Letter on Trump Administration Demands of Yale

Written By 1A Committee

Over the past year and a half, the Trump administration has targeted institutions of higher learning across the United States. It has threatened to fine these universities, cut off their funding, withdraw their tax-exempt status, and cancel student visas, among other punitive actions. In return for withdrawing these threats, the federal government asks institutions to sign agreements giving it broad oversight over academic policies ranging from admissions, to curricula, to disciplinary policies, to campus anti-discrimination efforts.

The latest target of these attacks is Yale University, where the Trump administration has initiated a baseless and politically motivated investigation into Yale’s admissions process. The government’s complaint rests on a false and dangerous premise: that the admission of diverse students based on holistic considerations is itself grounds for investigation. That is not civil rights enforcement. It is an effort to chill lawful efforts to foster the diverse academic communities that help creative expression flower, to commandeer the Yale admissions process, and to intimidate, by extracting submission from such a prominent target, observers across the country and even around the world. 

"Universities are bastions of free inquiry and free expression, including the types that power the arts, and this is precisely why the Trump administration is now attacking Yale’s independence,” said Bruce Cohen, Yale Alum, Academy Award-winning producer and steering committee member of the Committee for the First Amendment.  "Aggressive repression of educational institutions—and the innovative, boundary-pushing ideas and artistic expression that they foster—has been a hallmark of other authoritarian governments throughout history — and must not be allowed in the United States today."

The Committee on the First Amendment condemns the administration’s threats against Yale. At this moment, leaders at the university are reportedly negotiating a settlement with Trump’s Department of Justice. We consider this an ill-advised capitulation and stand behind a large coalition of faculty, students, staff and alumni who are urging Yale to stand firm against the Trump DoJ’s pressure. Such an abandonment of the university’s independence will inevitably undermine artistic expression, teaching, and learning at Yale—and beyond. Other universities such as Harvard have refused to sign agreements constructed on similar baseless charges, consisting of broad, vague, and potentially unlawful conditions that open up these institutions to a prolonged period of interference from the federal government. Yale should do the same.

1A Committee
Next

Statement on the President Reviving McCarthy’s Playbook