Universities face a reckoning. President Donald Trump canceled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University for failing to protect Jewish students. Columbia caved to the administration’s demands to get that funding back. Now, Harvard is in Trump’s crosshairs, with $9 billion at risk. Trump’s Department of Education is investigating at least 60 universities for creating a hostile environment. Something is terribly wrong.
The solution isn’t partisan posturing or federal overreach—it’s institutional courage. And it starts with replacing outdated neutrality doctrines—policies that prohibit universities from making statements about “controversial” issues—with values-driven principles.
University administrators make opaque decisions about what’s controversial—in their minds, defunding the police after George Floyd’s death in 2020 was not…
