SCHECHTER | Harvard Took the Bullet: Let’s Follow

I am an only child, so I don’t have any experience with siblings. But on Monday, the Ivy League’s academic big brother, Harvard University, did what I expect any parent would want an older sibling to do. They set an example.

Just before spring break, I wrote urging the Cornell administration to work with the rest of the Ivy League and other schools in challenging the actions of the Trump administration. Since then, Cornell has seen $1 billion in funding frozen by the federal government. 

What schools like Cornell need is substantive messaging that takes a firm, public stance against the threats to academic freedom. One way Trump’s populism mobilizes the public against higher education is by painting a picture of elite universities as enemy institutions that proffer dangerous ideas and represent “woke” ideology. In reality, they’re sandboxes for ideas to make society a better place. Challenging that perception requires loud, vocal support for the good work universities like our own do for society: innovations in spaceflight, advancement of artificial intelligence and developments in novel cancer treatments among other public goods.

That kind of highly public, vocal, individualized advocacy about the benefits of research universities requires some real guts. And taking the first step towards it is understandably difficult. Last week, a senior Cornell administrator framed it to me as a classic collective action problem. And they were exactly correct.

A collective action problem — familiar to any Cornellian in an economics or government class — is a situation in which a group shares a goal, but individual members hesitate to act, hoping others will. Put simply: why stick your neck out when someone else will do it for you?

In our case, high-level research universities broadly share the goal of defending academic freedom but fear the retribution associated with taking a stand. The administrator I talked to described this as the threat of being taken hostage. No school wants to take the first step. Textbook collective action problem: group interest, individual paralysis.

How do you overcome the paralysis? You need a first mover: a respected individual who takes that gutsy first step and absorbs the uncertainty of action. Maybe the risks aren’t as bad as everyone’s making them out to be, but they’ll never know until someone acts. Once that dam breaks, momentum can build.

On Monday, Harvard University took that first step. President Alan Garber rebuked the Trump administration’s demands on his university. They included leadership, hiring and admissions reforms; student discipline adjustments; viewpoint rebalancing within the faculty; and government monitoring. None of these changes are in line with the institution of academic freedom. So Harvard rightly charted a firm course, stating their “University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights” in the face of government demands.

As an institution with high public prestige, institutional leadership and sizable financial cushion, Harvard had the wiggle room to make a courageous move that substantially lowered the bar to solving the collective action problem. 

What was the Trump administration’s response to Harvard’s defiance? More funding cuts and a threat to their tax-exempt status. While I don’t want to downplay the far-reaching impacts of $2.2 billion in cuts (they will have profound impacts on the functioning of the university), the White House just continued using the tool available to them — financial pain.

With Harvard’s refusal to bend, they may have started to break the spell of fear the Trump administration has cast over higher education. Publications have applauded Harvard’s response. Public opinion seems to have swung their way. 

Now, the collective action problem shifts from cooperation to momentum. The snowball has begun to roll and it’s time for it to grow. Institutions like our own should take the cue from Harvard and join the fight.

On Monday, before seeing the news from Harvard, Cornell dipped its toes into the shallow end of resistance. In the relatively safe legal sphere, Cornell banded together with land-grant universities, the Association of American Universities and a variety of strong public and private schools to sue the Department of Energy over the cuts to indirect costs for DOE-sponsored research grants. This was a first sign of a resistant attitude from Cornell. 

Now that they have seen Harvard take the first step, Cornell’s administration should ratchet the pressure up a notch and join the fray of vocal opposition against the Trump administration from the highest levels of academia.

It was only natural for America’s most prestigious university to set the tone in fighting challenges to academic freedom. Harvard is the older sibling of the Ivy League, and we need to follow them into the heat of opposition. Collective action is no longer an excuse. We can’t leave our big brother to fight alone. 

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