP chapter have published thoughtful critiques of the Cornell agreement. I agree with their criticisms of the provisions on admissions data, campus climate surveys, and providing tendentious training materials to faculty and staff. But I think that while these terms are harmful and ill-advised, none of them cut to the heart of what it means to be a university.
The worst terms in the Cornell agreement are the financial ones. Cornell will pay $30 million to the federal government over three years. This is straight-up protection money, and paying it is shameful. Cornell has also pledged to spend $30 million on programs that combine agriculture with AI and robotics. Although the money will be spent on potentially worthwhile research, this particular cause is serving as such an obvious fig leaf that in a way it is even more embarassing. This said, I have seen universities lose far larger sums in even more pathetic ways. I don’t feel that mishandling money like this requires me or others to avoid performing academic service for Cornell. (Donors, however, might rightly question whether they should be supporting a university that squanders its money on bribes to a bullying government.)
The other relevant difference for Cornell is that I work here. My labor is not a gift that I gave freely and can freely suspend. I negotiated the terms under which I provide my labor to the university. Among those terms is that they pay me. The roof over my head and the food on my table are not trifles. For my part, I’ve promised to teach my courses, advise my students, perform my research, serve on commitees, and do the million other things that make up the job of a professor.
There’s something else to this, too. I’m a member of a community here, one with tighter bonds and greater commitments than the general worldwide community of scholars. I have obligations. My students are counting on me. My advisees are counting on me. My colleagues are counting on me. I know the names of the people who’ll be left in the lurch if I don’t show up to class. They signed up to take my course, with me. My first responsibility is to them, because, again, this is what it means to work at a university.
This is not to say that I feel obliged to support Cornell no matter what. There is no institution in the world that you should support no matter what. Rather, as I said last time, universities exist to promote the discovery, preservation, and transmission of knowledge, and upholding that value means different things depending on one’s relationship to the university in question. I can certainly imagine that Cornell could do things so repugnant that I would feel obliged to resign—but the bar is much higher when it comes to one’s own university.