Reconciling the inside and outside narratives for higher education

There's a way to do it, and there's also no choice

Much has been written about whether and what college presidents should be saying right now as the onslaught on the norms of academic freedom and government funding continues. The New York Times ran a piece from the editorial board two weeks ago imploring higher education to fight back. I was quoted: “The people who are attacking higher education are talking nonstop,” said Holden Thorp, a chemist and former university administrator who runs the Science family of journals. “And the people leading higher education are not saying very much.” It’s true that if the attackers are flooding the zone with whatever they’re flooding it with, it’s probably not the best to counter by flooding the zone with…nothing.

Still, I can understand the reluctance. No school wants to be next in the line of fire. So far, the administration has frozen $400 million in grants at Columbia, $175 million at Penn, more than $200 million at Princeton, and opened an investigation of all of Harvard’s federal grants. Columbia was given a set of demands to begin the conversation of getting the funds unfrozen, and they agreed — to the dismay and surprise of many on their campus. After taking the deal, the president met with the faculty in a call that was recorded and leaked where she indicated that the university wouldn’t really do everything they said they agreed to. A week later, she was replaced by a member of the board. This episode shows the difficulty of communicating in this environment, because when you’re under the microscope — and especially under the microscope in New York City — everything is coming out. So there’s no way to have an inside and outside narrative. Public university presidents who live with public records laws and open meetings are used to this; it’s a new world for the privates.

So, it’s more important than ever to get both narratives into resonance. As I’ve been going around the country talking about this, I've been playing around with how to do it, so let’s give it a shot here. A number of experienced presidents are doing precisely what I lay out below: they’re doing town halls with students and faculty, sharing details on the university's strategy and plan, and not worrying about whether it gets out. Then they’re talking to alumni and outside stakeholders with a message that may have different emphasis, but doesn’t pretend that they’re not trying to lead their campuses through this difficult moment.

A possible narrative

The campuses are in pain (although it is important to remember that some on the campus are happy about the state of affairs). No one on the outside would be surprised to hear that (although some may be rejoicing). And most people would see it as the president’s job to lead the campus through this. So, it would not be wholly detrimental if something like the following was recorded and posted online.

Thanks for inviting me to this (faculty/staff/student) council meeting. These are ominous times, and I know deeply unsettling for most of you. The responsibility to lead the campus at this difficult time is a serious one, and I approach it with a sense of humility and recognition of the historic overtones.

Things are happening that we previously could not have contemplated. We never imagined grants canceled that had been approved by agencies according to their guidelines and policies using funds appropriated by Congress. We never imagined our international students being arrested because they expressed their opinion or because of their identity. We never imagined that the federal government would break the social contract of the last 80 years and use the financial leverage it had been given in good faith to impose current political thinking on campuses devoted to free inquiry. While this leverage is in the form of research grants for science and social science, it is being used to undermine the entire enterprise.

The university is in a very difficult position. We remain committed to our values of knowledge and justice while at the same time, we have always sought to be a good partner with the federal government. We are now continuously having to choose between these two competing priorities. Before explaining our approach, it’s worth remembering how our partnership with the federal government evolved to its current state.

After World War II, when the US wanted to build a federally funded research enterprise, the wise decision was made to have the US sponsor research in universities rather than setting up federal research efforts. The animating idea was that professors independently pursuing their curiosity would produce stronger science and more unexpected findings that would enable strategic technologies in the long run. The wisdom of this decision has been proven over and over again for the last 80 years. But this was not a cheap idea. The universities had to set up labs and administer the grants, and so the social contract that was entered into was that we would share these costs with the federal government. Over time, federal funding grew and the ambition of the universities grew, and this led to greater reliance on the federal partnership. So, the leverage that the federal government currently has was given freely and enthusiastically by the institutions with the assumption that the partnership would continue to operate in good faith.

That good faith is failing. While of course the new administration can set its own priorities going forward, to undo commitments made by Congress and by the agencies is unprecedented. Whether it is legal or not will eventually be decided in the courts; there are now multiple suits that will likely go all the way to the Supreme Court. Our intention is to work with the new administration but also to keep legal commitments we have to our researchers and to the agencies that made these commitments. Therefore, we will be exploring our options to understand the legal rights and obligations we have on all sides of this issue and watching the actions that are working their way through the system. For the time being, the amounts of money that are being withheld are sufficiently significant that we cannot easily fill in all of the gaps without eventually making deep cuts elsewhere.

Nonetheless, we cannot ignore the results of the 2024 election and what it says about the relationship between higher education and the American people. While President Trump did not win in a landslide, he did win conclusively. The American people have spoken clearly through their votes and also what they have said in robust surveys. For example, during the election 78% of American voters said that it was more important for the new President to deliver change that improves American lives while only 18% said it was more important to preserve American institutions. And 57% of Republicans say that having a college degree is less important than it was 20 years ago. Further, while two-thirds of Democrats say that scientists should have a role in policy debates that involve scientific findings, two-thirds of Republicans say we should generate results and let the politicians decide what to do with them. It is undeniable that the latter is the prevailing view at the moment, and it is a tough blow to the appreciation of expertise in America that we must face.

While there is not a moral equivalence between the tactics that have been used to attack higher education and the mistakes that higher education has made to make those attacks more successful, we still must confront the disconnects that we have with the American public because we bear responsibility for convincing them of our value from here. I know many of you find that to be too conciliatory, and I understand that sentiment. But we don’t have a lot of friends in Congress or the administration, and therefore the task of rebuilding our partnership with the American people falls to us.

That case will involve stating with humility that we recognize it is a privilege to pursue and share the truth, that we are grateful for the public support we have received in the last decades, and that we understand that the principles by which we do teaching and research can seem mysterious to folks who don’t think about them every day like we do. And we have sometimes fallen short and when we have, we have not done all we could to take responsibility for our actions. We bear the burden of making the case for our principles, and we know it is worthwhile in the long run because even with all the challenges and attacks, undergraduate enrollment is at an all-time high, validating the value of how we do things. Our admissions director has informed me that we are preparing to enroll another strong class in the fall.

Our approach is therefore to stay in dialogue with the administration about their concerns and to be responsive as we feel we can be to their questions and requests, to express support to Congress for the improvements in the situation that were placed into the recent continuing resolution and to work with them as they prepare the next full budget, and to carefully monitor the legal situation as challenges to the administrations’s actions work their way through the courts. In the midst of all of this, our commitment to you is that we will remain accessible and conversational about the situation. [For some: we have also used our financial strength to sell bonds to give us some cash to bridge as many people and projects as we can while this plays out.] Our first duty is to the campus and your welfare, including your psychological welfare. We will attempt to alleviate as much uncertainty as we can and to acknowledge the pain and grief that many of you experiencing.

I know you have many questions about how the universities budget and legal operations function, and I’m here to answer them. I look forward to the next invitation to come talk to your group.

Then what?

Assuming this gets leaked, it will get some some snark from critics of higher eduction who will say that the president having to come do all this therapy shows that universities are filled with a bunch of liberal snowflakes. Guess what? They already think that. So, there will be no real damage from that getting out.

There will be some, but not nearly as many as the media portrays, faculty and students who will say that this message is still too conciliatory towards the administration. While that may well be a principled view, those folks are also going to say that no matter what unless the president goes full on resistance, which is never going to happen. But most people on the campus care about the institution and want to be as informed as they can be and to engage in the dialogue about what to do now. They are hungry for the details of how things work and to be able to discuss the options from an informed place.

I can continue to go to campuses and give these talks. I enjoy doing it and love meeting engaged students, staff, and faculty around the country during this historic moment. But it would be a LOT better for everyone if more administrators were doing this themselves. That would be build cohesion when it is desperately needed. As I said above, many experienced presidents are doing this right now. There is a path through this, but we will find it more easily with a shared understanding of where we might be able to go.