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A leading House Democrat on Tuesday called for an investigation into new whistleblower allegations that the Trump administration forced universities it deemed politically incorrect into settling antisemitism cases despite flimsy or nonexistent evidence.
In retrospect, it is no coincidence that wokeness blossomed at prestigious American colleges at the very moment when those schools were facing rising discontent over student debt and tuition costs. For the academic aristocracy, touting fealty to Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, trans rights, and other progressive movements served as a convenient distraction from the intractable economic and social issues that the colleges themselves were perpetuating.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon last week summoned college and university leaders to publicly declare their commitment to rebuild trust in higher education. But the path forward is murky, as leaders wrestle over whether to respond and how to walk the fine line between compliance and standing their ground.
Universities don’t have to choose between protecting Jewish students and championing freedom of speech. In fact, federal law requires them to do both. Yet when my alma mater, Brown University, resolved a federal civil rights investigation in July 2025, the line between protected speech and unprotected conduct was unnecessarily blurred.
On July 30, 2026, the American Association of University Professors did something it had never done in its 110-year history: endorse a candidate for federal elected office. AAUP President Todd Wolfson announced his organization would back Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate in Michigan’s U.S. Senate primary. And Wolfson made it clear that further endorsements will be coming, describing a shift from a defensive posture to an “offense” built on organizing and political advocacy.
For the good of the Nation, university leadership must seize this occasion to drive essential reforms—a process some began by adopting positions of institutional neutrality and improving policies related to campus protests. Before the end of 2026, I call on every postsecondary institution to describe to the American public your commitments to rigorous teaching, pathbreaking research, and national service—commitments that make our universities a bedrock institution of the American republic.
