On Friday morning, March 21, Penn students and others protested at Penn President Larry Jameson’s private residence, accusing the University of “complicity” in a range of issues from the situation of Palestinians, violations of free speech, and inadequate protection from I.C.E. raids. In a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, a university spokesperson characterized the demonstration as “unlawful intrusion and a deliberate act of intimidation.”

This conflict between students and administration is exactly the intended scenario designed by those who wish to diminish and subjugate our nation’s universities. I am a strong proponent of peaceful protest and free speech. But student protestors at Penn and elsewhere are playing right into the hands of strategists who know that “divide and conquer” will actually conquer.

Students who are angry about the war in Gaza should protest Trump, Rubio and the administration that sets the policies. Universities’ endowment investments have little to do with ceasefires, releases of hostages, or anything else concerning the war.

The fact of the matter is that Trump and company are deliberately putting universities in impossible positions. I am pleading with students not to take the bait.

Let me quickly say that I am not a Pollyanna saying that universities are all good. I’ve written frequently about the need for major reforms and will continue to do so. But right now, higher education — from community colleges to the Ivy League — is under the most serious threat in U.S. history. And the response to that fundamental threat has been all too quiet.

On Thursday, March 20, the day before the protest at President Jameson’s home, the American Association of University Professors organized a rally of 200 Penn professors, students and local politicians to demonstrate against the actions of Trump’s second administration. In a social media post, they called for attendees “to stand together with Penn employees.” They also called on Penn to take decisive action against bullying. With unity as the major theme of the protest, I would urge greater empathy with the university’s attempts to navigate through these treacherous waters. It’s essential to know who the real enemy is.

Project Esther weaponizes antisemitism on university campuses

On October 7, 2024, the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, published Project Esther, which they subtitled, “A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.” In reality, Project Esther is a cynical strategy to undermine higher education by pushing the false claim that universities are part of what it calls the Hamas Support Network (HSN) enabling Hamas Support Organizations (HSOs). Their “Desired End State” (ES) includes what they call “HSO propaganda eradicated from the U.S. education system at all levels.” This goal is the underlying rationale for censorship, deportations and harassment.

Project Esther even articulates “the risk” of increasing antisemitism by its actions: “At the same time, if Project Esther succeeds, it could reinforce a ‘blood libel’ narrative, lending credence to an HSN ‘blame the Jews’ mantra and expanded antisemitism.” I would argue that expanded antisemitism has already been the result of Project Esther tactics, as well as the undermining of universities and colleges.

Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof and Daphna Renan write about Project Esther in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“The arrest and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, the freezing of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and contracts to colleges, the directive to Columbia University to put its department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies into receivership — these are not improvised actions of the Trump administration. They are calculated measures outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther … quietly published before the election, Project Esther purports to offer “a blueprint to counter antisemitism” and secure the “prosperity of all Americans.” In reality, it is a detailed playbook for how to weaponize the accusation of antisemitism to undermine core tenets of liberal democracy in the United States.”

It’s hard to believe that the Heritage Foundation wrote these things down. But it’s even harder to believe that few people have read the document, and even fewer have protested against it.

I’m frustrated with criticisms of universities for doing everything possible to protect their institutions, their research agendas, and their students from blatant Trumpian attacks. Sometimes universities have to agree to superficial accommodations — changing the wording on websites, etc. — in order to protect core values.

Let me be clear. Campus antisemitism is real, but President Trump is using it for his own autocratic purposes. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Amir Goldberg and Barbara J. Risman express alarm about the Trump administration’s measures. They write, “We believe they are dangerous, hypocritical, and cynical. The plight of Jewish students and faculty members deserves better than to be exploited as a cudgel by an authoritarian presidency, hellbent on retribution and hostile to academic free speech.”

The way to address campus antisemitism — and all other civil rights violations — is for the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights to do a thorough investigation with recommendations for addressing the situation. But Trump / Musk have shut down these offices in Philadelphia and elsewhere and are hollowing out the Department of Education itself in preparation for final closure.

Systematic, fair remedies for civil rights abuses work. Arbitrary, conspiracy-infected accusations make matters worse, especially when the punishment — withdrawal of research funds — precedes proof of wrongdoing and is unrelated to the alleged infractions.

Universities are doing their best in an impossible situation

Elected officials have long had the University of Pennsylvania in their crosshairs, as projected on national television last year during Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s attack on then-Penn president Liz Magill. Now Penn is facing “proactive punishment,” the freezing of $175 million of research funding, because the university, in accordance with NCAA rules at the time, permitted former Penn student Lia Thomas, the first openly transgender swimmer, to compete and win the NCAA championship in the 500-yard freestyle. Whatever you believe about the right or wrong of this decision, it is patently unfair to punish Penn researchers for something that happened two years ago and that cannot be changed now. Why aren’t Penn students protesting this penalty? It’s also outrageous to sit still for Trump threatening that the research freeze is “just a taste of what could be coming down the pipe.” Bullies make threats. If we want to stop them, we must speak up.

Students, defend the world-changing research done by your university! At Penn, undergraduates and graduate students can work with faculty members to create new knowledge. You can participate in projects that will one day contribute to a cure for cancer. That’s one of the great benefits of attending a research university.

Diminishing these opportunities goes against society’s interests as well as student opportunities. Threatening university research betrays the decades-long partnership between the U. S. government and research universities.

While private companies do valuable research, they have little motivation to fund basic research — experiments that don’t have an immediate payoff but are essential to later practical outcomes. Penn’s Katalin Karikó’s Nobel-prize-winning basic research led directly to the accelerated ability to create a Covid vaccine. Threats to remove research funding and indirect cost support at Penn and other universities are not in the public interest. In fact, these threats are dangerous.

I’m frustrated with criticisms of universities for doing everything possible to protect their institutions, their research agendas, and their students from blatant Trumpian attacks. Sometimes universities have to agree to superficial accommodations — changing the wording on websites, etc. — in order to protect core values. Penn’s new tuition policy — free tuition for qualified students from families making up to $200,000; free tuition, room and board, etc. for qualified students from families making up to $75,000 — demonstrates diversity, equity and inclusion, even if that vocabulary is not highlighted.

Penn’s recently announced partnership with Foundations, Inc. and the School District of Philadelphia makes DEI real, avoiding the high cost of actually using those forbidden letters.The Academy at Penn is an $8 million project that will offer four years of pre-college experiences to 25 students at two Philadelphia public schools: the School of the Future in Parkside and Furness High, a neighborhood school in Pennsport.

The Academy at Penn is similar to Temple Future Scholars — also a program to make diversity, equity, and inclusion a reality.

My final plea: Students, please make common cause with your universities and colleges. Start with the assumption that they are doing everything they can to protect you from unfair and potentially illegal actions. As Ben Franklin is purported to have said after signing the Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

What we can do

• Redirect criticisms of universities to the federal government where the outrage belongs.
• Bombard Congressional representatives with calls and emails protesting the undermining of higher education.
• Support university and college faculty, administration and staff, who are doing their best in an impossible situation.
• Elect candidates who recognize that U.S. higher education is the envy of the world and understand that undermining it has a very high cost.
• If you are able, make philanthropic contributions to university and college programs supporting diversity, equity and inclusion, even if theY don’t now use the words.

Elaine Maimon, Ph.D., is the author of Leading Academic Change: Vision, Strategy, Transformation. Her long career in higher education has encompassed top executive positions at public universities as well as distinction as a scholar in rhetoric/composition. Her co-authored book, Writing In The Arts and Sciences, has been designated as a landmark text. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum.

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