Note to Rutgers: It’s Time to Fight
Workers at the State University Are Ready. Will Management Join Us
Donald Trump is not slowing down in his efforts to bring higher education to heel. The president, as The Guardian (UK) reported late yesterday, signed several new executive orders “targeting universities as his administration seeks to reshape higher-education institutions and continues to crack down on diversity and inclusion efforts.”
The orders, The Guardian reported,
address foreign gifts to universities, directing the federal government to “enforce laws on the books” related to the disclosure of large donations, and college accreditation, which the president has referred to as his “secret weapon” to upend US universities. While reading the orders to Trump, the White House staff secretary Will Scharf said that the third-party groups that accredit universities have relied on “woke ideology” rather than merit.
Wednesday's executive orders continue what has been a Viktor Orban1-like assault on colleges and universities that has included weaponizing the immigration process and stripping colleges and universities of research funding.
Upwards of 1,100 international students — college and university graduate and undergraduate students in the United States on visas — have had their protections revoked (though there has been some pushback in court). Billions in research funding is being withheld — including money used in medical research.
Too many colleges and universities have caved to the pressure — Columbia has been the most visible, but Yale’s crackdown on student protesters raises some concerns.
At Rutgers University, faculty and staff unions will be holding a rally (a student rally will take place at the same time, but is not directly connected). We’ll be lining up at 11:30 a.m. outside of Winants Hall to leaflet and make several demands of the university Board of Governors.
Protect our workers — we demand job security now and a reversal of previous layoffs of adjunct professors;
Protect international students and scholars. Keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement off campus;
Protect academic freedom and free speech.
Protect research. Fight the federal research cuts.
And defend diversity and inclusion programs, which make it possible for those traditionally excluded from higher education to attend college and make Rutgers a more representative place for learning.
The larger theme, of course, is don’t back down or give in to the Trump agenda. Stand firm and defend the university.
Put another way, we are asking that Rutgers be more like Harvard — which forcefully stood up to the Trump attacks — and not like Columbia.
That’s the point of the University Senate’s resolution, which calls on Rutgers to help create a Big 10 defense compact. The Senate decried the “escalating politically motivated actions by governmental bodies (that) pose a significant threat to the foundational principles of American higher education” and called for a “Mutual Academic Defense Compact” that would make clear that “preservation of one institution’s integrity is the concern of all, and an infringement against one member university of the Big Ten shall be considered an infringement against all.” The compact would include “a shared or distributed defense fund” that would “provide immediate and strategic support to any member institution under direct political or legal infringement.”
The proposal is gaining traction among university faculty bodies but needs support from school presidents and governing bodies — but it’s not on today’s agenda. It should be, but university governing boards tend to be risk averse and corporate in their outlook. Rutgers’ board is no exception. It is going to take pressure, and today’s action is just a small beginning to what is going to have to be a broad-based and aggressive resistance campaign.
I’ll try to post from the rally today, so check back.
Viktor Orban is the autocratic “president” of Hungary and has used his authority to remake higher ed there into a tool for his own ends.