Trump v. higher education
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This is On Point. I'm Debra Becker, in for Meghna Chakrabarty. In universities throughout the U.S., scientists conduct vast amounts of research that is now under threat as the Trump administration seeks to, quote, reclaim elite universities. One example of this is Harvard's work on a microchip the size of a USB thumb drive that can simulate a human organ system.

It's called a human organs on chip, and it promises to accelerate drug discovery and help personalize medical treatments by imitating human organs. If it's a lung, we could have air and breathing motions. If it's intestine, you have peristaltic-like motions. And these devices, the cells, the way we position them, recreate the structure of the living tissues in our organs, and as a result, we mimic organs

organ-level responses to drugs, toxins, and radiation. That's Don Engber, founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and a professor of vascular biology at Harvard Medical School. He helped develop these chips. Recently, he had been using them to study radiation exposure during cancer treatments. And Engber says the federal agency overseeing the work was enthusiastic.

Just a week earlier, they were so positive about the advances we were making, developing ways to identify drugs to prevent radiation injury, that they were asking us to come up with a small proposal or what they call an add-on with additional funding.

to expand what we were doing to another area. When he says they, Professor Engber is talking about the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, as it's called. That's the federal agency that helps fund his work.

But last Monday, amid Harvard's high-profile fight with the White House, his two contracts with BARDA suddenly ended. One of the people who works for me, who is a project manager for me, and a key point of contact with the team at BARDA, received an email just about five hours after Harvard published its rejection of Trump's demands. And in that email were two attachments, two PDFs that simply said,

This is a stop work order to cease all activities on these two contracts. There was no explanation at all. Harvard had refused to comply with the Trump administration's demands, requesting that the school agree to a series of steps that would give the federal government more oversight of the school's hiring, admissions and governance.

Immediately, the White House then fired back and froze more than $2 billion in research grants for work done by Professor Engber and his staff at the Institute.

It was pure punitive lunacy. That is how I felt about it. Engber points to the White House recently honoring work done at his institute by Professor David Walt. That work focused on new tools to test for neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Parkinson's.

Walt, who's a professor of pathology and bio-inspired engineering at Harvard Medical School, says he received a stop-work order that said it went into effect immediately. The consequences of that were fairly significant. I had three people that were assigned to the project, and because we had to stop the project immediately,

I was forced to move them over to other projects, which is not the ideal situation. And having to stop that without any warning was very disappointing. And Walt says funding freezes like these will have consequences.

There are things like cell lines where patients had donated tissue. Those kinds of things can't just start up again. They have to be stored properly at very cold temperatures. They have to be rejuvenated and propagated. And when you have a stop work order, if you don't have the resources to be able to produce

properly put those kinds of materials away, in some cases, it jeopardizes the entire prospect of being able to restart that project in a timely fashion. So there's a lot of work

that the government had paid for, that taxpayers had paid for, that ended up being completely wasted. And the battle lines in this fight between the president and perhaps the most well-known university in the country seem to deepen every day. The White House is threatening even more actions against Harvard, including taking away its tax-exempt status. Here's what President Trump said when asked about that at a press conference last week.

Why are you considering changing the tax status of Harvard? Because I think Harvard's a disgrace. I think what they did was a disgrace. They're obviously anti-Semitic. So today on Point, Trump versus higher education and the clash between the White House and Harvard University. Joining us first is Sarah Brown. She's senior editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Welcome to On Point, Sarah.

Hi, Deborah. Thanks for having me. So we have a lot of volleys here in this fight between Harvard and the White House, and we may not get to all of them this hour. But let's start with this federal funding and let's talk about exactly how much this will affect universities like Harvard and universities throughout the country and, you know, what the consequences might be here from this fight.

Right. So the federal government has enormous power over higher education. More than half of undergraduates receive federal financial aid and the government funds more than half of all academic research. So this is a lot of money, right? And even for an institution like Harvard or some of the other universities that have been singled out by the Trump administration for mass funding freezes,

You know, they don't have—they might have large endowments. They don't have, you know, billions of dollars in the bank necessarily to just—

fill the gaps in this funding. And so the impacts are really significant, you know, and as the researchers who were just cited on the show noted, right, I mean, you can't just turn research on and off. If the funding is on hold, that might mean long-running clinical trials have to end or animals have to be euthanized. And sometimes studies follow patients for years and you can't just stop that work for a few weeks or, you know,

And so, you know, Harvard officials have said, you know, with these billions of dollars being frozen, we're already seeing grants devoted to cancer drugs and Alzheimer's and acute radiation syndrome and lots of other really important issues. They're all on hold and that those the challenges here with the funding will throttle research and discovery.

And what about the claim, first the claim that, you know, the basic question of should the government be funding this much research? Why should the government do it? What does the government get in return? What would you say to that? And then I would like to ask you about the accusations of anti-Semitism against Harvard, which is sort of the premise under which the White House has done some of this. So first, why should the government fund this research?

Right. So there has been growing government support for research since the mid 20th century. So we're talking about many decades here. In 2023, American universities spent about $60 billion in federal money on

And, you know, those initial investments in the sort of mid-20th century were made at a time when the government was placing a lot of value on university research. It was closely tied to national security interests around where

World War II. And that federal role in research has continued to grow. More recently, it's supported major medical breakthroughs on, again, on cancer and other diseases. And, you know, the government has historically viewed grants as an investment in a public benefit. Like, we all want cures for cancer.

And, you know, I will say scientists were concerned, you know, decades ago, as this federal role in research funding was growing, they were concerned about government interference and they were concerned, would higher education become beholden to federal influence? But

In general, there has been sort of bipartisan buy-in for the research and innovation that universities do. And the government generally let the universities work independently. You know, that there's this idea of academic freedom in the U.S., that universities should be able to do teaching and research without

out sort of external influence and that that's really important for the pursuit of knowledge. And that has generally been the practice for a long time. And that's what we're seeing change right now. And of course, this fight began with the accusation. And we heard a clip of President Trump saying this at the start of the show, that

There's anti-Semitism that needs to be addressed on Harvard's campus. And there's actually an anti-Semitism task force that has really been the lead agency for the White House in a lot of these letters to universities that they haven't addressed yet.

allegedly haven't addressed, anti-Semitism, particularly after protests on campus following the Hamas attack on October 7th of 2023. So what do you say about those allegations from the White House that are underlying a lot of this? Yeah, so big picture, the Trump administration is enacting an agenda that's grounded in the idea that universities have been captured by progressives and that

conservative values need to be imposed on campuses from the government. So, you know, there's an effort to refocus, you know, college curriculum on Western civilization. There's an effort to get rid of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And then there's also this crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests. The Trump administration sees those protests as anti-Semitic and

And they have used the fact that, you know, they argue that colleges have failed to combat anti-Semitism. That has been their justification for freezing and in fact even canceling in some cases a lot of federal funding. And, you know, the Trump administration argues that these steps are necessary to force colleges to make changes that will keep Jewish students safe.

I think, you know, a lot of people in the academic community believe that this isn't really about anti-Semitism. This is about the Trump administration trying to assert a greater level of control over universities. You know, you mentioned some of the demands that were made by the White House. And there was a very lengthy letter that may have been sent by mistake, according to reports now. But regardless, this letter that the White House did send to Harvard had

some demands that seem incredibly onerous. Did Harvard have a choice here? Did it have to reject these demands from the White House? People in higher education, you know, college leaders and academics across the board say that effectively Harvard didn't have a choice because the demands that were being made of the university were

for a government to be asking the university to do these things. So, for example, the document that the Trump administration sent to Harvard, you know, asked them to share all hiring and admissions data for audit for years. I mean, these are just steps that are a little bit further than a lot of people think is appropriate. Okay, we'll talk more about that after a break. We're talking about the clash between the Trump administration and Harvard University. I'm Deborah Becker. This is On Point.

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Before the break, Sarah, we were talking about some of the demands that the White House had listed in a letter to Harvard in its decision to have negotiations with Harvard over alleged anti-Semitism. And you mentioned some of them, but there were some things in this letter that I thought were very interesting and really send a signal to Harvard

the whole higher education ecosystem in the U.S., among them talking about reforming international admissions at Harvard and ensuring that there is viewpoint diversity on campus. Can you explain why Harvard reacted the way it did to those things and what those would mean for higher education in general?

Right. So, you know, you mentioned that there was a demand to reform international admissions and the government demanded basically that Harvard no longer admit students who appear hostile to, quote, American values. That was it. It was not defined further. Right.

You know, there was also a demand to conduct an audit of "viewpoint diversity among all students and staff" and submit it to the government by the end of the year. There was also a demand to review "all existing and prospective faculty for plagiarism" and a demand to commission an external review of programs that "most fuel anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism harassment or reflect ideological capture

And so from Harvard's perspective, this would have really threatened the independence and the academic freedom of the university again to pursue teaching and research as it sees fit. And I think, you know, what's important, too, is that the Harvard demand letter went unnoticed.

quite a bit further than a similar demand letter that was sent to Columbia University. Now, Columbia reacted differently. They made concessions to the Trump administration in order to preserve some of their federal -- try to preserve some of their federal funding. They'd actually already had $400 million canceled. And Columbia did make some changes. They changed their student disciplinary processes. They did put an academic department under the supervision of a vice provost, sort of increasing oversight.

There were differences in what Harvard was asked to do versus what Columbia was asked to do here. But Harvard did appear to be starting to make some changes. And there were some who were concerned that Harvard was going to do the same thing that Columbia did. But then this letter came, which seemed to go further from the White House. What does that suggest to you? I think universities are in a really difficult

difficult position right now because as we were saying federal funding is so essential to how universities operate and so there is this question about you know how if I'm an institution and I am trying to ensure that my federal funding is preserved that my researchers are able to do research that students are considering continuing to receive their financial aid you know what do I do in this situation and so you

You know, we've seen, for example, at Northwestern University, you know, they have now been targeted for a funding freeze. Right before that, they announced a bunch of changes that they had made in recent months to try to combat anti-Semitism, to reform student discipline. You know, everyone is sort of

on a kind of walking on eggshells trying to figure out, you know, to what extent do I try to negotiate with the Trump administration? Or if it seems like those negotiations are not being made in good faith, do I take a stand? And of course, that's what Harvard has decided to do here. And then, of course, there have been other things that have come out because of that, such as the IRS, you know, possibly ending Harvard's tax-exempt status. I mean,

What would that do? And even could that happen? What are your thoughts about that? Right. So the vast majority of public and private universities are tax exempt. And that has been the case for quite some time because universities provide a public good, right? They provide education. They provide research. They support students. They do community engagement. And

You know, if Harvard lost that status, they would be taxed on endowment earnings. They would be taxed on revenues from tuition and housing costs. Donations would no longer be tax deductible for the donor. I mean, it would be a huge change for institutions. Now, to be clear, the White House has said that they are not pressuring the IRS to do anything because these are supposed to be independent processes.

But, you know, college finance experts told us when we've done reporting on this that this move seems well outside normal legal and regulatory bounds. And it feels like another issue, frankly, that could end up in court sort of judging, did Harvard, you know, engage in some kind of political activity that would have violated its tax exempt status? That's kind of the core issue here. And Harvard, of course, says it has not. Right.

And then we've got the targeting of international students. And, you know, the world has watched, right, as we've seen two students, one from Columbia, one from Tufts University in Massachusetts, who are now being held at an ICE detention center in Louisiana, right?

These international students were here legally, but they were targeted for their speech, essentially, and they now face potential deportation. What does that do to the environment in higher education when there's this threat of potential deportation of some of your students if they say or do something that the government may not like?

Right. So there are over a million international students in the United States. It is an enormous part of sort of higher education in this country. It's not a surprise that the Trump administration is taking steps to potentially deport international students, especially those who protested the war in Gaza. You know, Trump talked about that on the campaign trail.

I think what's quite shocking to some people is that, you know, sometimes the actions don't match the rhetoric. And in this case, they do. And in fact, you know, the Trump administration has effectively canceled the legal status of hundreds. We've actually tracked over 1,200 international students and recent graduates at campuses across the country since the beginning of April. Harvard has had at least 12 students and recent graduates affected. And, you know, again,

Again, international students are a huge part of higher ed in this country. If they are, you know, told to leave the country immediately, if they are, you know, prospective students are incentivized to go seek education elsewhere, that would have major impacts and frankly reshape higher education in this country as we know it. I think a lot of international students, you know, in the global context, international students view the U.S. as kind of

the best in the world. And in large part, that's because the US has academic freedom and because of free speech and because people come to American universities to teach and research free from government interference. That is not the case in many other countries. And so again,

these impacts on international students would have major implications for the sector, you know, financially and otherwise. Now, you mentioned other universities, and I just want to get to this briefly because we did see a letter from dozens of university presidents this week actually supporting what Harvard has done. And you also mentioned Columbia and the fact that it did agree to a lot of the White House demands. I'm wondering how

What you get the sense is now among many university leaders regarding this standoff with the White House against Harvard and other schools, really.

Yeah, so I think that since President Trump took office, you know, he started enacting his higher education agenda pretty much right away. And there was a lot of reluctance in the early weeks of the Trump administration among college presidents to say anything. They did not want to be made a target, as we've been saying, that, you know, they did not want their federal funding to be at risk, right? That is a huge problem.

And so I think for a while college presidents were really reticent to speak out. We've started to see that change because, you know, as we are now at three months, nearly 100 days into the administration, I think some college presidents are just seeing that their communities are asking for them to stand up and say, you know, what the Trump administration is trying to do in higher education is inappropriate. It's

It's interference. It violates academic freedom. And so, you know, we now that you mentioned that letter, more than 200 academic leaders have now signed on to that statement. And, you know, they they wrote in the statement that they are open to constructive reform, quote, and do not oppose legitimate government oversight, but they oppose.

pose intrusion into the lives of those on campus. And so that's -- we are seeing more college presidents and, you know, leaders in the academic community who are saying the Trump administration has gone too far. And frankly, it is a risk because it could put a target on their back. You know, you mentioned pressure being put on university leaders to take a stand and to do something and fight back against some of these

proposals from the White House, demands from the White House. Among those who were calling on Harvard to do that was Ryan Enos, a professor of government and director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University. And he joins us now to talk about what's happening specifically at Harvard. Thanks for being with us.

Hi. Thanks. I'm glad to be here. So what's it like now on campus at Harvard in the middle of all of this fighting? This week there was a lawsuit that Harvard filed in response. So really, it's a heated fight here going on with the White House.

Yeah, it is a heated fight. And I'll tell you, it's been a real seesaw on campus. You know, professors and I think a lot of students were kind of people that like to keep our sort of heads down and concentrate on our research or our studies or whatever it might be. But this whole time, since essentially since Trump took office, it's been like there's a sword hanging over the head.

of the campus just waiting for something to fall. And those of us that were paying attention to the situation knew that Trump was coming for Harvard. It was very obvious from the get-go. And when his demands finally started coming, it was really a feeling that what is gonna happen? Is Harvard gonna capitulate like Columbia did? And then they did not. They pushed back eventually. And that really, in some ways, was this moment of joy on the campus and this moment that we're finally fighting back.

And so I think the emotions have really been back and forth on this thing. And then, of course, now we see the pain that we knew was coming from these grant cancellations and the threats to our international students and all the other things that are coming as the Trump administration is now trying to punish Harvard for its stance. Right. I mean, that's one big enemy, right, that can make things very unpleasant for a university. Are you concerned about that, that maybe there are consequences here that you're not seeing at the moment and it could be damaging for Harvard?

Well, of course I'm concerned about it. Trump is playing out the authoritarian playbook, as we've said over and over again, and a lot of authoritarians have been

successful in taking apart the higher education systems in their country, or at least bringing it, bending them to their will. And that's what Trump is trying to do. And the United States government is a powerful entity and they, the Trump administration is using it sort of arbitrarily and capriciously to attack students and scholars. And that's going to inflict pain. I,

I think big picture, the larger question is whether taking that short-term pain is important for preserving the role of higher education and not just higher education but concepts like free speech in this country. And personally, I think it is. And if any place can take a stand to try to preserve those things, it would be Harvard.

You're listening to On Point. I'm Deborah Becker. One thing I want to ask you about is we were just Sarah Brown and I were discussing some of the demands that were made in this letter to Harvard from the White House. And I'm wondering, you know, could there have been some compromise? And there are reports that the White House has been trying to open up negotiations again with Harvard. Do you see areas where there might have been room to compromise between these two sides?

So I never want to be somebody that would say I would reject compromise. That would be a foolish way to go about life. And I would never want to be somebody that said that universities can't find ways to improve the way they do their business. I'm somebody that actually has been very critical of a lot of things at Harvard during my career there. But I would...

I would be very cautious to say that what we're entering into with the Trump administration was something that was trying to achieve any kind of compromise. You know, I think the better way to characterize it would be something like where a bully comes and says, OK, compromise, I'll give me your lunch money and I won't punch you in the face. And then, of course, as we saw with Columbia, you give them your lunch money and they keep coming back and back again and again. And so.

They keep punching. And that's the way bullies work. We all know that, right? And so I think trying to reach compromise with something like that would be a fool's errand. And I'm glad that Harvard didn't try to do... I think Harvard...

maybe made some moves that looked like they were going to do that. And that concerned a lot of us. But I'm glad that ultimately that wasn't the direction they have gone. You know, clearly there is hostility against Harvard and other universities and many folks who are supporters of the president think that maybe Harvard is

had gone too far. Maybe Harvard and other elite universities did not make room for free speech. Expressions of conservatives, maybe, or those who maybe didn't adhere to a prevailing ideology, that viewpoints were silenced. Do you think

that there's some truth to that, or why do you think there is this hostility against elite universities like Harvard that would really fuel the president's supporters and really prompt him to do what he's doing right now?

You know, this is a really great and complex question. We could probably do a whole show on this because it's something that's really hard to unpack. But I think there's a couple of things I would say about it. And one is when I answer this question, of course, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that.

All of this fits a pattern of these authoritarian attacks in higher education. So thinking about whether it fit conservative ideology or whether Harvard was out of step with what some people in the country wanted, I think is very much a pretext. And in that sense, we have to always hold that in mind when we think about any sort of ideological imbalance that Harvard had or has, that that would have come one way or another. These attacks would have come one way or another.

Now, that being said, I do think this is something that is very much worth thinking about and as a complex issue. There is no doubt that Harvard is a institution like most elite higher education in the United States that is overwhelmingly liberal among its faculty and its student body. I'm somebody that in the past has said that I think that does a disservice to our learning at Harvard.

because we should try to hear from as many diverse viewpoints as we can. And I think Harvard should think about ways that it can bring in more ideological diversity. But I think even when we take a step back from that, and this is something that a lot of my colleagues and I have spent time discussing, is understanding

what ideological diversity we're trying to reach for is a really complex thing. Because, of course, you know, there are no perfectly balanced institutions in the United States. The Trump White House doesn't have ideological diversity. Goldman Sachs doesn't have ideological diversity. You know, Disney doesn't have ideological diversity. We tend to be unbalanced in this country because of the way people sort into these different institutions. Now, colleges and universities may have a

a reason they want to achieve more ideological diversity than let's say these companies I mentioned in the White House. But it's not something we're going to fix by coming in with the kind of sledgehammer that the Trump administration has taken. And it's certainly not what they ultimately care about. What they care about is control.

All right. We're talking about the clash between the Trump administration and Harvard University and what that might mean for higher education. After the break, we're going to talk about a potential parallel between what we're seeing here and other authoritarian governments. Stay with us. I'm Deborah Becker. This is On Point.

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On today's show, we're talking about the fight between the Trump administration and Harvard University and what this might mean for all of higher education in the U.S. Ryan Enos is with us. He's a professor of government and director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University. Also with us is Sarah Brown, who's senior editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education. And before the break, Ryan, we were talking about ideological diversity on campuses and whether there does need to be some kind of effort

to increase diversity. But I also wonder, you know, what about the federal government's role here? If it is providing

funding, does the federal government have some or should it have an oversight role to ensure that there aren't violations, that laws are being followed if it is in fact, you know, if it does have a financial stake in that particular organization? Where does that oversight begin and end? Do you think that this case raises those questions?

Well, of course it raises them because in many ways the Trump administration is using violations of laws as a pretext for these attacks they're making. And I don't think anybody would doubt that the federal government should have an oversight role in universities.

Just like they have an oversight role in a lot of institutions to prevent things like discrimination. The question that we have to ask then is, are they exercising that oversight role properly? And if you look, for example, at the lawsuits that Harvard has filed and the Harvard professors separately have filed against the Trump administration,

they all contend, and I think very rightly so, that they're not exercising that oversight role properly because they are skirting, I don't even think skirting's the right word, totally avoiding the processes that are in place to make sure that that oversight is not arbitrary and capricious. You know, I think when you see something like the Trump administration telegraphing before Trump even got in office when he was on the campaign trail that he's gonna punish these universities,

And then he comes in and actually starts doing that. It's not really a matter of oversight, but it's using the law in order to enact one's political agenda or to punish their political opponents. And that's not oversight in the way that we think it should operate. Sarah Brown, I wonder what you would say about that question in terms of, you know, I wonder if there's a historical perspective here. Has this ever been done before? Has there ever been this kind of fight between

the White House or other federal lawmakers and universities?

What we're talking about with these immediate funding freezes and cuts to grants en masse, that we have not seen. But it is important to note that the federal government has leveraged civil rights laws and the implied threat of federal funding cuts to try to get universities to take certain steps. So the best recent example of this is Title IX, the law barring sex discrimination in higher education. Right.

The Obama administration, you know, 15 years ago leveraged that civil rights law in order and the implied threat of, you know, we could pull all of your federal funding to force universities to take campus sexual misconduct more seriously. And the federal government steps on that front have led to a whole Title IX bureaucracy that has appeared on campuses. You know, there are new offices and staffs and new investigative processes that are

all stemmed from the federal government saying, you know, we believe in order to comply with this civil rights law that you need to take steps to combat sex discrimination in the form of sexual harassment and sexual assault. And so there are precedents for the government trying to enforce civil rights laws via this implied threat of pulling funding. The mass pulling of funding has not happened.

happened before. I want to bring up something that both of you have mentioned here, and that is regarding authoritarian practices and what we have known about them from the past and what we've learned. And so bear with me for a minute, because we also spoke with Kim Lane Schiappelli, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton. And she sees parallels, very clear parallels here between President Trump and the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. Let's listen to what she says.

When Orban first came to power, he was worried that he would not have a loyal civil service. So he suspended the civil service law and just mass fired huge numbers of state employees who we didn't trust that weren't in his camp. And the other big part that's really similar is that

Orban, while he was out of office, had done a really close study of the national budget, and he realized how much of the forces that might be oppositional to him were actually funded through the state.

And so as soon as he came into power, he immediately just cut without warning lots and lots of these little funds that sent everybody into a tailspin. And Schiapelli says another area where Orban made cuts, Hungary's universities. So in the first two years...

he was in power, he cut university budgets by 40%. And so we're seeing that here, again, a different mechanism because in Hungary, the national budget didn't fund all the science grants. A lot of that money was coming from the EU. But everything he could control, which was almost all the universities in Hungary were state universities, and he just slashed the budget. And then lots of faculties stopped working, lots of departments had to close.

And why does she think that leaders like Orban target higher education? The cynical thing that we used to say about Viktor Orban was that people with university degrees didn't vote for him. So therefore, he wanted to produce fewer people with university degrees. That's a long term project. But I think, you know, many autocrats see that universities provide a home base.

for criticism and critical thinking in general, which is something that they really don't welcome. That's Kim Lane-Chapelli, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton. Professor Enos, I wonder if you might elaborate on that a little bit in terms of, because you did bring this up, authoritarian governments and their attacks on higher education. Why does that happen and what effects have we seen it have?

Yeah, I think we can understand why it happens if we also look at the other things that authoritarians attack, which have happened in the United States under the Trump administration as well. They tend to attack judges and other people that are involved in the legal system, lawyers, for example.

they tend to attack the press and this is a pattern that is so stark that it's almost a one-for-one event where this happened in Turkey when democracy was being taken apart, it happened in Hungary, happened in Russia, happened in Venezuela and here we see it happening in the United States

And I think that if you think about what all those institutions have in common, these judges and the press and universities, is they provide this voice for people speaking out or challenging the government, challenging the executive in the government.

Some do it more directly than others in the sense that judges can actually block things through laws. But universities historically have been places of dissent. And it's a pattern of crushing that dissent because that's something that authoritarians don't like that we see play out overwhelmingly.

over and over again and should really raise these alarms in the United States when we see it happening here as well. And do you think the U.S. judiciary would be able to fend off those types of things that perhaps in other countries, if they didn't have a stronger judiciary, they could not?

Well, that's a really good question. And I wish it was the case that I said we could just say, okay, the judges will take care of this and we can sit back. And some people have argued that. And I think it's because we're used to the system of law working in the United States. We think that we have this robust judiciary. But even now, we're starting to see that

shake. We see reports of judges being threatened. We know that there is threatened with violence and we know that there's members of Congress. We've seen multiple media reports that members of Congress are changing their votes, for example, because they're afraid of violence from Trump supporters. It's

easy to imagine that would extend to judges as well many influential people in trump circles have essentially said that trump should ignore judges when they try to block some of his actions and once that happens that rule of law essentially crumbles it's all held together by this assumption that people respect these systems and these rules

And so in that sense, I think what that tells us is we can't sit back and wait for judges to save us. That is just not going to, it's not going to work. It's not going to preserve our democracy. And therefore, we need civil society, which includes places like universities. It includes Harvard, includes businesses, includes the free press. We need all that to stand up and push back.

and provide support for these judges and push back from these sort of authoritarian demands that are coming in. But I wonder if another thing here that might be an obstacle to the White House's proposals here and the White House demands is the effect that these institutions of higher education have on the economy. And I wonder, Sarah Brown, if I could ask you about that. I mean,

We have thousands of colleges and universities in the U.S. And, of course, you mentioned the stature and the respect that higher education in the U.S. has and why so many international students do seek to study here. So I wonder, would the potential economic fallout

also be a concern for the White House that it may try to negotiate something a little bit more softer because it might need these universities to not only carry out research but to be the economic engine that they have been. Right. I mean, take Harvard University out of it. There are thousands and thousands of colleges across the country and in many cases they are the primary economic engine

jobs, you know, they are the primary source of jobs in their communities. And so, you know, I think even early on when the Trump administration started to, you know, go after colleges funding, there were a handful of Republican lawmakers, you know, for example, Senator Katie Britt in Alabama, who

stood up and said, you know, we're a little worried about this. You know, if the University of Alabama is not able to do the research that it needs to do, that really harms my state. And so, you know, at this point, it's sort of hard to know where we're headed with this. It's all been quite a chaotic hundred days so far for higher education. But, you know, I do think it is important for people to recognize that, you know,

on a very local level, including in very Republican areas. The local college or university is a major, major employer and economic driver. And, you know, even many Republicans do not want to harm their constituents in that way. And what effect do you think this has on all of higher ed as this fight plays out?

plays out. Do you think that there are more schools and universities that are willing to fight because Harvard is fighting? Are they thinking that that's an example? Or do you think they're frightened and they just want to put their heads down and be quiet?

I think it's going to be really interesting to see because on the one hand, I think a lot of people are in the academic community see what's happening with Harvard and the fact that they're fighting back as a turning point where, you know, universities are going to take a stand. But taking a stand is really expensive, right? At this point, you know, Harvard already had initially $2.2 billion in research grants frozen. It's now a

potentially another billion dollars frozen that's on the table. And so, you know, we're talking about massive impacts. Most universities do not have the funding to fight in the way that Harvard is. And, you know, for example, I talked to a small college president in the Midwest a couple of weeks ago, and they were saying, you know, we don't think that the Trump administration is going to come after us right now. We don't see that happening. But if he did, we would immediately capitulate because we do not have the resources to

to litigate this prolonged fight in the courts over our federal funding. And, you know, our students need their financial aid. And so, you know, I think it sort of remains to be seen whether this is going to be a turning point or whether, you know, we're going to continue to see concerns about, you know, trying to not put a target on students.

individual institutions backs. And Professor Inos, I would like to ask you also the same question, what effects that you think this has on all of higher ed? But first, because Sarah mentioned the vast resources of Harvard, and there's been a lot of talk about the size of Harvard's endowment, which is the largest of any university in the country.

So a lot of folks think, well, Harvard has the resources. It can afford to do this. It's not really going to be hurt as badly as some of these other schools. So not only can it withstand this type of threat, but it also should be the leader in this fight. What do you say to that?

Well, I think there's some truth to it. And it's of course true that this is painful for Harvard. You know, there's people that are going to lose their jobs. There's people that are having their status as students threatened. And all those things are going to bring pain and potentially affect what we're doing, already affecting that. You know, we've cut admissions to our graduate students. We've frozen hiring. We've done all those things.

But I'll tell you, this is something that I have been trying to rally Harvard to for months to take this fight. And when myself and mainly my colleague, Steve Levitsky, were making this point in the press and other places, we would hear from other

other academics and actually just people out there in the world, over and over again, we'd hear from them and they would ask, you know, when is Harvard going to stand up? They would say, we're waiting for Harvard. If you don't do it, nobody will. And we made this point that we think that if Harvard does speak up, that people will rally to its side because we had heard people saying this to us privately.

And I think in many ways that turned out to be true. When Harvard stood up, it seemed like that's what higher education was waiting for. And in many ways, I think that's what civil society was waiting for. You know, you heard praise for Harvard from people like Barack Obama. You know, Steve Kerr, the basketball coach, was talking about how Harvard was doing the right thing. And I think Harvard in many ways was the first institution

major institution to stand up and say no to the Trump administration. And it showed that civil society more largely was waiting for something like that to happen. Well, I'm sure we will be talking about this further as this fight goes on. Ryan Enos, Professor of Government and Director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard. Thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you. Also, Sarah Brown, Senior Editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education, thanks to you as well. Thanks, Deborah. I'm Deborah Becker. This is On Point.

You're listening to It's Revolutionary, a podcast celebrating 250 years since the shot heard around the world was fired right here in Massachusetts. I'm Jay Feinstein. From revolution to revolution, we're exploring the people and places in Massachusetts that shape America.

Today we're in Boston, which was the heart of the abolition movement. It's a place where voices called for justice, where ideas turned into action. If you were anyone who was anyone in the abolition movement, you had to come through Boston to get your street cred. Like, this is where you get your credibility. Many of the country's most notable abolitionists spoke from the pulpit of the African Meeting House in Boston.

The building is now part of the Museum of African American History. And as I stepped inside, Dr. Noel Trent, president and CEO of the museum, made something clear.

This isn't just a place to learn about history, it's a place to experience it. When you come into this room, you're literally walking in the footsteps of history. You're standing in the same place that a notable abolitionist like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Mariah Stewart, and many, many others stood. Frederick Douglass was a force in the abolition movement.

His very first speech was actually here in Massachusetts, in Nantucket. At just 23 years old, he stood in front of a crowd and told the story of his life as an enslaved person. You know, he talked about his experience. And that's what's interesting is that, you know, for a lot of people in the abolition movement, there's a period of time when you have white people speaking about the horrors of slavery. It's hard for people to relate to until you have an enslaved person

tell their story. That moment when Douglas shared his lived experience was revolutionary. And it wasn't long before Douglas became the most recognized Black man in America. His image is symbol of dignity and defiance. So much so that the research shows that he was the most photographed

American man of the 19th century. He went on to be a national vigor, but it was Massachusetts that shaped him into the leader he became. This is this place where essentially he's forming his identity as a free man, right? Massachusetts is where his children are born. Like it's very much the second phase of his life. The Museum of African American History recognizes this legacy.

That's why they've introduced a brand new exhibit, an interactive AI-powered Frederick Douglass.

This digital Douglas, built from his own words, gives visitors a chance to engage with history in a whole new way. Can we meet it? Yes, we can absolutely meet Douglas. You want to do that? I do want to do that. Radio is all about painting a picture with words, so naturally the first thing I asked him was what he looks like. Mr. Douglas, can you describe for us how you look? Can you describe your appearance for us?

I appreciate your curiosity. I must focus on the essence of my journey and the message I wish to convey. My appearance is less significant than the strength of my character and the passion for justice that drives me. I walk with purpose, fueled by the desire for freedom and equality for all. It is the spirit within that truly defines me. What aspects of my journey resonate with you the most?

Clearly my question was too superficial for him, but I appreciate the answer. That's the first time I heard that and I was like, oh, that's a good answer. It was a good answer. But for those wondering what A.I. Douglas does look like, imagine a very large and very tall TV monitor. Accounts say that, you know, when you're in Douglas's presence, you know it, right? Like there's a little bit of an intimidating factor.

Also, A.I. Douglas is impeccably dressed, and that's because real Frederick Douglass was very conscious of what he looked like, so he could signal his worth to his community. Earlier iterations, I just felt like the clothes weren't good enough. I was superficial. It was time for both of us to get a little deeper.

Mr. Douglas, I'm wondering if you could tell me how Massachusetts has shaped you? Ah, Massachusetts has played a pivotal role in my journey toward freedom and advocacy. It was here on the soil of the Pilgrim Fathers that I found a community willing to support my emancipation. The fervent response from the people of Massachusetts to protect those escaping slavery inspired me deeply.

That's so cool. That's exactly what you told us. See, I know what I'm talking about.

Frederick Douglass spent his life making people listen. And here in this space, his voice is still commanding attention, still shaping how we understand our history. And Dr. Trent says the AI is getting better every day. You could ask the same question a year from now and it would be completely different because everything's refined. And that's what's exciting about this is that we can continue to find new ways and it pulls people back to us to want to continue to engage with the stories that we're telling here.

It's Revolutionary is a podcast from MA250. For more stories, check out massachusetts250.org or wbur.org slash ma250.