Brown and Columbia have already settled their disputes with the Trump administration, and The Daily Signal reports other major universities are expected to follow suit.
Jay Greene, senior research fellow of The Heritage Foundation, says the reason for the settlements is not difficult to understand.
“Some people think that the university leaders, who are making these agreements with the Trump administration, are acting on cowardice or behaving mysteriously, but it actually makes a lot of sense for universities to settle. The first and most important reason why they're settling is because they're guilty," Greene explains.
AFN reported previously about how federal investigators sent a letter to Harvard that said the institution was “a willful participant in antisemitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff.”
Universities are also afraid that the Trump administration will infringe upon their academic rights. The settlement agreements from Columbia and Brown both have provisions in place against the administration violating their academic freedom. Columbia’s agreement reads that the U.S. government does not have the authority to dictate faculty and university hiring, admission decisions, or academic speech.
Greene says that another factor is that the trustees want to settle to enable them to implement reforms that they have desired for a long time.
"They're legally responsible for discriminatory behavior, but they don't have the authority to stop it, either by controlling discipline or controlling hiring. That has been left to groups of radical faculty," Greene informs.
He says trustees prefer to blame the Trump administration as the reason they are settling in order to deflect the anger from uncompromising faculty. However, universities are also trying to save face and stop the damage from their reputation.
