Three weeks ago, Northeastern Class of 2025 graduates turned their tassels at Fenway Park, a tradition five years in the running. But despite the clear skies and beaming sun, this year’s commencement served as a bookend to a semester marked by political unrest, confusion and fear.

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has continued to forcefully pressure higher education institutions to conform to his political agenda — and Northeastern has not been immune to the political headwinds. 

Northeastern’s Senior Vice President for External Affairs Mike Armini sat down for two interviews with The Huntington News, May 15 and 23. He discussed the university’s response to Trump’s rapid changes on higher education institutions — Northeastern’s role in responding to Trump, how it is communicating its response and his thoughts on how effective that response has been. 

Armini said evading Trump’s crosshairs while standing up for the Northeastern community has been an exercise in balance and thoughtful decision making, where senior officials must consider the university’s constituencies, compliance with the law and long-term stability.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has slashed research funding, attempted to influence curricula at private universities, upended the student visa system, put federal financial aid for lower-income students at risk, undermined free speech and paralyzed the Department of Education. 

And while Trump has taken particular aim at several high-profile institutions, including Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University, Armini pointed out that Northeastern has yet to be singled out to the same extent. 

“There are no federal investigations of Northeastern, and we have received no congressional subpoenas,” Armini said. “Now, I think that’s a sign of the university doing a good job. But there may be others who would see a federal investigation as a badge of honor.”

In the past few months, there have been repeated calls for Northeastern leadership to do more to fight back against federal overreach. In open letters and demonstrations, panels and interviews with The News, members of the university community have called on Northeastern’s top brass, including President Joseph E. Aoun, to openly oppose Trump.

“The senior leadership team is entrusted with protecting the university and ensuring its long-term success,” he said. “That’s a burden that not everybody in the community has. So, that has to be understood. Sending off an email is different than actually having the responsibility that the Board [of Trustees] and the officers of the university have.”

Armini has served as senior vice president for external affairs at Northeastern for nearly 17 years, entering the role after serving as associate dean for communications at Harvard Law School. In his current role, he oversees university communications, marketing strategies and Northeastern’s relationships with the press along with local, state and federal governments.

Over the past decade, he has helped manage and execute the university’s rebrand from a commuter school to an elite global university. He has also helped lead its response to COVID-19, the Israel-Gaza war, multiple university mergers, as well as the first, and now the second, Trump administration. 

That experience and consistency among the university’s leadership, Armini said, have helped the university weather storms that have significantly impacted other institutions. He said the university’s success in its response to Trump has caused communication teams at other institutions to reach out for advice.

“I just tend to get a lot of calls saying: ‘How do you guys do this?’ or ‘What are you thinking about that?’” he said. 

As Armini puts it, the university’s communication strategy focuses on informing the Northeastern community and reaching its various stakeholders — including more than 350,000 living alumni, parents, the Board of Trustees, donors, faculty, staff members and more than 40,000 students. A central part of Northeastern’s communication strategy, he said, is to avoid top-down messaging in favor of a means of communication that can be updated in real time.  

For the most part, Northeastern has publicly communicated the impacts of the federal administration’s policies on the university through its “Navigating a New Political Landscape” FAQ page, which is continually updated with new information. Northeastern has also published Q&As with university leaders, including the outgoing Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David Madigan and Vice President for Federal Relations Jack Cline, on its own media outlet, Northeastern Global News.

“The first rule is always to begin with your audiences in mind,” Armini said. Part of how the university decides to communicate its response to the federal administration is by thinking through the scope of its audience, he said.

This diversity in viewpoints means Northeastern is often selective in its words and actions when it comes to the Trump administration.  

“We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who have extremely divergent viewpoints and experiences,” he said. 

As of publication, Aoun has authored only one statement — released Feb. 12 and titled “Reaffirming our Mission Together,” which received polarized responses from university community members. (Aoun has also signed on to two open letters: “A Call for Constructive Engagement” April 23 and “A Renewed Call to Action“ May 22.)

“We heard from some faculty who said, ‘Oh, well, we don’t like this because we don’t think it’s strong enough,’” Armini said of the Feb. 12 statement, which did not name Trump explicitly but referenced “changing landscapes” and “the onslaught of daily news about changes in public policy.” 

“The first reply we got to [Aoun’s] email was from the parent of a student who said, ‘I don’t like this email because I don’t know why you’re sending it. We think Trump is fantastic,’” he said. “That always is a good reminder for us about how diverse the community is.”

As the university works to communicate its response to Trump, the federal government’s actions continue to have a significant impact on Northeastern’s campuses. 

Notably, shortly after his inauguration, Trump issued multiple executive orders against  diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs. Days later, Northeastern quietly changed its own messaging and the structure of its DEI initiatives — a move criticized by many faculty members. Armini said that the university began re-evaluating the purpose of its DEI policies and office over a year ago, after the departure of former Chief Inclusion Officer Karl Reid.

“So the organization changed, there’s no doubt about that,” he said of the recently rebranded Office of Belonging. “And obviously the name changed. And again, those were things that we were thinking about for a long time. And I think, in general, the principles remain. The one thing I would say is we have to comply with the law, and that has changed a little bit.”

But the federal administration’s actions have impacted more than just DEI initiatives. As part of Trump’s crackdown on immigration, the State Department initially terminated over 1,800 student visas, and more than 40 Northeastern students and recent graduates were impacted, the university said. Trump also barred transgender NCAA athletes from women’s sports, and Northeastern Athletics scrubbed its page on transgender student involvement in university athletics.

On campus, several international students said they don’t know if they can return to their home countries and called on the institution to provide more support. A student in the LGBTQ+ community said they feel as though the “world is closing them out.” A first-generation student called the university’s compliance with the federal administration “embarrassing.” 

Moreover, Trump’s attacks on academic freedom and free speech, and the fallout of last year’s on-campus pro-Palestine encampments, have put the spotlight on university policies nationwide. The News asked Armini about how the university is balancing responding to threats against the core values of higher education — including academic freedom and free speech — while ensuring the long-term success of the institution. 

“I think balance is the key word. First of all, I think when it comes to academic freedom, what’s in the faculty handbook here is really strong, and we stand by that,” he said. ‘I know it’s come up in discussions. I think it is true that we have to pick our battles.”

One of those battles is research funding, which supports a key tenet of the university’s identity. As an R1 institution, Northeastern is responsible for a high level of research activity, earning $296 million in external awards in Fiscal Year 2024, or FY 2024. 

“Something like changing the way research is funded is something we may decide to really challenge,” Armini said. “That’s not only bad for universities — the proposed changes — but it’s very likely bad for the country.”

Moves to massively cut research funding further the Trump administration’s priorities to eliminate what it considers wasteful bureaucratic spending and combat higher education’s so-called “woke” agenda. The two leading scientific research funders in the U.S. — the National Science Foundation, or NSF, and the National Institutes of Health, or NIH — have faced proposed budget cuts that would devastate research nationwide. In FY 2024, Northeastern received $67.6 million from the NSF and $88.3 million from the NIH.

While challenges to research could pose a significant threat to the university’s function, and political headwinds may continue to present hurdles over the next year or four years, Armini says the university continues to be in a “strong position.” 

Northeastern continues to stand out among American higher education institutions with record-high applications. It boasts a widely regarded co-op program, a sizable international student population, a president who has been at the university’s helm for more than 18 years and, most uniquely, a global campus network — which Northeastern said it could use to continue teaching international students with revoked visas.

“Most of our peers don’t have international campuses, so it may give us what we call a level of resiliency that others don’t have,” he said. 

But the chaos of the second Trump administration’s early days, which has spurred university leaders to meet at least three times a day, is something Armini says might slow down — something the university factors in when balancing its preservation and standing up its own values.

“I do think the volatility of the first hundred days is largely over,” he said. “Let’s see what happens. It’s risky to make those predictions, but I think we’re well positioned for what’s coming.”