The Department of Education is investigating more than 50 universities for using race to recruit and support some students.
Danielle Holley, the president of Mount Holyoke College, has been outspoken about the Trump administration’s attempts to punish conduct, thinking and research at universities that the White House finds objectionable. Mount Holyoke is not of the institutions being investigated
Holley says higher education needs to stand up to the Trump administration.
“We have the right as universities and colleges to determine our own missions,” Holley says. “And the government really has some serious restrictions under the First Amendment about telling us what our values and missions can be.”
4 questions with Danielle Holley
Standing up to the federal government could come with a huge cost. The Trump administration has pulled $400 million in grants from Columbia University for what it says is the university’s failure to police antisemitism on campus. It is demanding the university make changes before it reinstates the money. So how would a school like yours, for instance, stand up to the federal government if they came knocking on your door?
“We have not had the federal government come knocking on our door, but I do think it’s very important, obviously, for colleges and universities to protect their values and mission.
“For example, most colleges and universities would say that protecting Jewish students, making sure that antisemitism is not present on our campuses, is a very important college and university mission. The question is, what does the U.S. government, what does the federal government do when they are trying to basically become kind of a super board of trustees or super admissions commission? Because I think one of the things that is important to academic freedom and to individual professors, et cetera, in terms of the First Amendment, is this question of who decides. And so for us as colleges and universities, it’s very important that we enforce our own rules and standards of conduct and not let the federal government politicize what we do as colleges and universities.”
What happens when the cost of doing that is $400 million?
“I think that we as universities have to challenge, right, the federal government’s ability to do that. Because if this is viewpoint discrimination, right, if it’s the government saying you have to think in the way that we think, or you are subject to having your funds pulled then I think the question is really to see them in court, right?
“The question is really, is this a First Amendment violation by the federal government or are colleges and universities really able to determine internally how to best kind of regulate ourselves internally? There are important values at risk, but the question is, does the federal government have the right to politicize what we do as universities?”
Many Americans of different political points of view do believe that college campuses have gone through a bit of a transformation in recent years; they’ve become places for the elite, for instance, where only liberal ideas are embraced or where conservative students don’t feel like their ideas are heard. Do you think that universities have brought any of this scrutiny on themselves? Could colleges do something to be a more welcoming place?
“Absolutely. I think as colleges and universities, we have to talk more about what we are there to do, which is to produce knowledge and spread knowledge and help students of whatever political background they’re from determine how best to use that knowledge to further what they believe are their own values and mission.
“I think where we’ve gone wrong is to allow this idea to become prevalent. I mean, I’ve taught for 20-plus years. I can barely get students to read the syllabus, let alone indoctrinate them into any form of political belief. So, I think that’s the false narrative that’s being pushed is the idea that colleges and universities are somehow indoctrinating students instead of developing and spreading knowledge.”
What do you think the Trump administration is actually trying to accomplish here?
“I think if you read a lot about autocracy and the kind of diminution of democracy around the world, you learn that attacks on the university are one of the first places where people start when they want to attack democracy.
“People like JD Vance attended Yale Law School. Obviously, our president attended [the University of Pennsylvania]. These are graduates of the Ivy League universities. So to hear them attack universities, there’s clearly a mission beyond kind of simply an attack on universities. But the question is, do we have a well-educated populace that’s able to participate at the highest levels in democracy?
“The only reason to destroy universities and colleges is to attack a highly, educated democratic populace. And I think it is deeply ironic when we see people who attended the Ivy League universities then attack universities as a problem in our democracy.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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