A Northeastern professor called on university leadership to more forcefully respond to the actions of President Donald Trump’s administration in an open letter to the university community Feb. 22, the first such letter at Northeastern since Trump took office last month and issued a barrage of executive orders targeting higher education.

Kylie Bemis, an assistant teaching professor of computer science at Northeastern, shared the letter around 3 p.m. Feb. 22 addressing the university’s response to Trump’s administration.

The letter was sent to several members of faculty and administration, including Provost David Madigan, Chief Belonging Officer Richard O’Bryant and the office of the Dean of Khoury College of Computer Sciences.

“Northeastern University deserves leadership who are open and transparent with our university’s students, faculty, and staff about our legal strategy to fight for our research, for our financial aid, for our safety from ICE, for our human rights and civil rights as transgender Americans, and for our democracy,” Bemis wrote.

In the letter, Bemis expressed her pride in members of the Northeastern community who have fought for justice in some way, including data science students who have conducted projects around social justice, graduate students involved in unionization efforts, students participating in protests for Palestine and faculty who have sought to protect diversity, equity and inclusion programs amid Trump’s executive orders calling for their removal.

“I am so proud of all my Northeastern colleagues who have stayed up sleepless nights wracking our brains trying to think of ways to protect our most vulnerable students during this unprecedented crisis,” Bemis wrote.

Bemis, who worked at Northeastern for nine years, began as a postdoctoral researcher and later joined as teaching faculty in 2019. Bemis said she hopes that her teaching has instilled ethics and justice in her students, and expressed gratitude to other groups on campus.

“My great hope is that I’ve instilled a sense of data ethics and civic responsibility in the students I’ve taught,” Bemis wrote.

Bemis went on to reference Trump’s recent posts on the social media platform Truth Social referring to himself as a king and called upon her colleagues to take a stand.

“We now live in a time when the President of the United States has openly aligned his administration with the dictators and authoritarian regimes of the world, and seems to seek to become a king himself. But America has no kings,” Bemis wrote. “I believe Northeastern University deserves leadership with the courage to say this out loud.”

Bemis demanded that Northeastern leadership protect its most vulnerable students and faculty with identities under attack from the Trump administration, including transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, immigrants and activists. 

“I believe Northeastern University deserves leadership who are ready and willing to meet this moment with the bravery and fight it deserves. … But even without that leadership, I believe in the Northeastern University community,” Bemis wrote.

Bemis expressed her belief in the community’s ability to stand up in the face of potential further cuts to research funding and financial aid, future ICE activity on campus and the rights of transgender community members who have been targeted by the administration. 

The letter ended with a statement of solidarity to the community: “I see you. I thank you. I’m with you.”

Bemis, who attended Northeastern’s Feb. 12 faculty senate meeting, spoke about Elisa Rae Shupe, who was the first person in the United States to be legally recognized as non-binary in 2016. Shupe died by suicide Jan. 27, 2025 and was found covered in a transgender pride flag, with a note condemning Trump. Using this as an example for the stakes of protecting the rights and safety of the transgender, community, Bemis said that Northeastern currently has taken “no active steps” to protect its “vulnerable” populations. 

“This email from our university president is not worth the pixels that it is written on without action behind them,” Bemis said at the meeting, referring to President Joseph E. Aoun’s Feb. 12 message to the university community reaffirming its values that made no explicit reference to Trump. “We need to see that action, and that is what I am here begging and pleading the senate and the university leadership to do.”