This State University Has a Plan to Take on Trump

The conversation between two Rutgers University professors that lit a fire in U.S. higher education circles lasted only about 10 minutes.

The professors — one teaches chemistry in Camden, N.J., the other psychology in Newark — said they were frustrated by the Trump administration’s abrupt cuts to research funding and its efforts to dictate policy on some campuses.

They were also troubled by the lack of a unified response by university leaders.

“We needed to write something that had some meat,” said David Salas-de la Cruz, who directs the chemistry graduate program at Rutgers University-Camden. He likened the effort to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, a military alliance of 32 countries.

“This is not just about money,” he said. “This is about the essence of education.”

So late last month, Professor Salas-de la Cruz and Paul Boxer, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University-Newark, drafted a one-page “mutual defense compact.” It was a one-for-all, all-for-one statement of solidarity among schools in the Big Ten athletic and academic conference — 18 large, predominantly public universities that together enroll roughly 600,000 students each year. “An infringement against one member university,” they wrote, “shall be considered an infringement against all.”

Participating schools would be asked to commit to making a “unified and vigorous response” when member universities were “under direct political or legal infringement.” Faculty members might, for example, be asked to provide legal services, strategic communication or expert testimony.

The compact, now approved by faculty at more than a dozen universities, does not come with a commitment by school administrators to provide financial backing for a joint defense fund, and detractors have criticized the initiative as largely toothless.