To the Editor:
Re “Columbia School Protests as Trump Officers Reward College’s Concessions” (information article, March 26):
As a graduate of the Columbia College enterprise college, I write this letter with disappointment and foreboding. In 1970, I used to be the coed who organized the assembly the place a majority of my fellow college students voted for a strike that briefly closed the enterprise college to protest the Vietnam Battle. The varsity, which was conservative for the time, had remained largely open in the course of the bigger college protests in 1968.
There was not one official on the college who ever discouraged my actions. There have been no recriminations. Amazingly sufficient, there was by no means a second after I feared that any motion could be taken in opposition to me or that any of my actions could be curtailed.
Universities like Columbia are the crown jewels of our civilization, advancing data via freedom of thought. How disappointing to see this nice college, a former bastion of free speech and expression, give up its beliefs to a president wielding the tawdry risk of cash to inform it methods to act and what to show.
The give up of the academy is an unmistakable step on the street to authoritarianism.
David Shactman
Sarasota, Fla.
To the Editor:
Because the not so proud mom of three Columbia graduates, I applaud President Trump’s actions. I’m neither anti-science nor politically conservative. The college has had over a 12 months to stanch the wave of virulent antisemitism sweeping the campus and has achieved nothing by itself. Solely when President Trump set draconian guidelines for reinstating grants did the Columbia administration enact measures to insure the security of Jewish college students. Sadly, that’s as we speak’s local weather.
Sharon Senderowicz
Nice Neck, N.Y.
To the Editor:
As retired college officers, we imagine within the mission and the accomplishments of American faculties and universities. And we’re appalled on the administration’s threats to withhold beneficial federal funds from universities except they behave in methods the administration approves. Lastly, we’re involved on the obvious capitulation of Columbia College to the administration’s calls for and anxious that others could comply with.
We had been college students at Swarthmore Faculty within the late Fifties and early Nineteen Sixties. Congress had handed the Nationwide Protection Training Act, one function of which was to supply faculties and universities with funds for scholarships in order that america might educate brilliant younger individuals who would be capable to assist us compete with Russia in the course of the Chilly Battle. With a purpose to obtain these funds, nonetheless, the establishments wanted to conform to administer a loyalty oath to scholarship recipients.
Courtney Smith, the president of Swarthmore on the time, helped to prepare leaders of different main faculties and universities to oppose the administration’s coverage as an unconstitutional assault on freedom of speech. The concerted opposition succeeded, and the Eisenhower administration backed off. The explanations for the present administration’s actions are completely different and so are the monetary stakes — however the underlying difficulty is identical.
American faculties and universities have to be free to function independently as they did all through the twentieth century, when many grew to become among the many main tutorial establishments on the planet. That independence allowed them to supply numerous numbers of gifted graduates who grew to become leaders in a large number of fields and to conduct pathbreaking analysis that led to many essential improvements.
The administration assaults universities one after the other, however historical past tells us that the establishments can achieve overcoming these assaults in the event that they act collectively.
Randolph G. Moore
Maurice Eldridge
Mr. Moore is a former regent of College of Hawaii. Mr. Eldridge is a retired vp of Swarthmore Faculty.
To the Editor:
Come on, college presidents! Now will not be the time to cower in your workplace suites! President Trump can decide you off one after the other except you arrange and mobilize.
You will have all kinds of assets at your hand: inter-university organizations, skilled and tutorial associations, funders, donors, college, employees, alumni, college students, supportive politicians and others.
You need to be main the offensive in opposition to the depredations of the Trump administration. Not solely is it in your curiosity to oppose Mr. Trump’s vicious insurance policies and political intimidation, however it is usually your ethical obligation to defend democratic establishments in opposition to autocratic management.
You and your administrative employees (chancellors, provosts, deans and tutorial chairs) can lead the resistance in opposition to Mr. Trump and his minions. As people, we’re powerless; after we arrange, we now have energy. Use it!
Ralph W. Larkin
New York
The author is a retired professor of sociology at John Jay Faculty of Felony Justice, Metropolis College of New York.
