Key points
- Students should engage in self-reflection about speech environments: Obama
- Trump administration has threatened universities with major cuts
- It has suspended $175 million to the University of Pennsylvania: The New York Times
WASHINGTON: US former President Barack Obama urged universities to resist attacks from the federal government that violate their academic freedom.
According to The New York Times, he made these remarks during a campus speech on Thursday.
The former president said that schools and students should engage in self-reflection about speech environments on their campuses.
“If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right?. Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?” The New York Times cited Obama as saying.
“If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.”
Columbia University
Obama’s comments came as the Trump administration has threatened universities with major cuts, according to US media reported. It took away $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University in March while later suspended $175 million to the University of Pennsylvania, and said this week that it was reviewing about $9 billion in arrangements with Harvard and its affiliates, the New York Times reported.
At Harvard, more than 800 faculty members have signed a letter urging their leadership to more forcefully resist the administration and defend higher education more broadly.
Princeton’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, called the targeting of Columbia University “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.”
In his remarks, Obama also called on law firms, which have also faced threats from the Trump administration, to stand for their principles, even if they risked losing business, according to the New York Times.
