Columbia’s Capitulation Will Hurt Us All

When most Americans think about our great universities, they probably don’t think about the origins of lasers, FM radio or bar codes; they don’t think about the Google algorithm, the invention of the computer and the iPhone, cures for childhood leukemia, the Pap smear, scientific agriculture or the discovery of mRNA vaccines. They almost certainly don’t think about the CRISPR technology that may lead to cures of many genetic-based diseases. And they definitely don’t think about the electric toothbrush, Gatorade, the Heimlich maneuver or Viagra.

Yet all these discoveries and inventions — and tens of thousands more — have their origins at American public and private research universities. For over a half century, these institutions have housed the best and most innovative sites of learning in the world. During World War II, university researchers, often at government-sponsored laboratories, developed enhanced radar technology, found a way to mass-produce penicillin, developed the jet engine and mastered techniques for blood plasma transfusions. Each of these discoveries helped the Allies defeat authoritarian aggression.

Today, the pre-eminence of the American research university is under severe attack from the federal government. It must be defended.

Again and again, basic research has led to fantastically lucrative private development. Stanford graduates spawned Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Instagram, Netflix and a thousand more businesses. The University of California, Berkeley, produced companies, including many A.I. startups, that are developing better medical treatment for Americans. M.I.T., Harvard, Arizona State, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Texas, among others, have become the origin for many private enterprises supporting the American economy.

The Trump administration has sought to impose its will on higher education by withdrawing more than a billion dollars of funding from some universities and threatening others with similar punishment. It has sought to deport student protesters who are legal residents. All this represents a fundamental assault on the values and functioning of our university system. Columbia and Johns Hopkins, founded in 1876 and America’s first true research university, may be only the first to feel the effects of this needless use of a sledgehammer.

Columbia’s capitulation last week to the Trump administration, in which it agreed to a number of demands in order to restore federal funding, obliterates its leadership in defending free inquiry. If Columbia allows authoritarian-minded leaders to dictate what we can teach, then the federal government will dictate what we can read, what books we may have in our libraries, what art we can display, what problems scientists can explore. Then, we are no longer a free university.