UNIVERSITIES AS BULWARKS: HIGHER EDUCATION’S ROLE IN PRESERVING THE CONSTITUTION

Preface

This essay follows journalist Christiane Amanpour’s approach to objectivity: Truthful, not neutral. Pursuing truth through reporting facts empirically observed. Giving a fair hearing to all sides, though not treating opposing views as having equal empirical or moral weight if facts point in one direction. Therefore, no false equivalency, whether reporting events or furnishing analysis, while striving to keep the two distinct.

This edition of Constitutional Imperatives explores American universities’ contemporary leadership obligations in our democracy. In this precarious time, the Constitution, the rule of law, and our political traditions are under calculated assault by President Trump and his administration. Universities in our Republic, through their growth, academic and research successes, and continuing, significant contributions to American society, are now collectively a foundationally important, resilient estate. University enterprises are integral to our politics and democratic processes. Thus, the leadership roles highlighted here are unavoidable obligations of university boards of trustees, faculties, alumni groups, and current students; this is a time of crisis and peril, and our democratic institutions must respond.

Faithful Execution of the Laws

The Constitution, in Article II, Section 2, commands the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” We are in an age with a President who consistently, knowingly, flagrantly ignores constitutional and statutory requirements rather than faithfully implementing them.

For U.S. higher education, President Trump’s calculated disregard of constitutional limits on federal executive power includes ongoing, pretextual, unconstitutional attacks on academic freedom.

Mr. Trump’s campaign to suppress freedom of thought and expression on campuses across America, and to bend universities’ teaching to reflect his political preferences, was announced without shame on October 1, 2025. On that date the Trump administration sent “The Compact of Academic Excellence in Higher Education” to an initial list of nine prominent universities. The Compact offered the prospect of preferred access to federal funding in return for changes in university policies and practices protected by the First Amendment. The Compact’s targets included academic freedom and free speech.

Most of the nine initial recipients rejected the Compact without hesitation. In her October 10, 2025 letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, MIT president Sally Kornbluth wrote:

The [Compact] . . . includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.

In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.

This essay does not seek to chronicle how universities across the country recognized the Compact’s threat to academic freedom and rejected it soundly. Nor is this the place to analyze the Trump administration’s related, continued assaults against Harvard, undertaken without subtlety as an attempted object lesson to all of academia. Elsewhere readers can find summaries of litigation successfully blocking the administration’s ongoing, pretextual, unconstitutional attempts to curb free speech and academic freedom at Harvard.

It is sufficient here to note that universities realize they can litigate successfully against the worst of Mr. Trump’s attempted intimidation tactics. Litigation with a university as plaintiff – undertaken if the university’s good faith negotiations with the Trump administration to preserve academic freedom are unsuccessful – will over the short and long run prove essential to protecting higher education’s freedom to seek knowledge, develop facts, and pursue truth wherever it may lead, often in the process exposing Trump administration falsehoods.

Universities have freedom to examine facts and to document for society the political and economic consequences of those analyses when applied to Trump administration policies. Universities produce leaders and scholars equipped to dispute Trump administration political falsehoods, and help inform the public at large of the deficiencies and threats those policies present.

Mr. Trump recognizes universities’ impact on public understanding. Undoubtedly, he and his acolytes correctly see it as a threat. Universities can help fix attention on harmful social and economic consequences flowing from Mr. Trump’s modus operandi of ignoring, rather than faithfully executing, existing legislation and legal rules.

Higher education’s institutional role of helping to inform and educate society at large is an essential contribution to American politics in the 21^st Century. And it is protected by the First Amendment.

Contours of Threat

President Trump is devoted to The Big Lie, a propaganda technique developed by the Nazis and used by dictators and authoritarian regimes to disastrous effect. The Big Lie relies on constant repetition of distortions and outright falsehoods (say the untruth often enough, with unrelenting conviction, and many will come to think it is true). For Mr. Trump, who uses to advantage the president’s bully pulpit and constant news coverage, The Big Lie is a tailor-made technique.

Examples abound. President Trump continues to describe the violent insurrectionist attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as a patriotic excursion rather than, inarguably, a cataclysmic violation of law. Note his devotion to reinforcing the January 6 Big Lie consistently over the years, at every opportunity and using a variety of means.

He pardoned rioters fairly convicted of violence against police. He asks Congress to authorize a fund (the “slush fund”) for the corrupt purpose of compensating convicted rioters – those who sought through violence to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as prescribed by the Constitution. Mr. Trump declares those rioters were subjected to what he describes, repeatedly and falsely, as an unfair criminal justice system.

All this is distortion, aggressively false; but Mr. Trump employs The Big Lie consistently as a political litmus test and cudgel. It helps him disparage the rule of law. Disparaging legal process (the January 6 insurrection and convictions are examples) is an ongoing project; it frees him to act as he wishes however illegally (e.g., the White House ballroom project), especially when no one takes him to court.

Mr. Trump’s directions to the Justice Department to initiate contrived criminal proceedings for revenge against his perceived political enemies, prosecutions with no factual basis whatever, are blatant abuses of constitutional due process and court rules. They are filed in bad faith by government lawyers who should know better.

An obviously trivial example, and yet so illustrative, is Mr. Trump’s continuing to assert the silly Big Lie that dissolving and flaking apart of the Reflecting Pool’s new lining was caused by passersbys’ vandalism. The real cause is well-known publicly: rushed, botched installation. The President remains undaunted by the Justice Department’s forced, very public admission in court that no facts support the vandalism theory.

Mr. Trump’s application of The Big Lie extends to far more serious issues than the Reflecting Pool. He uses The Big Lie to obfuscate major policy errors. Truth about tactical and strategic mistakes, and lack of progress, in the war in Iran; financial distress for many in the Trump economy; destructive devotion to tariffs as a means for managing the economy; disparagement of the public health need for vaccines – these are examples from a long list.

Mr. Trump’s devotion to lying is threatened when universities and prominent faculty members develop facts that help educate the public, supplying arguments that run counter to his administration’s policies and constant streams of Big Lie propaganda.

The judiciary, the press, and the media generally are companion institutions of American democracy. They identify and publicly criticize abuses of Mr. Trump’s second term – abuses that Congress has so far been unwilling to check. Their strength and resilience are constant counters to Trump administration abuses.

Universities and their faculty, the press, and other media complement each other in exposing Mr. Trump’s stream of untruths. They demonstrate the value of experts, another target of Mr. Trump’s ongoing disparagement, because experts will argue facts (for example, the virtues of vaccinating newborns) that undercut disruptive policies Mr. Trump seeks, often inexplicably, by whim or nonsensical assertion, to justify.

Thus, it is important for Mr. Trump and his acolytes to try weakening universities, to cow their faculties and boards of trustees, to blunt their reputations and influence, and to cast doubt on analyses emerging from the processes of academic inquiry.

Consistent with the President’s reliance on Big Lies, Mr. Trump and his administration carry out their campaign of intimidation against higher education openly, with no attempt at subtlety.

Higher Education’s Structural Contributions to American Democracy

While our universities are cast in a defensive posture – set back on their institutional heels, as it were – by those in and out of government who seek, under pretense of “viewpoint diversity,” to impose their social and political preferences, U.S. higher education still educates successive generations of leaders and the public.

In contrast to Mr. Trump’s consistently ignoring constitutional norms, American universities continue teaching the foundational principles underlying our democracy. These concepts emerged from the Enlightenment. Our founding generation adapted and applied them in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They were confirmed in blood, articulated by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, and further strengthened in three constitutional amendments (13, 14, and 15) in the aftermath of the Civil War.

These Enlightenment principles are as powerful as ever. Adapting them anew to meet 21^st Century challenges is an unavoidable task. Facing the political consequences of current cultural disputes, we must find means to reconcile differences over race and religion. These deep cultural disputes have reached crisis points. They are choking our political, and especially our legislative, processes. These differences have been and remain persistent impediments to progress, and particularly to Congress’s capacity to address efficiently the challenges of the late 20^th Century and now the 21^st. And it is in deep wells of resentment and hate over race and religion where President Trump deliberately exacerbates disagreements for purposes of political manipulation and advantage.

How can our country successfully ameliorate deep societal divisions over race and religion, subjects of such enduring sensitivity that have come, decisively, to the fore in America’s politics? Where are the sources of principled compromise and reconciliation?

Here is where universities and their faculties can develop systematic thought and philosophical persuasion. Here is where those who teach at American universities are positioned to contribute in a foundational way to the moral structure of American society, and in practice, to our politics.

That is why the Trump administration sees universities as a threat they must attack and try to redirect.

Higher education has for good reason flourished in the United States. It has progressed over the decades to become a pillar of our democracy. That is why universities’ influence, developing new knowledge and searching for truth, extends far beyond college campuses. It benefits society continuously and in a multitude of ways. We must resolve to maintain and strengthen academe’s role in our constitutional polity, no matter what pressures and criticisms the current administration brings to bear.

For these reasons, university communities cannot but aggressively champion freedom of thought and expression. First Amendment freedoms are essential to higher education’s success, guaranteed by the Constitution, affirmed by the Supreme Court, and fundamental to our laws.

But rights – even the most basic constitutional rights – are not self-executing. So who can act for higher education in this time of peril?

The answer: corporate bodies at colleges and universities, that is, boards of trustees; their administrators, faculties, and alumni supporters; and, yes, their student bodies. All must resolve to contribute to the cause of vindicating academic freedom and independence from government pressure; they must defend higher education’s capacity for making essential contributions to our democracy.

This is the practical application of constitutional law. It recognizes how the First Amendment can be mobilized in litigation to confront the Trump administration’s calculated abuses of law.

All this occurs in context following the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. That case changed the law on affirmative action by reversing its direction. It held unconstitutional the use of any racially based criteria – affirmative action as had been practiced for decades – in university admissions programs.

This presents a practical reality. It acknowledges, as a matter of responsible corporate governance, the imperative to respond to federal agencies accusing universities of violating federal law by having conferred, or continuing to confer, benefits, particularly admissions, based on race.

The change requires identifying and dismantling racially based university programs and processes that have a racial component. The Trump administration is aggressively enforcing these requirements under long-existing civil rights legislation (principally Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), formerly the basis for affirmative action and now, by the Court’s decision, turned against it. University boards of trustees and senior administrators have no choice but to respond when federal agencies come calling with allegations of civil rights violations. Responses require assembling factual showings and negotiating over adequacy of universities’ altered policies. This often includes acceding to the government’s insistence on periodic reporting requirements so agencies can monitor compliance.

These negotiations are unavoidable, but – expertly conducted while relying on constitutional protections – they need not compromise a university’s insistence on preserving academic freedom and freedom of speech. Those protections are unaffected by the Students for Fair Admissions case.

Prospects of reaching agreement with any Trump administration federal agency (such as the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) will almost inevitably raise fears among faculty, alumni, and students. Even agreements universities reach that preserve academic freedom as a practical matter will be criticized by those who believe any negotiation with the Trump administration is unacceptable. Yet experience to date shows that artful negotiation, pursued as a responsibility of university corporate governance and stewardship, will succeed in preventing the Trump administration from impinging on freedom of expression and academic independence, even as race-based programs are phased out and the process monitored by the government.

Allure and Mythology of Mandated Viewpoint Diversity

On August 3, 2026, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon released a letter sent to all U.S. universities (text availability in the notes). The letter is a milder version of the Compact described earlier. It appears hortatory, and explicitly does not require any compliance by universities; it only suggests the universities responds with their reactions.

The letter is significant because it demonstrates the Trump administration’s ongoing determination to influence American universities “intellectual pluralism,” “academic vitality,” “free exchange of ideas, wide-ranging debate, and openminded campus discourse,” among other concerns. Reactions to the letter are unsparing. They recognize it as an attempt to channel and limit academic freedom, the free flow of ideas – free from government interference – on university campuses, and impose viewpoint diversity as conceived by the government and private sector groups politically aligned with the current administration.

The phrase “viewpoint diversity” encapsulates the notion of a mythical, ideal balance of ideas and ideologies – ones that have not achieved currency to match competing ideologies in society’s or universities’ free flow of ideas. That is, “viewpoint diversity” or “intellectual pluralism” reflects a fond hope that government has a legitimate role in forcing universities deliberately and systematically to re-balance what we know in shorthand as “the marketplace of ideas” on their campuses. The re-balancing is aimed at aligning teaching and discourse with the political and ideological preferences of the Trump administration and its supporters.

Universities and commentators across the country recognize the letter as an attempt to compromise universities’ independence and academic freedom. It is cast in a way that may seem less vulnerable to successful First Amendment challenge than the Compact itself or other, more direct Trump administration initiatives aimed at Harvard and other select universities.

But academe recognizes the letter for what it is: another attempt at imposition of thought diversity that aligns with the government’s political views. And universities and their faculties across the country will resist its implementation successfully, through litigation if necessary.

Events at Texas A&M and Texas Tech offer a current example. Faculty at both these eminent universities are suing their university systems to block policies that forbid teaching on race, gender, and sexuality, including the treatment of those subjects in Plato’s works. These lawsuits are based on the First Amendment. They will undoubtedly succeed. Supreme Court precedent dictates that the state (and these state university governing boards are state agents) cannot trample academic freedom.

That state university governing boards would adopt policies in utter disregard of the Court’s First Amendment precedent is appalling. More appalling perhaps is that the university system officials involved do not recognized the absurdity of ordering faculty to cease teaching foundational works of philosophy.

But we take events as they present themselves. These absurd attempts at government restrictions on freedom of state university faculty to teach signal deep peril. The are, it appears, consonant with the Trump administration’s hope of forcing universities and scholars to dampen teaching and public education critical of government policy. Even if resort to the courts becomes necessary, university communities know they must resist these attempts to stifle freedom of thought and expression. And they know they can rely on the Constitution, particularly the First Amendment, to assure success in opposition.

In Conclusion

The last line of the second stanza of America the Beautiful is, “Thy liberty in law!”

That phrase guides the challenge of this moment, when the Constitution seems at the mercy of a president who aggressively disregards its command that he execute the laws faithfully.

How to preserve our liberties against this assault?

The answer for American universities, their governing boards and faculties, is to embrace their role as agencies in the functioning of our democracy and the preservation of our liberties. Universities can contribute learning and the search for truth to public conversations, to help ameliorate cultural disagreements and their continual political repercussions.

This ultimately is advocacy to sustain the rule of law; and sustenance is crucial because liberty in law remains the true foundation of American exceptionalism. It is a principal reason America has been, and can again be, the envy of the world.

Notes

Christiane Amanpour’s approach to objectivity:

Truthful, not neutral: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policycast/christiane-amanpour-says-objective-journalism-means-pursuing-truth-not; https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jan/26/our-job-is-to-be-truthful-not-neutral-christiane-amanpour-on-trump-tech-and-and-fighting-for-the-truth.

Selected background: The Big Lie propaganda technique:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/big-lie ; https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/the-big-lie/ (Jonathan Lemire, The Big Lie ); https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/political-propaganda/43850 ;https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6306982 ; https://www.hoover.org/news/big-lie-exposed-rhetorical-analysis-nazi-german-22-lessons.

Representative critical articles regarding s “The Compact of Academic Excellence in Higher Education”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_for_Academic_Excellence_in_Higher_Education ; https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/a-brief-legal-analysis-of-the-department-of-educations-proposed-compact-for-higher-education ; https://www.steptoe.com/en/news-publications/white-house-looks-to-seize-control-of-higher-education-policy-through-compact-for-academic-excellence-in-higher-education.html ; https://www.vpm.org/news/2025-10-17/uva-trump-compact-academic-excellence-cville-mahoney-surovell-lucas-locke.

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf (full text of Supreme Court opinions); https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/20-1199 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/supreme-court-admissions-affirmative-action-harvard-unc.html?smid=url-share .

University corporate governance obligations to respond to federal allegations:

https://president.yale.edu/department-of-justice-investigations .

U.S. Department of Education August 3, 2026 letter to universities and selected reaction to the letter:

https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-secretary-of-education-linda-mcmahon-issues-national-call-action-university-presidents-and-governing-boards ; https://president.yale.edu/posts/2026-08-03-department-of-education-letter-for-all-university-presidents-and-governing-boards ; https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2026/08/new-education-department-letter-urges-university-reforms-uva-professors-weigh-in ; https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/03/trump-admin-asks-colleges-to-sign-on-to-their-priorities-01022271 ; https://www.forbes.com/sites/marybethgasman/2026/08/10/mcmahons-call-to-action-raises-questions-about-university-independence/ .

Texas A&M and Texas Tech policies forbidding faculty to teach Plato’s philosophy dealing with race, gender, and sexuality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/us/tamu-plato-race-gender.html ; https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/education/2026/04/09/548564/political-oversight-reaches-texas-college-classrooms-with-texas-tech-and-a-m-at-the-forefront/ ; https://aaup-texas.org/blog/f/aaup-texas-am-university-condemns-banning-of-plato ; https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2026/01/08/texas-am-forbids-a-plato-reading-in-an-intro-philosophy-course/ ;https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/academic-freedom/2026/04/20/faculty-defect-texas-publics-citing-censorship ; https://firstamendmentwatch.org/professors-sue-texas-am-system-over-limits-on-teaching-race-gender/ ; https://www.texastribune.org/2026/07/08/texas-tech-lawsuit-creighton-race-gender-instruction/ ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/07/08/faculty-sue-texas-tech-claiming-censorship-teaching-about-race-gender/ .