Professors, students, Bostonians — we all benefit from our universities in the realm of higher education today, but our institutions are doomed to fall unless we fight for them.
You may be healthy today because of treatment at a Boston hospital relying on research funded by the National Institutes of Health. You may love and care for the New England coastal and oceanic ecosystems, which research funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration helps to protect. You may even rely on our National Science Foundation-funded cybersecurity research to protect your personal data without even knowing it.
As professors at Northeastern University, we are members of the same community. Faculty speak at community events, including “Meet a Scientist” at the Boston Museum of Science. We watch the same Red Sox games and drink the same iced coffee. Our students turn out by the hundreds to scream their lungs out for every runner racing from Hopkinton to Boston on Patriots Day. We are your neighbors, and you are our family.
As members of the Northeastern community, you need to know that we — and our institutions — are under attack. Federal funding cuts and freezes have halted our work on topics from generative artificial intelligence to cancer research simply because the grants contain terms such as “women,” “socioeconomic” or “discrimination.” The dismantling of the Department of Education threatens financial aid like Pell Grants, which provide vital pathways to unlocking the American dream for many students. The most vulnerable now live in daily terror from the Trump administration’s merciless targeting of immigrants and transgender Americans.
Beyond these immediate impacts, attacks by the Trump administration pose an existential threat to universities, communities and American democracy itself. Even top private universities struggle to produce world-changing research without federal funding. Corporate funding will not save us, because it can take decades to develop the revolutionary Ozempic drug from the exploratory research on Gila monster venom.
Most university leaders have remained silent amid these attacks. Innovation relies on university research, however, industry leaders haven’t spoken up. Universities are essential to our community, however, political leaders say little.
Many university leaders nationwide believe that we can survive by complying to reduce the impact of cuts or by staying silent to avoid becoming a priority target. This blatantly ignores the immigrant and transgender students who are afraid for their safety, worrying their university will not protect them. This ignores the faculty whose research has already been made impossible merely because it mentions a now-banned phrase. It ignores the irreparable loss of reputation when our universities sacrifice fundamentally American values like freedom of speech. We must work together to ensure this doesn’t happen here at Northeastern.
We must learn from the fate of Columbia University. We must learn that no amount of appeasement will satisfy Donald Trump’s regime. Columbia’s administration believed they could save their institution by obeying his anti-American demands, from banning face masks and shuttering departments to allowing political commissars to dictate university policy. Now, Columbia will continue to exist in name only, a mere shadow of its former self.
If we do not learn from Columbia, then the Trump administration will come for our institutions one by one, and each of our universities will fall prey to the same attack. Our leaders’ silence may temporarily delay the inevitable, but it also enables it tenfold. To borrow a phrase from the flags flown by America’s founders, now is the time for our universities to “join or die.” Together, the universities and communities of New England are one of the most powerful coalitions in the world.
Even when legal protection is beyond their capability, the words of our leaders absolutely matter; Tufts University President Sunil Kumar’s “Declaration for Rümeysa Öztürk” shows us that. Freedom of speech is one of our most fundamental civil rights in America. The powerful speech of legal residents including Rümeysa Öztürk, Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung and others seems to be enough for the Trump administration to violate their rights of due process in attempts to make them “disappear.” Powerful speech must then also be enough to threaten the Trump administration’s attempts to erode our democratic institutions.
Therefore, we ask the Northeastern and Boston community to join us in calling on our university, industry and political leaders to stand together. We must acknowledge the unfolding crisis, resolve to protect our most vulnerable community members and mutually pledge to fight for our country’s research, our country’s education and our foundational American freedoms.
Boston doesn’t bow to kings. Our universities are worth fighting for.
Kylie Ariel Bemis, Rahul Bhargava, Alexandra To, Richard Daynard, Rachel Rosenbloom and Laura Edelson are Northeastern professors. You can reach them at k.bemis@northeastern.edu, bhargava.rah@northeastern.edu, a.to@northeastern.edu, r.daynard@northeastern.edu, R.Rosenbloom@northeastern.edu, l.edelson@northeastern.edu.
