Over the past few weeks, some of the most prestigious universities in the country have faced a threat to their very existence.President Trump has frozen billions of dollars in federal funds in an attempt to rid higher education of what he calls its woke ideology.Rachel Abrams speaks to the president of Princeton University, Christopher L. Eisgruber, who has vowed to fight.Guest: Christopher L. Eisgruber, the president of Princeton University.Background reading: President Trump paused dozens of federal grants to Princeton.Mr. Trump’s orders threaten the financial foundations of higher education, but few universities have protested openly.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Christopher Goodney/Bloomburg Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What is the threat to prestigious universities?
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams. This is The Daily. Over the past few weeks, some of the most prestigious universities in the country have faced a threat to their very existence from President Trump, who has frozen billions of dollars in federal funds in an attempt to rid higher education of what he calls its woke ideology.
And the question now is, who will cut a deal and who will fight? Today, my conversation with the president of Princeton University, Christopher Eisgruber, who has vowed that he will fight. It's Wednesday, April 9th. Hi, Rachel Abrams.
Thanks for coming here.
Yes, thank you for making the time for us.
Do you mind if I grab a cup of coffee? Please, no, no.
You should definitely caffeinate.
Okay. I'm already caffeinated.
No, good. We like that energy on the daily. We're a high-energy show. All right.
Okay. Terrific. Come on back.
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Chapter 2: How did Princeton respond to funding suspensions?
Thank you. So President Eisgruber, first of all, Eisgruber, right?
Yeah, feel free to call me Chris, please. Okay, Chris. It's easier than Eisgruber.
Chris, we are talking to you about one week after the administration moved to suspend dozens of grants to Princeton, and that could be hundreds of millions of dollars potentially. And this, of course, follows the moves from the administration against other universities. We've seen it with Columbia. We've seen it with Harvard. And if this goes the same way that it's gone for other institutions—
What we could expect to see in the near future, if you haven't gotten it already, is a list of demands from the Trump administration, changes that they want to see from Princeton. So we want to talk to you today about how you're feeling about the choices that you have in front of you and what those choices even look like, practically speaking. But just to start off,
I want to start this conversation with you maybe taking us back to the moment when, if you remember, when you realized that Princeton might actually be in trouble.
Well, without trying to be precise right now about the timeline, we began to see precipitous kind of threats to funding streams early on in the new presidential administration. And that included initially a freeze to funding. research funding to universities. It included the imposition of severe caps on what are known as facilities and administration recoveries or overhead cost charges.
Those are charges that apply to very real costs of research. And suddenly the government is saying, well, we're going to take that number down in ways that are going to make it impossible for universities to go forward with the research that they've been doing before.
So that was the point at which I and every other university president realized there was a serious threat to this government-university partnership that has contributed to the strength of the country and to the quality of our research institutions. Then a couple of weeks ago, something happened at Columbia that introduced a new and, in my view, very dangerous element to this, which is that
The government came in and, without any due process or any apparent investigation, said basically to Columbia, we're going to take away a bunch of your grants that support things like medical research, and we're not going to restore them to you unless you do things like admissions reform for how it is you take in undergraduate students and putting certain departments that deal with things like Middle Eastern studies into receivership.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of government funding on academic freedom?
So I decided to write the op-ed because I do think there's a very fundamental threat here right now with two dimensions to it, to America's research universities, that anybody who cares about the strength of this country, our economy, our prosperity, our security, our health should be worried about.
And one of those is the threat to this compact between the government and our universities that has produced research that's made a difference in the life of every American.
Mm-hmm.
The reason I wrote when I did, when the threats were made to Colombia, is that there's an even more fundamental threat when the government starts intruding on academic freedom. It basically says there are departments at Colombia that seem to be saying things that we don't like. We're going to use this funding as a mechanism to try to change what it is Colombia does. is doing in that respect.
That means as we look at efforts to influence what universities are doing, how they teach about Israel and Gaza, how they teach about climate, how they teach about American history, how they teach about diversity, we are seeing threats of significant intrusion into the freedom of scholars to raise the kinds of ideas that enable change to take place in our society and enable people to pursue truth.
We see another version of this going on as the government goes in and gives an order, for example, to the United States Naval Academy to remove a whole series of books from its library. There is a pattern here of intrusions in academic freedom of strong universities that should be of concern to every American.
Right. And so basically to say this another way, the administration may have said that these actions that they're taking are about anti-Semitism and rooting that out on campus.
But it sounds like what you are saying and your point of view is that this is more about this broader beef the Trump administration has with institutions of higher education, specifically with regards to academic freedom, the things that they are teaching and not teaching.
And that the government, it sounds like, again, correct me if I'm wrong here, but the government has this enormous leverage, which is research funding. And that is the cudgel with which that they can punish universities for speech or actions or conduct or academics that they do not like.
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Chapter 4: How does the Trump administration's approach affect universities?
And so I just sort of wonder, would you agree with that, that this is more about academic freedom than maybe some of the other reasons that we have heard recently? Yeah.
Rachel, I don't want to make this about motive and what the government's motive or intentions are. What I would say is, if this is genuinely about anti-Semitism, there's a right way to go about that, right? We should want our universities and our government to be partnering around making sure we have campuses where everybody can flourish. And for me, that's about all the groups on my campus.
It's about our underrepresented minorities. It's about our Jewish students. It's about our Muslim students. And we should all be working together around that. But there are right ways to do that. The wrong way of doing it does involve using funds as a cudgel to get universities to do things that the government wants. And when, for example, I'll take one particular demand in...
the government's letter to Colombia. They asked Colombia to do comprehensive admission reform.
What does that even mean?
I don't know what that means, Rachel. But what I do know is that I can't draw a connection between the stated concern of remedying anti-Semitism and a suggestion that Colombia should do comprehensive admission reform.
You think these things are disconnected?
I think they're disconnected. And in any event, I think that it's not appropriate for the government to be using its power as a funder to change the way that Columbia does its research, its teaching, or its admissions.
So, OK, I hear what you're saying that academic institutions should be free to decide what to teach, when to teach, how to teach, who to admit, all of that stuff, while also maintaining their obligations to have a safe and equitable environment for students. I hear all of that. But and you wrote a little bit about this in the op ed.
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Chapter 5: What is the relationship between anti-Semitism and university funding?
Chapter 6: How reliant are universities on federal funding?
And his answer was, I came to the United States because the National Science Foundation was willing to fund the kind of long-term research That I do, whereas in England, the government funding agencies were looking at things with a much shorter term application.
If we stop that compact between the government and research universities, we're not going to be doing the kind of research anymore that Duncan Holden did. And that research is either going to happen someplace else or it's not going to happen at all.
given that the federal government contributes so much money to universities and that your point is that it's a unique relationship that the private sector cannot make up for. If you suddenly took away $200 million, there isn't a private company waiting in the wings to fill that shortfall.
And given the fact that the government is now using the leverage that they have to force change on campus, I just want to take some of the government's arguments head on. And specifically, as we mentioned before, the administration says what we're doing is in service of rooting out anti-Semitism on college campuses. particularly in the wake of the pro-Palestinian protests last year.
And you had mentioned earlier that you think that there is a problem. You have recognized that anti-Semitism is a real problem on college campuses. You suggested that maybe colleges are not doing enough to root it out and combat it.
And I would like to know specifically as a college president, as I think you mentioned in previous interviews that you yourself are Jewish and you feel a personal relationship to this issue. I would like to understand and hear more about the specific things that you have seen in the past 18 months that are concerning to you and that have alarmed you.
Yeah, Rachel, so I appreciate the question. And I should say that, you know, there are two things that are true simultaneously. One is I see things that alarm me about anti-Semitism. The second is that many of our colleges are great places to be Jewish and better places to be Jewish than a lot of other parts of our society.
So I would say that about Princeton, our students, our Jewish students report the highest levels of satisfaction and belonging on our campus. campus. And we look to support all of our students to make sure that they are having good experiences on this campus.
When you ask what alarms me on campus... I'd like to know what specifically you've seen that has bothered you in the last 18 months.
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Chapter 7: What are the long-term effects of reduced funding on research?
There are classes that have been interrupted. There are students who have trouble getting to their classes. There were remarks made by people, students, and academics in the wake of the October 7th Hamas terrorist attacks that were utterly unacceptable, right? So there was one Cornell faculty member, for example, who described the event as exhilarating.
to him.
That's unacceptable. And I don't see how you can say something like that without anti-Semitism being involved. So those things disturb me. And we need to make sure that there are processes on every campus to enable us to address those incidents. You have to have very clear rules and you have to be willing to enforce them.
I want to bring up another one of the administration's critiques, which is something you hear a ton from the right and have heard it for a while, which is that universities, particularly elite universities like Princeton, Harvard, Yale, the Ivies, they are not representative enough of the broader public politically.
And of course, that's important because our judges, our lawyers, people that are incredibly influential in shaping society often come out of institutions like yours. And so this is shaping not just how students think, but it is shaping American culture more broadly. And that is why it is important to take a strong and aggressive stand. I'm curious, what do you make of that argument, first of all?
And how important is it for a university to reflect the broader political ideologies of the country? Is it a problem that most universities are probably left of center?
So, Rachel, there are a lot of different parts to that question you just asked. Let me start with where I think the truth is in the critique, right? So, it is important for universities to have vigorous contestation about the truth and to make it possible for people of diverse viewpoints to express their opinions and to flourish on the So we need to be a place where conservatives feel welcome.
We also need to be a place where conservatives feel they can speak up. And we need to be a place where when there are important conservative arguments to be heard and when political viewpoints matter, people are asserting those. And I do think universities can do that. better about that.
That is, when we're talking about free speech, we have to talk about the importance of having multiple viewpoints heard, and we should care about that because it's integral to our own mission and what we're trying to do in education and research. That's different from saying that universities should reflect the political ideology of the country. We shouldn't, actually, right? We shouldn't.
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Chapter 8: How is Princeton addressing concerns about campus safety and equity?
They're considerably more often at this point as needed. What does regularly mean? Every one or two weeks or so.
Wow, because you're viewing this as a crisis.
It is a crisis, right? I mean, the funding that is essential to the quality of American research and America's universities is under threat. That's a crisis for universities, and it is a crisis for our country. We each have our own missions and our own needs, so our responses are not necessarily going to be identical to one another. But I will say this.
I think even when universities have to concede or make concessions because they may be forced to do that in order to protect people, I think they need to speak up under those circumstances and recognize the principles at stake, even if they say something like, I really regret this, but I need under these circumstances to make a compromise. Do you wish you had heard that from Columbia?
I do wish I had heard that from Columbia, right? I mean, I just think I understand why Columbia might feel that they had to make concessions under the circumstances. These choices are so hard, right? You have careers at stake. You have jobs at stake. You have the ability to educate your students at stake.
And you may say, look, I wish I could take a stand on principle, but given what's at stake, I can't. But then you need to say that, right? You need to admit and you need to say to your community and to Americans, hey, there's something really fundamental here. That has been lost here.
Does this mean that you are considering making concessions to the Trump administration?
I'm not considering any concessions.
Not at all?
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