“A Reckoning:” Fmr. Columbia President on Academic Freedom Under Trump

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks Bianna. Lee Bollinger, thank you so much for talking with us.

LEE BOLLINGER: My pleasure.

MARTIN: I should say, Mr. President, because you’ve led two of our most prestigious and competitive universities – University of Michigan and Columbia University. And I actually should mention that these were not placid times when you were leading these institutions. There were student protests, there was congressional scrutiny, there was political pressure, there were sort of political currents. But obviously you wrote this book thinking that there, you know, there’s something special about this moment. So what is it about this moment that strikes you as different?

BOLLINGER: Well, I think the first thing is the federal government assault and intrusion into the academic affairs of universities. So that has not really happened, certainly not to this degree for decades. I mean, you really have to go back to the McCarthy period which was really about one senator leading a campaign of intolerance. You have to go back to that for something comparable. And so the level of intrusion, the threat to academic freedom, the need to think about universities and their role in the Constitution and the First Amendment is much more imperative today than it really has been in modern history. So that’s really the precipitating reason for the book.

MARTIN: In your book, you write, “We are, in short, witnessing a tectonic shift in America toward the use of authoritarian tactics that threaten our democratic form of government…The university is among the first (along with the press) of the major independent institutions in society to feel the brunt of this new and frightening transformation.” I mean, so your point here is that yes, the universities and the press are on the leading edge of this, but this is really about democracy. What, what convinces you that, why do you say that?

BOLLINGER: I think it’s both about democracy and about fundamental values in the country. I mean, we’ve seen from the very start of the administration efforts to try to silence and really attack law firms, media, civil service independent agencies that provide the nation with objective information like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and then universities. The business community is also face this, if there’s any kind of opposition, there’s an effort to come down very hard on them and to try to silence them. So, this is something that you really cannot have if you’re going to be committed to a democracy. And if you’re going to be committed to a nation that values knowledge and independent information and knowledge. And that’s where we have been for the past century, and it would be a tragedy to lose that.

MARTIN: As a person who, you know, presumably just through your own work as a scholar, as a lawyer, as a leader of these prominent institutions, you’ve met a lot of these industry leaders. One of the things that is, that you pointed out is that a lot of them folded over pretty fast. Amazon, you know, was going to, or talked about, you know, having some sort of indicator on their website of the cost of the Trump administration’s sort of tariff scheme on different products. And of course, he threatened them, and they immediately folded. A number of law firms, right? Some of the finest, most distinguished lawyers in the country. He threatened them, they folded. And I’m just curious why you think they’ve capitulated so quickly? 

BOLLINGER: Yeah, so I think this has come, the whole sort of affair has taken people by surprise. People have been shocked by the level of assault on basic values and basic institutions. And so we were not prepared for it. I think it’s just, you know, a combination of it’s very, very difficult to face a situation in which the government’s full power, which is immense, can be brought down on you and face what everybody will always say it, an existential choice. Do you capitulate, do you try to find a way outta this, even if that means sacrificing some of your values? Or do you stand up and try to fight back? That’s a really hard problem. And I’m very sympathetic to the people who have felt, and institutions who have felt that they had to find a way to save their institutions by negotiation and conciliation.

But it is the case that the only way in which you can effectively counter this is by collective action. It’s not by an individual institution or a single sector of the society. Everybody who writes about the democracies, the end of democracies, and so on. I mean, all the scholarship points out that it’s only when civil society broadly sort of acts and rises up and said, this cannot stand, that you really have effective resistance. 

MARTIN: A lot of people, you know, see universities in lots of different ways. I mean, some people see colleges and universities as places you go to learn stuff so you can get a job. They’re are engines of the economy.  Why should someone, perhaps, who didn’t have the chance to go to a university embrace that idea? 

BOLLINGER: I think people understand in their hearts that having major institutions – but of all kinds from community colleges all the way through to the highest research universities – that it is really valuable for the society to have this kind of effort, human effort to expand knowledge because it benefits the society in all kinds of ways. Everything from economic development to simply making it possible to understand life. And it applies not just to the people who come and are students or to the faculty who are there, but it benefits everybody in the society.

I think also that, you know, there is a campaign that’s been going on for many years of people who want to characterize universities in very negative stereotypes, as filled with intolerance, ideological, not scholarly, too costly, et cetera, et cetera. And while there are fair criticisms about universities, many of which I have made myself, the fact of the matter is if you look at all the parts of the society and you say where, which ones have the most integrity in pursuing what their mission is? I think universities are at the very forefront of that. And the proof is in part that everybody in the world wants to come and attend universities in America, because they really are the standard for this.

MARTIN: Well, they did. That might not be the case anymore. I mean, the number of international students coming to the United States has really fallen precipitously. You know, it, it’s interesting, the irony —

BOLLINGER: But not because of, but not because of the quality of universities. 

MARTIN: But because of the political environment…You know, the irony is that these concrete financial pressures being placed on universities are having a deleterious effect on kind of the research flow. We see that, you know, top scholars, research dollars are flowing to, you know, Canada to China. Some $400 million in grants and contracts frozen at Columbia, $510 million at Brown, $1 billion at Cornell, $790 million at Northwestern. Much of it tied to demands about governance or compliance. What do you think the consequence of this is going to be down the line?

BOLLINGER: This idea of the Trump administration, of suspending that kind of funding, you know, for that kind of resurge is foolhardy. But it’s, it’s also striking at the basic values that we have committed ourselves to. And it may sound idealistic, but the First Amendment, the constitution of the country, has made it very clear that the value of knowledge and the preservation of democracy, the making it possible to be a democracy, is very, very difficult to do. That these are what the country is committed to. And the things we’re talking about, Michel, of fundamental research in these areas and beyond in the liberal arts as well, are what are – that’s threatened by this kind of use of the lever of funding to accomplish intrusions into pure academic decision making: faculty, students, policies of the universities.

MARTIN: The fact is that on the one hand, there are people – even if you accept what, what a lot of people believe, which is that the campus climate is just a pretext for authoritarian impulse. There are still a lot of people who feel, and certainly have felt, particularly, let’s just say it in the wake of the, the Gaza War, that there are certain students who are just under attack on some of these campuses, and that they have felt silenced, and some of them have felt harassed and deeply unwelcome. And I just wonder how you sort of square those two – I don’t wanna call it realities – but two phenomena, well, let’s just sort of call it that. How do you square those two things?

BOLLINGER: So there’s no question. Over the past year, year and a half we’ve faced a, you know, an incredibly difficult situation on American campuses, but also in the society generally, in trying to understand and deal with questions of policy and principle with the Israeli-Palestinian-Hamas issues, but also with race in America, with abortion in America, rights of abortion. I mean, these are incredibly difficult issues for people to address. And when that happens, unfortunately, there are excesses. And you have to be very clear if you are in an institution or if you run an institution that excesses are unacceptable and will be treated as such. But you also have to understand that you have to have very clear ideas about excesses. 

The First Amendment over the past century, again, has said – the court has held many over many decisions, conservatives, liberals alike – that hate speech, that antisemitic, that racist speech, that sexist, misogynistic speech will be protected by the First Amendment, just like any other idea. That’s a very, very significant choice and a very difficult one. And something that I’ve written about over the course of my career. Universities, public universities are bound by that because they’re bound by the First Amendment. Private universities have made a choice. They too, will be bound by the First Amendment. What that means is that when you are having debates about public issues on campuses, and you’re committed to a First Amendment approach, you may end up with very, very bad speech being spoken, which is horrible for many people to have to deal with, and horrible for the community at large. (35:10): But you cannot say that that is itself something that the universities have failed to correct for when in fact, the commitment has been in the society and now on campuses to live by First Amendment for all kinds of reasons. 

MARTIN: So in your essay for the Atlantic last May, you wrote that, “Strategies of appeasement never work out. At some point when sanity returns, you’ll be seen as having sacrificed your principles when under pressure, and that will undermine your case forever.” So you draw a contrast between universities that negotiated settlements in Harvard, which chose to resist, and won an injunction blocking what a judge called “an arbitrary and capricious funding suspension.” Based on what you’ve seen, has Harvard gotten it right so far? And is that a path that others should follow?

BOLLINGER: Universities, like other institutions, were surprised and shocked by the level of intrusion and demands and the threats that they faced. Completely understandable in my view, that universities would respond in different ways, and it would be very difficult to organize collective action. Myself, I think that the Harvard approach was the right one, especially for Harvard, because the level of intrusion was much more than for other universities, at least so far. So I do think, and the point of this book is to try to say, that universities need to be much clearer about what their identity is in the society, their role and responsibilities. They need to make that claim, and they need to do it in various ways, but through the courts and the First Amendment and law is a primary way. So, yes, I think that standing up and articulating your values and making your defense is the right approach.

MARTIN: And I recognize that this has to be an awkward question for you, as the former leader of this institution, but you do realize that for many people, Columbia is the poster child for appeasement.

BOLLINGER: So I’ve made a deliberate choice not to criticize, directly – criticize my institution and the one that I led for 21 years. One has to be, as I said, you know, very sympathetic with institutions who are trying to struggle with how to deal with the attacks that they have endured.

MARTIN: So what do you think people should do right now? People who share the perspective that you share, people who share the concern, the deep concern that you’ve articulated, and people who also share the love of knowledge and of free thought that you’ve articulated.

BOLLINGER: So, I think we need to settle on the key, the core identity of what universities are. So it’s just critical to me that we can’t fall for this idea that universities are just businesses or that they are only for elites. That, you know, all of these standard criticism. It really is important that universities say who they are. And say that with conviction. I think it’s also important that universities find ways to act together. This kind of collective action is critical, but it also has to be across sectors. So it has to be with the press. Michel, you would have to agree. I think that the press has also failed to develop a collective kind of response to the various intrusions. Same with law firms, same with businesses. 

Anybody who is a scholar of democracy and how you preserve it in the face of attempts to undermine democracy will say that it’s only when civil society broadly stands up and resists that you can have an effective resistance to a government that is intent on achieving its goal of undermining any kind of opposition. That is something that requires daily work. It requires work of many, many people, and you never know exactly how it’s going to unfold. But that has to happen. 

MARTIN: Lee Bollinger, thanks so much for talking with us.

BOLLINGER: Thank you, Michel.