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FELLOW UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS: HERE’S HOW TO STAND UP TO TRUMP  
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Michael Roth
January 25, 2026
MSNOW
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_ Leaders of powerful institutions do have a choice. The price of
allowing the preferences of any president to dictate the policies and
practices of organizations that depend on freedom and autonomy is to
destroy the legitimacy of those organizations. _

Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student, gained
national attention during protests at Columbia University last year,
spending over 100 days in jail., screen grab

 

 U.S. District Judge William G. Young
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called President Donald Trump “authoritarian” this month and took
his administration to task for trying to deport students who’ve
engaged in speech the government opposes.  Young, a Reagan appointee,
described the federal government as engaging in an “unconstitutional
conspiracy” to “twist the laws” and “pick off” well-known
activists in order to intimidate all noncitizens across academia.

IMAGINE IF MY FELLOW UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS HAD THE BACKBONE JUDGE
YOUNG DISPLAYED.

Imagine if my fellow university presidents had the backbone Judge
Young displayed. When the administration was snatching students off
the street
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for taking political stances the administration considers problematic,
imagine if those higher education leaders had stood up to say publicly
that the president’s charge of antisemitism was a smokescreen
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for his attempts to change how colleges and universities admit
students
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and teach them.

Although the administration has a duty to enforce civil rights laws
that protect all students from harassment and discrimination, it is
also the case that the government failed to follow its own protocols
of investigation and adjudication in these matters. Everyone at the
schools that have made “deals” with the administration knows this,
just as they know that the real issue was never about protecting
Jewish students, women’s sports or objectivity in fields such as
Near Eastern Studies.

But instead of saying clearly what they really knew, university
leaders at so many schools
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made deals and paid fines while others
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peremptorily did away with programs that were not in line with the
preferences of the president.

University presidents were not alone in their appeasement. We’ve
seen law firms and media executives do the same.

The heads of some prominent law firms could have — and should have
— publicly denounced the administration’s attempts to interfere
with the legal system’s core principles and defended clients who
might not agree with the administration, but instead many promised to
“donate” millions of dollars of pro bono legal work
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the president’s favorite causes.

Of course, resistance would have meant having to fight the
administration’s executive orders in the courts, which would have
been expensive. But these are prominent attorneys, after all. Instead
of defending the rule of law, the firms made deals
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that helped preserve their partners’ wealth.

UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS WERE NOT ALONE IN THEIR APPEASEMENT.

ABC temporarily suspended late-night talk show host and comedian Jimmy
Kimmel for a comment he made after Charlie Kirk was killed, but
imagine if the network’s  executives had made clear that they would
not be intimidated by Federal Communications Commission threats
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against Kimmel or Trump’s vow to take away broadcast licenses of
those who in his mind gave “him only bad publicity or press
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Instead, in the hope of escaping the government’s crosshairs, they
capitulated with a suspension of Kimmell — however brief —  and
gave in to the preferences of the president.

That’s why Judge Young’s words this month are so powerful. We
should receive those words as his refusal to participate in the Trump
administration’s duplicitous descriptions of current events.  That
same week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had also done the same.
When the Justice Department announced
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that it was pursuing a criminal investigation of the Federal Reserve
because of cost overruns at its renovated headquarters, Powell
recorded a video message
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saying out loud what other beleaguered leaders have been silent about:
that the government’s investigations were just a cover for punishing
someone failing to satisfy the Trump administration.

As Powell put it, “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence
of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best
assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the
preferences of the president.”

We don’t have to imagine why, instead of fighting back, some
prominent leaders of law firms, media companies and universities have
chosen to issue statements about how they can improve their
procedures, cultivate respect and fairness or work to restore trust in
their institutions. The threats from the White House and the Justice
Department are real, and the federal government has enormous powers
— especially when it doesn’t follow its own rules or adhere to
conventions of fairness. Americans now know that the president feels
his only limitation
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his own mind and his own morality, and that his chief advisor believes
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in the iron laws of strength. Leaders of institutions in the
president’s crosshairs have good reason to be afraid.

I don’t know if Powell and Young are afraid, but they didn’t back
down. They didn’t accept the nonsense put before them and instead
chose to speak frankly and directly. They are well-aware, as are now
elected officials in Minnesota, that the price one pays for defying
the preferences of the president can include being placed under
criminal investigation.

I DON’T KNOW IF POWELL AND YOUNG ARE AFRAID, BUT THEY DIDN’T BACK
DOWN.

But the price of allowing the preferences of any president to dictate
the policies and practices of organizations that depend on freedom and
autonomy is to destroy the legitimacy of those organizations. The
price of letting any president rule over the country with no
limitations but his own mind is the destruction of our democracy.
Powell said that “public service sometimes requires standing firm in
the face of threats.” Judge Young has written
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that his sense of duty prevents him from acquiescing in “political
persecution…anathema to our Constitution and everything for which
America stands.”

Some law firms
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are challenging Trump’s administration, while many career
prosecutors are resigning rather than helping carry out Trump’s
agenda
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including his most recent attempts to smear the name of ICE shooting
victim, Renee Nicole Good.  And although many university presidents
are accommodating the president by cloaking themselves in neutrality
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other higher education leaders, including those at George Mason,
Princeton, Bard, Harvard and Mount Holyoke, are resisting federal
pressure.

I have no idea if the Federal Reserve chair is on the right path in
regard to interest rates, or if Judge Young’s approach to free
speech will prevail at the Supreme Court, but I am sure they have
chosen paths of integrity in the face of an increasingly authoritarian
White House. The health of our educational sector and of our democracy
may well depend on how many other institutional leaders make that same
choice.  

_Michael S. Roth is president of Wesleyan University and the author of
“Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free
Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses” and “The
Student: A Short History.”_

_MS NOW (a backronym of My Source for News, Opinion, and the World) is
an American cable news channel owned by Versant. In 2025, MSNBC
separated from the NBCUniversal News Group and rebranded as "MS NOW."_


* universities
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* Columbia University
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* Wesleyan University
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* William G. Young
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* Kavanaugh; Lewis Powell
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