When the Federal Government Denies Constitutional Rights
By Alan Singer
On Thursday, April 17, I marched with New York City AAUP chapters and thousands of educators, students, workers, and allies from the arch in Washington Square Park to Foley Square in lower Manhattan in defense of higher education. We rallied to defend the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution from Trump administration directives. As university faculty, we asserted our rights and our students’ rights to speak, write, learn, teach, research, associate freely, and protest. We also condemned illegal abductions of noncitizens for expressing opinions the Trump administration disagrees with, anti-DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies, and cuts to scientific research that leave the country unprepared for potential epidemics and the effects of climate change.
After Columbia University’s initial capitulation to Trump administration demands—issued under the pretext of combating antisemitism on campus—in an effort to lift a federal embargo on funds, it was hit with new stringent restrictions that would have robbed the university of academic autonomy. Learning from what happened in the exchange between the Trump administration and Columbia, when Harvard University was sent a five-page list of demands that would have completely transformed the school’s operations, admissions, hiring, faculty, and student life policies, it refused to comply, placing federal funding and its tax-exempt status at risk. In an open letter addressed to the Harvard community, university president Alan Garber wrote “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” The national AAUP and the Harvard University chapter of the AAUP have already filed a lawsuit alleging that the Trump administration is violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
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Alan Singer is a historian and teacher educator at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. His most recent books are Social Studies for Secondary Schools, 5th edition (Routledge, 2024) and Class-Conscious Coal Miners (SUNY Press, 2024). Blogs, tweets, essays, interviews, and e-blasts present his views and not those of Hofstra University.