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His guide of what the United States election means 2024 for Washington and the world
The writer is the president of the Academy of Sciences of New York and former Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley
During the tumultuous years I was Chancellor of UC Berkeley, I thought I had lived everything: controversies about intercollegial athletics, sexual harassment, debates on freedom of expression, protests and disturbances, massive budgetary deficits and political tensions at the state level. Since last year, after the horrendous violence in Israel and Gaza, things have become even more out of control. Only in the Ivy League, four of its eight presidents resigned in the space of a few months.
Now, within a few weeks of the inauguration of Donald Trump, we have seen draconian cuts in the National Health Institutes and the National Foundation of Sciences, threats to revoke funds for schools with racially inclusive programs and the cancellation of federal funds for research in universities such as Columbia and Johns Hopkins.
As if the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in research money were not bad enough, the United States government letter to Columbia last week establishing the previous conditions, “for formal negotiations regarding the continuous financial relationship of the University of Columbia with the United States government,” is the nightmare of any president. Although it begins with a reasonable tone, as in the first demand to “enforce existing disciplinary policies”, it is soon clear that these words are understood in a very specific sense: “significant discipline,” he clarifies, “means expulsion or suspension of several years.”
As we read, the letter becomes increasingly sinister. He insists that the studies of the Department of the Middle East, Asia of the South and African take “under the academic administrator” for a minimum of five years. As a relevant dean in Columbia, once I did that, to preserve academic governance and protect the department from external interference. But it is likely that the intention is now to press the University to impose political views through its curriculum and faculty. That would sound the death of death for academic freedom.
At the end of the 19th and early twentieth centuries, the presidents, together with the trustees, ruled the campus with impunity. They made all the hiring decisions for teachers and staff, created and imposed curricula, and had exclusive control of students’ admissions and discipline. To dismantle this system, prominent academics distributed the declaration of early 1915 on academic freedom and academic tenure. He defined academic freedom composed of three basic elements, “freedom of research and research”, “freedom of teaching” and “freedom of extramural expression and action”. Academic freedom is not the same as freedom of expression protected by the first amendment, but was immensely strengthened by that fundamental protection.
In the years after World War I, the Faculty assumed much greater control of internal governance. During the following decades, American universities took preeminence about the German University of Research once dominant, which collapsed under the weight of the Nazi government after 1933. Academic freedom was fundamental for the emergence of US universities.
As universities became post -war global research powers, university education became basic for the newly expanding middle class. The university presidents became important figures in American society. Clark Kerr, president of the University of California from 1958 to 1967, built new campus, promoted institutional change and innovation, and articulated the importance of higher education. Over time, he was caught in the sights of the growing politicization of the university and considered by the new governor of California, Ronald Reagan, who had campaigned on a platform to clean the disaster in Berkeley. His first act was to fire Kerr.
In recent years, as the tuition fees have shot, admission has become increasingly selective and the policy of the increasingly polarized campus, presidents are once again in impossible situations. Administrators are blamed for the beginning of the “neoliberal” university, since public universities were defined. As fund collection has become a great presidential obligation, No Confidence votes have followed almost any institutional crisis. The average duration of presidential holdings has collapsed about five years.
These are not ordinary times. Because these works are, this is the time to affirm in the strongest possible way the extraordinary value of our universities, and the supreme needs to maintain its research programs, as well as its commitment to academic freedom. Yes, universities can be much better, and must accept their failures while they are open to change. But without them, our democracy, our science and our security as a nation will be seriously in danger.