New England Scholars Speak / Action Network

US Scholars: Speak Up for Liberty and Justice NOW

Public Domain. Photo by Nataraj Munoli: https://www.pexels.com/photo/statue-of-liberty-66709/

March 2025

An Urgent Message to University and College Presidents Across the United States

At this dangerous juncture for the future of academic freedom, free speech, and due process on all our campuses, we call on you to stand together, hold your ground firmly, and vigorously defend the core values and principles which bind us as scholars and educators.

As university and college presidents you have solemn professional and moral responsibilities to all our students, staff, and faculty. We therefore urge you to legally contest—not capitulate to—the current White House administration’s alarming political campaign against institutions of higher education.

We solemnly remind you that,

• Anticipatory obedience, as modern history has repeatedly demonstrated, will serve not to protect your university or college, but to undermine it as an independent and credible institution of free inquiry and scholarship.

• Your administration is not the only one under attack, nor the only campus at stake. Instead of capitulating and enabling an authoritarian takeover of higher education in the US, we urge you to form a coalition of public and private universities nationwide and direct your administrations’ collective political, public relations, and legal resources against the ongoing existential threats to our institutions and our democracy.

 

As your faculty members, we understand that there are difficult choices ahead. The Trump administration’s orders, which are already being challenged in the courts, seek to undermine the integrity of our institutions as bastions of critical inquiry, research, teaching, and debate. As your faculty members, we need you to undertake concrete and sustained actions to preserve these and all constitutionally protected rights on our campuses nationwide. We are prepared to stand behind your leadership in doing what is right, but that requires you to actually lead and do what is right. Specifically, these are our expectations of your administration at this critical time.  

History has shown that university administrations, like governments, suppress the free exchange of ideas at their own risk. Capitulating to President Trump’s executive orders will not save our universities and colleges. It will degrade and disgrace them. Indeed, surrendering now will hasten the descent into authoritarianism, further the repression of dissent and free inquiry on our campuses, and ensure the destruction of a sector that has long been a cornerstone of our democracy.

Sincerely,

300+ Signatories at 100+ universities and colleges across the US, and Growing…

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