A university president makes a case against cowardice

There wasn't, historically, the level of enormous potential negative consequences legally and practically if the universities talked back.

Universities, like many institutions, have also become more like large incumbent businesses than previously - e.g. perpetuating their own existence over having strong core values.

This is really well articulated. It's like how a company uses fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to justify a pivot away from some kind of principled stance.

Might have been a mistake to let some of them turn into real estate hedge funds.

Biden was considering withholding federal funds from schools over their vaccine policies[1], and tried to withhold federal funds from schools based on how they treat transgender students[2], but that was blocked by a judge. Obama did a similar thing regarding transgender students[3].

Things like this are why Hillsdale College rejects all federal funds. So they can do what they want without threat of the government revoking funding[4].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-vaccines-delta...

[2] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/12/texas-title-ix-lgbtq...

[3] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/13/477896804...

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/the-co...

Sure, but my argument was not "the federal government has never done this", but that "colleges have usually felt secure that this would not be done to them if they defended student protests", or at least, if we're being cynical, "that they would have an opportunity to walk it back if their calculations were incorrect".

I don’t feel like the reasons behind this are the same.

Biden/Obama: We want you to accept and protect everyone

Trump: I want you to deliberately reject certain races and nationalities, and close all the departments studying stuff I don’t like.

> Trump: I want you to deliberately reject certain races

Which race are colleges not allowed to accept? Source for this?

The current administration refers to inclusion of PoC and women as "DEI", so when they talk about ending DEI, that's what they mean.

See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/17/defense-depa... for one example where it's particularly blatant.

> The current administration refers to inclusion of PoC and women as "DEI", so when they talk about ending DEI, that's what they mean.

I call bullshit on them wanting to ban women and black people from colleges, that is not what they mean when they say end "DEI", you are crazy.

Can you post a single link where they even hinted at wanting to ban black people and women from colleges? That is such an egregious accusation that you need more than just that they took down a page about a black guy.

> I call bullshit on them wanting to ban women and black people from colleges

Oh I’m sure it’s not as egregious as them wanting to ‘literally’ ban them. There’s no need for something quite that drastic. But think of how much nicer the place would be (not to mention more useful for networking) if none of these poor people were ever accepted in the first place.