In the quiet hours before dawn on March 11, 2025, federal immigration officers in unmarked vehicles surrounded the off-campus apartment of Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old green card-holding graduate student who had led and organized pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. Masked agents dragged him from his bed and into detention — not for any criminal activity, but for engaging in constitutionally protected speech. On March 25th, Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was abducted by ICE agents and transported to a detention facility in Louisiana after publishing a critical op-ed in her campus newspaper. By the end of the month, international students from Columbia, Cornell and Georgetown faced similar proceedings for their on-campus activities. None of the victims received due process.
Ever since encampments protesting institutional investment in Israel’s war in Gaza emerged in early 2024, Columbia has served as the epicenter of unprecedented turmoil in American higher education. Hence, the White House identified it as a politically expedient target, terminating $400 million in federal funding before issuing an expansive list of demands: severe disciplinary measures against student protesters, a campus-wide ban on masks intended to conceal protesters’ identities and institutional adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism — which legal scholars identified as creating unconstitutional constraints on speech. Once the shakedown was complete, the administration set its sights on the University of Pennsylvania, freezing $175 million in federal funding over a controversy surrounding transgender athlete Lia Thomas’s success on the women’s swim team. A White House official ominously characterized these actions as merely “a taste of what could be coming down the pipe” for American universities.
Washington’s opening salvo against higher education isn’t limited to these headline-grabbing cases. It stems from a long held grievance that portrays universities as captured territory in a zero sum ideological struggle that must now be reclaimed by force. Armed with an emboldened White House, conservative activist Christopher Rufo is now gleefully executing his long-awaited agenda of retaliation; a punitive counterstrike against the “enemy within.” This rhetoric leaves no doubt that this movement isn’t about restoring ideological balance on campus but instead using the full might of the federal government to coerce universities into either submission or financial ruin. The Department of Education’s overt threats coupled with targeted congressional probes on federally funded research betray a savage contempt that treats universities as barnacles to scrape off America’s hull. Appeasement will go nowhere against such determined opposition — we would be wise to take them at their word.
Though these battles might feel distant, perhaps confined in our imaginations to elite, highly politicized institutions, Macalester is not safe. Our community — particularly our large cohort of transgender, undocumented and international students — stands especially vulnerable in a climate of heightened political intimidation. Niche’s 2025 Liberal College Rankings places Macalester at #25 nationally, making us a likely target in an administration already probing dozens of small liberal arts schools for alleged Title VI violations. What happened at Columbia and Harvard could arrive on our doorstep tomorrow.
This vulnerability stems not only from external threats but also from internal uncertainties about the purpose of higher education. Universities across America, including our own, have struggled to articulate precisely what they stand for. Good-faith critics within academia have long warned of this ambiguity, highlighting tensions between protecting open inquiry as well as student security. This contradiction is our Achilles’ heel that has become visible to those who wish to do us harm. If universities cannot assert their purpose with clarity, they risk losing not only their public legitimacy but also their capacity to protect vulnerable populations, defend the sovereignty of scholarship and preserve their indispensable role as society’s most reliable refuge for dissent.
An official policy of Institutional Neutrality is an indispensable first line of defense for intellectual freedom against despotic abuse. Such a principle recognizes that symbolic institutional positions often invite unwanted scrutiny from impetuous opponents of scholarship while yielding scant practical impact. Macalester’s provocative campus activities thus remain within the bounds of their pedagogical pursuits — fostering environments where students cultivate critical thinking skills and learn to engage thoughtfully as public citizens. Should institutional positions begin to circumscribe the boundaries of acceptable discourse, we deliver to our critics precisely the ammunition they seek to undermine higher education’s essential role in a democratic society. Neutrality isn’t surrender — it’s strength.
But statement neutrality isn’t enough. A politically independent university requires explicit institutional safeguards against ideological interference in its core functions: faculty appointments, staff retention, curriculum design and program development. By establishing clear principles that shield academic decision-makers from political pressure, we stand resolute against attempts at partisan intimidation and interference. Macalester’s faculty, departments, programs and administrative units all dedicated to intellectual growth, social justice and global citizenship, serve as custodians of rigorous scholarship, critical inquiry and transformative community engagement. Embedding ideologically impartial standards across all institutional structures empowers our educators and administrators to confidently uphold academic freedom and scholarly autonomy in the face of mounting external pressure.
At the same time, for Macalester to abandon visible commitments to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) would be a grave mistake. These principles have been the lifeblood of meaningful academic inquiry at our institution long before they acquired their current nomenclature. Diversity gives rise to a rich tapestry of experience-informed intellectual perspectives that allows us to challenge our prevailing assumptions and expand the frontier of knowledge. Equity addresses historical and systemic barriers by identifying and nurturing talented minds long overlooked due to entrenched prejudice and bigotry — precisely the intellectual capital universities cannot afford to squander. Inclusion cultivates a culture of mutual respect and openness, a prerequisite for meaningful intellectual exchanges that embody the generative spirit of higher education. Macalester must continue to explicitly uphold and visibly support DEI commitments, affirming their integral role in sustaining both academic freedom and the distinctive qualities of the liberal arts.
The most critical recommendation is that Macalester urgently strengthen its alliances with well-resourced collective bargaining institutions, including the AFA, AAUP, HxA AAU and with regional consortiums. American universities, despite functioning as unparalleled intellectual and economic engines — hosting premier research labs, nurturing globally influential thought leaders and driving transformative technological innovation — remain dangerously isolated when confronting coordinated political assaults. The smothering of Columbia has made this all too clear. Our imperilment will persist until universities decisively pivot toward a model of nationwide solidarity; only by establishing shared defensive strategies, pooling legal resources and coordinating advocacy campaigns can universities transform individual distinctiveness into collective resistance. The message must be stern and unequivocal: an attack on any institution of higher learning must be met as an attack on all.
If you care about academic freedom, about protecting the vulnerable, about social justice — if you care about what the liberal arts have to offer a deeply prejudiced world, about global citizenship as a duty to those beyond our borders — now is not the time to rest your head. It is not the time to hide. Meeting the moment requires universities to stand up visibly and without hesitation; not as institutions paralyzed in the face of authoritarianism, but as those that still remember how to resist it. Whether Macalester can fulfill this vital democratic function depends entirely on what concrete, institutional actions it chooses to take next.
Academic freedom isn’t preserved through caution, but through conviction. The time has come for Macalester to demonstrate that we understand not just the value of what we teach, but the courage essential to defend it.
