Alice Speri at The Guardian reports Faculty at Harvard University are organizing amid anxiety that their University will capitulate to President Donald Trump, whose Administration could hold back on following through on billions of dollars in Federal contracts and grants to the school if it does not agree to his Anti-Semitism policies. Harvard President Alan Garber has offered no detail about what Harvard would do to protect its independence from the Trump Administration. Kirsten Weld, a History Professor and the President of the Harvard Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a national group advocating for Faculty, is calling attention to a subsequent Harvard “statement of abdication” that basically says: ‘Yes, we have been bad and we deserve to be punished.’” And that’s why Faculty across the country have also begun to organize. AAUP has filed three lawsuits over the funding cuts at Columbia University, the targeting of international students by Immigration Authorities and Trump’s efforts to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs on campuses. Meanwhile, Rutgers University Faculty have proposed a “mutual defense compact” within the Big Ten Consortium, which includes some of the largest State Universities in the country, to support one another in the face of political attacks. Says Weld: “The attacks coming from the Federal Government might be directed toward Columbia and Harvard, and who knows which other university, but if we allow them to proceed, then we will be picked off one by one. The only way forward for any individual institution in the Higher Education Sector right now is to join forces.”

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