Elite Universities Form Private Collective to Resist Trump Administration - WSJ

Leaders of some of the nation’s most prestigious universities have assembled a private collective to counter the Trump administration’s attacks on research funding and academic independence across higher education, according to people familiar with the effort.

The informal group currently includes about 10 schools, including Ivies and leading private research universities, mostly in blue states. Strategy discussions gained momentum after the administration’s recent list of demands for sweeping cultural change at Harvard, viewed by many universities as an assault on independence. The collective, as some are calling it, represents a separate, quiet and potentially more potent effort than recent public resolutions from university-aligned groups.

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The Trump administration has been worried schools would team up in resistance, because it is harder to negotiate with a united front, according to a source familiar with the government task force. Within the past two months the task force warned leadership at at least one school not to cooperate with other schools to defend against the task force demands, said one person familiar with the warning.

So far, the allied university leaders agree that one red line for them is relinquishing academic independence, including autonomy over admissions, hiring, and what they teach and how it is taught. One point some have discussed: Several of the schools have been in place for 300 years, while President Trump has been in office for three months, one of the people said.

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Members of the loose collective have conducted scenario planning to develop responses for various attacks. One area for which they feel poorly prepared: the federal government denying schools the ability to enroll international students, who provide significant tuition revenue and intellectual firepower to campuses. The group also worries the federal government could hinder universities from hiring international faculty, say some of the people familiar with the discussions.

While the university leaders in discussions don’t plan to surrender operational independence of schools to the Trump administration, members might agree to cosmetic changes that allow the White House to look like it has won, according to one participant in the collective.

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