S2 - Episode 3: The Harvard Plan

Summary

On the Media – S2, Episode 3: “The Harvard Plan”

Date: November 14, 2025
Hosts: Brooke Gladstone, Michael Olinger, Ilya Merritz
Co-production: Boston Globe

---

Episode Overview

This episode, the final in a three-part miniseries, dissects the Trump administration's aggressive campaign to reshape American higher education through a new, conditional “compact.” It traces the history of government-university relations, contrasts the old vision of independent academic inquiry with today’s culture wars, and investigates how schools, administrators, and academics nationwide are resisting, adapting, or accommodating these political pressures. Central to the episode: the attack on the so-called “Vannevar Bush compact,” the origins and consequences of the Trump compact, and vivid on-the-ground reporting from campuses across the U.S.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Vannevar Bush Legacy and the Old “Compact”

• Historical Blueprint: Vannevar Bush, WWII-era scientific leader, laid out the model for U.S. science where taxpayer money supports independent, curiosity-driven university research (“Endless Frontier” report, 1945).
  • “Science funding must be long term and predictable…University researchers should have complete independence on how to do their work…” (Ilya Merritz, 05:16)
• Compact as Treaty: For 80 years, universities thrived under this arrangement – great science, global admiration, and a degree of insulation from politics.
  • “Academics, researchers, the leaders of industry organizations, college presidents, they all really view Vannevar Bush as the architect of the modern American university.” (Becky Milligan, 07:08)

2. The Trump Administration’s Assault on Universities

• Who Is Mae Mailman? The driving force: White House official Mae Mailman, a Harvard Law graduate, conservative activist, and Stephen Miller’s deputy. (08:10)
  • She targets universities’ “victim culture,” aiming to reverse what she sees as the glorification of minority/oppressed identities.
  • “If we’re setting them up for failure by glorifying minority status or oppressed status, then…we cannot be a great country.” (Mae Mailman, 10:05)
• Birth of the Trump Compact:
  • It imposes ideology-heavy criteria on university funding: enforcing biological sex definitions, tracking campus politics, capping international enrollment, scrapping affirmative action, and pledging support for Trump administration policies.
    • “The Trump compact comes with conditions like a commitment to the biological definition of sex, tracking and reporting on the political orientation of students and faculty...” (Ilya Merritz, 12:02)
• Reaction and Fractures:
  • Ivy League universities, especially Harvard, become flashpoints for lawsuits and funding threats; some public universities in “red” states see opportunity, others risk alienation.
  • “A few weeks ago… the Trump administration offered its own revised vision for universities' relationship with the government.” (Ilya Merritz, 11:49)

3. How Are Schools Responding?

• Resisters and Suers:
  • Many schools are fighting back through the courts—notably, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and consortia like the AAU.
  • Lawsuits focus on defending “academic freedom” and shielding against government overreach cloaked in “viewpoint diversity” language.
    • “Eisgruber has stuck out his neck… the Trump administration's bureaucratic assault on Columbia amounted to… the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare…” (Ilya Merritz, 23:40)
• Seeking Solidarity:
  • Rutgers professors Boxer and Salas de la Cruz attempted a “NATO for universities” (the Big Ten Compact)—a mutual defense pact. Initial enthusiasm fizzled amid legal, bureaucratic, and political obstacles, but their message made it into Big Ten promotional PR.
    • “Suddenly, Boxer and his allies realized that creating NATO for universities would be a much bigger lift…” (Ilya Merritz, 19:35)
  • “If universities aren't going to formally band together to resist, Boxer figures they should at least tell their own story, a positive story…” (Ilya Merritz, 22:59)
• Pragmatic Adaptation:
  • Universities like Mizzou and Vanderbilt look for an edge by courting government favor. Mizzou’s president lobbied at Mar-a-Lago for funding; Vanderbilt’s president views the compact as a conversation starter, not a blunt instrument.
    • “I went there to discuss that opportunity as well as continued advocacy for funded research from federal agencies.” (Moon Choi, 30:48)
  • As funding cuts hit, SEC schools fare better than Ivies; some see less harm in aligning with administration priorities.

4. Case Studies & On-the-Ground Reporting

• Missouri’s Nuclear Bet:
  • Despite sector-wide cuts, University of Missouri (Mizzou) pushes for a second nuclear reactor, leveraging policy attention on regional equity and securing bipartisan support as national security.
  • “Literally what we produce in the reactor today is in patients next week… hospitals around the world.” (Uriah Orland and Becky Milligan, 27:01–28:15)
• New College of Florida:
  • A small liberal-arts college was “remade” via government intervention—new board, cultural overhaul, sharp decline in rankings and increased costs, but compliance with the new ideological demands.
    • “New College is really a case study for how a state used the power of the government to dictate a college campus's operations and trajectory.” (Becky Milligan, 35:02)
• Columbia, Princeton, Harvard:
  • Prestigious universities are suing, negotiating, and bracing for more draconian cuts.

5. The Architect Speaks: Mae Mailman Interview

• No Olive Branch:
  • Mailman stands firm: cuts and oversight are consequences of “indulgence” in victim culture and perceived anti-Semitism, not evidence of authoritarianism.
    • “So, like, okay, some less money, all right. Some transparency in admissions… This is the ultimate scary thing, is the Columbia deal. That’s it.” (Mae Mailman, 41:08)
  • “That Trump is a fascist or an authoritarian thing never strikes me as super thoughtful…” (Mae Mailman, 42:06)
• Reciprocity Dismissed:
  • She is unbothered by “what if a left-wing president does this?”—arguing “they would do it anyway.”
    • “If you do, then they do. Thing is just… not a relevant talking point anymore…” (Mae Mailman, 43:30)
  • Sees the compact as common-sense accountability: “It’s reminding schools of their obligations so that universities don’t feel like they are running into the unexpected.” (Mae Mailman, 43:43)
  • On demands for viewpoint diversity: “What type of authoritarian regime would be like, I want more debate. I want views explored, debated and challenged. Like fundamentally, what is being sought here is freedom and the lack of an orthodoxy…” (Mae Mailman, 50:49)

6. The Academic Perspective

• Claudine Gay’s Diagnosis:
  • Ousted Harvard president Claudine Gay, in rare public remarks, describes the pressure campaign as:
    • “Academia is not to blame. The agenda here is about destroying knowledge institutions because they are centers of independent thought and information. That’s what’s going on here. That is the story.” (Claudine Gay, 49:50)
  • Argues objections to campus “wokeness” are a misdirection for a “power grab.”

7. Fallout and The Future

• Institutional Unease:
  • Faculty at government agencies (e.g., NIH researcher Jenna Norton) are sidelined after speaking out; the administration frames it as rooting out “radical leftists.”
  • “Vannevar Bush imagined an equal partnership between the government and independent research universities…this year…the government…gave up some of that equality.” (Ilya Merritz, 53:23)
• Scientific Freedom at Risk:
  • The episode ends on a somber note: “Right now that kind of exuberance is in short supply in America’s research labs…” (Ilya Merritz, 54:51)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• “We are waiting on you, Harvard. When will you speak up? If you don’t speak up, who will?”
  – Ryan Enos, political science professor, urging Harvard toward moral leadership (01:52)
• “If you’re going to have a relationship with the federal government, you are dependent in ways that you have no idea. And to act like you are some independent entity is false. Like it is false.”
  – Mae Mailman (11:08)
• “The Trump compact comes with conditions like a commitment to the biological definition of sex, tracking and reporting on the political orientation of students and faculty…”
  – Ilya Merritz (12:02)
• “A NATO style alliance for higher education…the idea that an attack on one university should be considered an attack on all universities.”
  – Paul Boxer (17:21)
• “If you don’t immediately have evidence to the contrary…that’s going to become part of your belief system.”
  – Paul Boxer on the power of anti-university PR (22:42)
• “The greatest threat to American universities since the Red scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.”
  – Christopher Eisgruber, Princeton President (23:40)
• “We made a conscious decision not to sign [solidarity statements].”
  – Moon Choi, Mizzou President, on strategic institutional self-interest (31:50)
• “New College is really a case study for how a state used the power of the government to dictate a college campus’s operations and trajectory.”
  – Becky Milligan (35:02)
• “That Trump is a fascist or an authoritarian thing never strikes me as super thoughtful…”
  – Mae Mailman (42:06)
• “What type of authoritarian regime would be like, I want more debate…what is being sought here is freedom and the lack of an orthodoxy…”
  – Mae Mailman (50:49)
• “The agenda here is about destroying knowledge institutions because they are centers of independent thought and information. That’s what’s going on here.”
  – Claudine Gay (49:50)
• “Vannevar Bush imagined an equal partnership between the government and independent research universities…this year…they gave up some of that equality.”
  – Ilya Merritz (53:23)

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• Background & Host Intros: 01:25 – 01:36
• Vannevar Bush & the Compact: 03:22 – 07:29
• Mae Mailman: Origins, Philosophy: 08:10 – 11:26
• Trump Compact and University Reactions: 11:44 – 13:41
• Big Ten Compact/NATO for Academia: 17:03 – 22:13
• Resistance & Legal Moves (Princeton, AAU): 23:13 – 25:39
• Mizzou’s Nuclear Gamble: 26:13 – 31:37
• New College of Florida as Test Case: 35:02 – 36:28
• Mae Mailman Interview: 39:15 – 51:12
• Claudine Gay’s Remarks & Closing Reflections: 48:05 – 52:43

---

Structure & Tone

The episode is deeply reported and unflinching, blending historical perspective, vivid reporting, and high-stakes present-day conflict. It showcases voices from across the spectrum—professors, activists, administrators, and architects of the Trump policy—without pulling its journalistic punches. The tone is urgent, skeptical, and sometimes pained, reflecting a moment of existential anxiety for American higher education.

---

For Listeners Who Want the Essentials

This episode centers on the forced reconfiguration of American universities’ independence by a politically-driven Trump administration, using research funding as leverage for ideological compliance. Old alliances and traditional university responses seem precarious; resistance is fragmented but ongoing. Some schools are fighting, others adapting, and a few (willingly or not) aligning with the government’s vision. The episode leaves listeners with the open question: Will the spirit of independent inquiry survive the new order?

Transcript

[Michael Olinger]

On the Media is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance.

[Ilya Merritz]

Companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if.

[Michael Olinger]

You could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary.

[Ilya Merritz]

Not available in all states.

[WNYC Announcer]

WNYC Studios is supported by Apple TV.

[Mae Mailman]

It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes. Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds. All they have left is a life raft and each other. This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive, hosted by me, Becky Milligan. Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

[WNYC Announcer]

WNYC Studios is supported by City Harvest. City Harvest believes no New Yorker has to go hungry. That's why they're on the road rescuing over 86 million pounds of nutritious food and delivering it to help feed New Yorkers in need. Transforming surplus food into sustenance, sustainability and smiles. Feed good for our communities, our city and our planet. Learn [e-mail].

[Mae Mailman]

From WNYC in New York.

[Ilya Merritz]

This is on the Media.

[Mae Mailman]

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Michael Olinger]

And I'm Michael Olinger.

[Ilya Merritz]

Over the last couple of weeks, we've been examining the Trumpet Administration's assault on universities in the Harvard Plan, the series.

[Michael Olinger]

We produced in collaboration with the Boston Globe.

[Ilya Merritz]

In episode one, we met three professors at Harvard who each have a very different take on how their employer should meet. The moment Ryan Enos, the poli sci.

[Michael Olinger]

Professor, wants Harvard to take a principled stand.

[Ilya Merritz]

We are waiting on you, Harvard.

[Michael Olinger]

When will you speak up?

[Ilya Merritz]

If you don't speak up, who will?

[Michael Olinger]

Cancer researcher Camilla Noxarova wants Harvard to.

[Ilya Merritz]

Make a deal to save her grant funding.

[Mae Mailman]

So I definitely want a deal.

[Ilya Merritz]

I think that what we do here is extremely valuable.

[Mae Mailman]

And the reality is that without a deal, it's dead.

[Michael Olinger]

And engineering professor Kit Parker asked why.

[Ilya Merritz]

They couldn't all just get along.

[Michael Olinger]

Parker is a Trump supporter.

[Hilary Burns]

When you go, talk to him immediately.

[Ilya Merritz]

If he talks to Putin and Kim here talk to us.

[Michael Olinger]

They're all professors, bystanders in a fight.

[Ilya Merritz]

No one really expected. At stake, billions of dollars in science.

[Michael Olinger]

Funding and America's standing in the world.

[Ilya Merritz]

But what do you do if you're.

[Michael Olinger]

A decision maker, the leader of a university?

[Ilya Merritz]

And what do you do if you're in the White House and you're determined to change campus culture? That's what this week's episode is all about. Here's ill. I want to tell you something about how we got here.

[Hilary Burns]

Today on Science Reporter. We are going to look back over.

[Ilya Merritz]

The years to a place where the government is able to twist the arms of the mightiest, the richest, the most prestigious universities in the world. And those universities don't quite know what to do. One way to explain it is to get to know a man who's been dead for 50 years. His name, Vannevar Bush. That's V A N N E V A R Bush. People say it different ways.

[Becky Milligan]

Yeah, it's actually amazing how often his name comes up when I speak with people who study or follow American higher education.

[Ilya Merritz]

My Globe colleague, Hilary Burns.

[Becky Milligan]

So Vannevar Bush was a scientist and really a visionary during the Second World War.

[Hilary Burns]

Of Vannevar Bush, an admirer has said, I always think of him as a Cape Codder. His roots are deep in the soil of that historic bit of sterile land and metaphorically speaking, his shoes are full of its sand.

[Ilya Merritz]

In photos, Bush wears rimless glasses and a three piece suit. He's lanky and sometimes smokes a pipe. An electrical engineer by training, Vannevar Bush in the 1930s and 40s was appointed by President Roosevelt to lead a bunch of newly created bodies focusing on military research and development. He was one of the key movers behind the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons.

[Hilary Burns]

Well, let's start off by going back to 1945 in New Mexico when you witnessed the first atomic bomb. What was your personal reaction then? Well, of course my first reaction was one of great relief that the program had been successful and the bomb had gone off on schedule. Well, now when you go look back from a vantage point of 18 years, do you have any regrets about it?

[Ilya Merritz]

No.

[Hilary Burns]

Of course President Truman made the decision to use the bomb. But I thought then and I think now that he was right for a number of reasons.

[Ilya Merritz]

One, the bomb accelerated the end of the war. Bush said America's victory was literally powerful by professors of physics.

[Becky Milligan]

And once the war ended, he wrote a report to President Truman titled the Endless Frontier. And that really became the blueprint for the US science policy and laid the foundation of the National Science foundation which developed the ecosystem we have today where the government funds basic research on university and college campuses.

[Ilya Merritz]

In science, the Endless Frontier, Bush laid out five fundamentals included these. Science funding must be long term and predictable. Decisions about what to fund should be made by public servants who understand science. University researchers should have complete independence on how to do their work, including Staffing and scope. This is of the utmost importance. There would be accountability though. The whole system of taxpayer funded innovation would be answerable to the US President and Congress and by extension the American people. Very different from our rivals in the Soviet Union.

[Hilary Burns]

Science is going ahead on 100 fronts at an accelerated pace, moving so fast that it's hard to keep up.

[Ilya Merritz]

Like a prophet, Vannevar Bush seemed to anticipate the amazing innovations that did come to pass, from gene therapy to artificial intelligence, underwriting it all, taxpayers placing their trust in universities and scientists.

[Hilary Burns]

Do you see any danger of a certain scientific elite gaining too much power in a situation like that? No, I don't. I hear it mentioned every little while.

[Ilya Merritz]

In this 1963 film produced by MIT. Bush sounded very confident about the system he built.

[Hilary Burns]

It's not very easy, you know, to dominate a group of scientists. They're about as independent a crowd as you could find anywhere. I just about as much think of dominating the scientists of this country as I would of, of a little clique run on a faculty of a university. It isn't done. It's impossible.

[Ilya Merritz]

For eight decades, Bush's vision prevailed. Sometimes it's even referred to as a compact, almost like a treaty.

[Becky Milligan]

Academics, researchers, the leaders of industry organizations, college presidents, they all really view Vannevar Bush as the architect of the modern American university. He is the visionary that created the current landscape we have, which became the envy of the world this year.

[Ilya Merritz]

It came apart not by neglect or decay or some outside enemy. It was attacked by the United States President through canceled grants, mass layoffs, organizational chaos, cuts targeting the biggest research institutions. The person shaking the foundation of Vannevar Bush's compact is a name you might not know. For much of this year, until she left to have her third baby, Mae Mailman was the White House lead on drafting executive orders and negotiating with college leaders. She has a breezy self confidence and a propensity to drop little provocations.

[Mae Mailman]

I do think that some jobs in the White House are just not amenable to having kids. Like, I don't know if that's anti feminist or I just. It's not.

[Ilya Merritz]

Mailman grew up in what she calls flyover country, Kansas. Her father was a white American who met her mother, who's Korean, when he was with the army in Asia training to be a doctor. Both parents were politically conservative.

[Mae Mailman]

When you're in residency, you don't have any money.

[Ilya Merritz]

Mailman told me her mom was appalled when she saw her husband's first paycheck upon becoming a licensed physician.

[Mae Mailman]

That's like a real dollar amount, and then you see the amount of taxes taken out of it. And I think that was my mom's radicalization moment.

[Ilya Merritz]

So Mailman has always been right of center. At Harvard Law, she led her chapter of the conservative Federalist Society. As she told the New York Times, she accidentally provoked a tempest when the group was seen getting delivery from a fast food restaurant whose owners funded efforts to oppose gay marriage. And the delivery bag was left in front of the locker of a gay student group.

[Mae Mailman]

There was a group chat going around saying that the federal society is trying to basically threaten the gay student group because there was this chick flaybacks. No, that didn't happen.

[Ilya Merritz]

She did not appreciate the rush to judgment. After graduating, Mailman joined the first Trump White House and stayed all four years. During the Biden presidency, she worked for a legal nonprofit opposing trans participation in sports. And when Trump was reelected, Stephen Miller.

[Mae Mailman]

Whom she calls a really good friend.

[Ilya Merritz]

Of mine, invited her back for Trump too. They both agreed they could not get stopped by the norms and practices that had gummed up the first Trump administration.

[Mae Mailman]

Now, we would never just accept those sort of answers like that. I need a faster timeline. What you're saying does not make any sense.

[Ilya Merritz]

And changing the culture of higher education was of the utmost importance.

[Mae Mailman]

And if we're putting our top leaders in our top schools and we're setting them up for failure by glorifying minority status or oppressed status, then how can we be a great country? We cannot be a great country.

[Ilya Merritz]

Mae Melman does not often speak in the language of science policy. She speaks the language of power, the language of culture wars.

[Mae Mailman]

There was a large increase in trans and non binary identification and even like more of an increase in homosexual identification. That's now come down. If you're just like a normal person and you just like are, I don't know, just a heterosexual person, like now you're not a victim and you can't be part of that. And so it be becomes cool. Like there was a fad element. There has to be a fad element, right?

[Ilya Merritz]

In her telling, universities pretty much had it coming when they indulged victim culture. Somehow these institutions forgot who was paying for their medical schools and labs. The government.

[Mae Mailman]

If you're going to have a relationship with the federal government, you are dependent in ways that you have no idea. And to act like you are some independent entity is false. Like it is falls.

[Ilya Merritz]

So is this how it ends? Vannevar Bush's dream? A system that, to be sure, concentrated prestige and money and Nobel prizes in a few places like Harvard. Even as the benefits in the form of knowledge and medicine were spread all over the country and around the world.

[Mae Mailman]

The Trump administration is continuing efforts to.

[Hilary Burns]

Exert control over higher education.

[Ilya Merritz]

A few weeks ago, with May Mailman's input, the Trump administration offered its own revised vision for universities relationship with the government.

[WNYC Announcer]

The White House sent a letter to several universities urging them to sign a.

[Ilya Merritz]

Formal agreement, what it's calling a compact. You could almost squint and think it was the same thing as the informal compact Vannevar Bush envisioned. But it's not. The Trump compact comes with conditions like a commitment to the biological definition of sex, tracking and reporting on the political or orientation of students and faculty, pledging.

[WNYC Announcer]

To support many of President Trump's policy.

[Michael Olinger]

Priorities, removing factors like sex and ethnicity from admissions decisions, a cap on the.

[Mae Mailman]

Enrollment of international students and strict definitions of gender. The complaints about the compact have been non specific. I feel like it's just been academic freedom. If anything, it's actually not radical.

[Ilya Merritz]

We'll come back to May Mailman a little later in this episode. Before that, what's a school supposed to do in a naked power play like this? Lay low, keep quiet, hope for the best? Or make some noise, show some fight. Be like Harvard. They sued the government. Here's a thought. What if not all universities need to shield themselves?

[Hilary Burns]

Graduates of the Alabama Class of 2020 standing here before you in this magnificent.

[Ilya Merritz]

Arena, what if some schools stand to benefit in the new order? The President sees it.

[Hilary Burns]

It is clear to see the next chapter of the American story will not be written by the Harvard Crimson. It will be written by you. The Crimson Tide.

[Ilya Merritz]

When we come back, lessons from some academics who resisted and some who are looking for opportunity. This is the third and final episode of the Harvard Plan from the Boston Globe and on the media.

[WNYC Announcer]

WNYC Studios is supported by Rippling. Is your business paying for 20 tools to do the job of one? That's not software as a service. That's sad. Software as a disservice. It's time to replace your stitched together tech stack with one platform for all your departments with Rippling. Rippling is the unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance. They've helped millions replace their mess of cobbled together tools with one system designed to give leaders clarity, speed and control. By uniting your employees, teams and departments in one system, Rippling removes the bottlenecks, busywork and silos your software created. Rippling gives your company one source of truth for your people, their data and everything they touch. With Rippling you can run your entire hr, IT and finance operations as one, or pick and choose the products that best fill the gaps in your software stack. And right now you can get six months free when you go to rippling.com wnyc. Learn more at RIP P L-I N G.com wnyc that's rippling.com wnyC for six months free. Terms and conditions apply. WNYC Studios is supported by Apple TV.

[Mae Mailman]

It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes. Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds. All they have left is a life raft and each other. This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive. Hosted by me, Becky Milligan. Listen to Adrift, an Apple Original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

[WNYC Announcer]

How does the brain process memories? Why is AI a solution and a.

[Mae Mailman]

Problem for our climate? What is leadership in 2025 and beyond? The TED Radio Hour explores the biggest questions and the most complicated ideas of.

[WNYC Announcer]

Our time with the world's greatest thinkers. Listen now to the TED radio hour from NPR.

[Ilya Merritz]

This is on the Media. I'm Ilya Merritz, host of the Harvard Plan, OTM's collaboration with the Boston Globe. Many things were different before Mae Mailman and Stephen Miller and President Trump decided to throw the full force of the executive branch at universities with the aim of changing the culture. Scientific research funding was considered sacrosanct. The idea of singling out a school for attack was unthinkable. Then when it happened to Columbia last spring, Paul Boxer was appalled. He's a psychology professor at Rutgers Newark.

[Michael Olinger]

I studied the development of aggressive and violent violent behavior from childhood through early adulthood.

[Ilya Merritz]

Boxer became convinced that new tactics demanded a new kind of response. A colleague of his, a chemistry professor named David Salas de la Cruz, had an idea inspired by 20th century diplomacy.

[Michael Olinger]

A NATO style alliance for higher education. The idea that an attack on one university should be considered an attack on all universities.

[Ilya Merritz]

The way Boxer and his colleague Salas de la Cruz saw it, Rutgers could be pretty vulnerable to attack. They're a big research school. They got scrutinized for DEI programs and for the handling of campus protests. But Rutgers would not be so vulnerable if it joined forces with the schools it was already connected to through the Big Ten Athletic Conference, including the University of Michigan, the Ohio State University, UCLA and Penn State. Big state schools with huge fandoms attached.

[Michael Olinger]

As a large conference that has tremendous reach in terms not only of our academics, but very obviously things like college football and basketball, we thought that was really a coalition to think about from the standpoint of a national defense against any kinds of incursions on universities.

[Ilya Merritz]

So Boxer and Salas de la Cruz set about trying to create a NATO for the Big Ten. They called it the Big Ten Compact. If you're not keeping count, this is our third compact after Vannevar Bush's compact and the Trump compact. Not long after the Rutgers Senate voted in favor of the Big Ten Compact, someone shared the text online. The idea had legs.

[Michael Olinger]

I logged on and found the post that had shared our Senate resolution that was getting hundreds and hundreds of likes and retweets. I don't know if they call it that in blue sky.

[Ilya Merritz]

But when it reached the desk of Rutgers president, who was then a lame duck near the end of his term, he declined to sign on. This was only the first setback. After a spate of articles put a spotlight on the Big Ten Compact, they heard from the Big Ten Academic alliance, which is the scholarly counterpart of the sports league.

[Michael Olinger]

Well, we soon found out that we were crossing over potentially into trademark violation land because we were told in no uncertain terms that we were not to represent our compact as the Big Ten Academic alliance compact because the Big Ten doesn't endorse it. And furthermore, if the Big Ten were to endorse it, it would only come if every single provost or other analogous leader of all of the 18 schools agreed to endorse it.

[Ilya Merritz]

Suddenly, Boxer and his allies realized that creating NATO for universities would be a much bigger lift. At state schools, university presidents and trustees have to think about state legislators, the governor, next year's budget.

[Michael Olinger]

Oh, universities in other states might have political challenges within their own states to prevent the whole university from joining them.

[Ilya Merritz]

A lot of red state schools had become punching bags for state legislatures, who saw them as out of step with their politics. In Ohio, a new law invites students to evaluate and report professors for perceived bias. It bans faculty from striking. In Indiana, professors sued over a similar law, claiming it was chilling to speech. They lost. And in Texas, faculty senates at state schools have been eliminated, depriving professors of a voice on policy.

[Michael Olinger]

What we had to just sort of finally understand was, a, there probably wouldn't be a Big Ten compact that would involve everyone, and B, nationwide efforts that cross political lines like that are probably going to be fraught and maybe even doomed from the start.

[Ilya Merritz]

So Boxer and Salas de la Cruz pulled back and they redirected their focus to Forming alliances in New Jersey. But a funny thing happened on the way to the failure of the Big Ten Compact.

[Michael Olinger]

In September, this ad appears on YouTube called We Are Here. Driving Health opportunity and stronger communities every day.

[Ilya Merritz]

We are Here.

[Michael Olinger]

It's an ad by the Big Ten and it's on the official YouTube account of the Big Ten Conference. And I opened it and I watched it, and it's 30 seconds of pretty much every single thing that we've been.

[Ilya Merritz]

Talking about in the medicine that keeps your family healthy, in the food on your table.

[Michael Olinger]

My younger daughter plays volleyball. We were watching a women's volleyball game on the Big Ten network and the ad popped up there in the solutions.

[Ilya Merritz]

Shaping a better future across the country in every corner of life. What I see is pretty standard issue pr, down to the soaring music and idealized images of college life every day. We are here. Paul Boxer, he loves it.

[Michael Olinger]

I've seen the ad probably 100 times by now. I could probably watch it for you right now and get all misty eyed again because it's just so moving in terms of its connection to what we've been talking about and struggling for.

[Ilya Merritz]

And he noticed something else.

[Michael Olinger]

The other interesting piece of it is that prior to the ad's appearance, the Big Ten had a disclaimer on their Big Ten Academic alliance website, essentially disavowing their connection to our compact. I forget the exact verbiage of it, but it was basically saying, the Big Ten Academic Compact is not us.

[Ilya Merritz]

That language had disappeared. The Big Ten compact never really came into existence. But also, the Big Ten are not trying to stamp it out. So in a way, the idea lives in sports. This might be dismissed as a moral victory. You lost the game, but you played hard. Good for you. For his own academic reasons, Boxer, the psychologist, thinks this kind of PR effort is actually very important right now. Ideas gel early in young brains.

[Michael Olinger]

So if all you're hearing when you turn on your news is these public universities are terrible. They're indoctrinating your kids, they're endorsing violence, they're doing this, they're doing that. If you don't immediately have evidence to the contrary, and that is a message that you keep hearing over and over again, that's going to become part of your belief system.

[Ilya Merritz]

If universities aren't going to formally band together to resist, Boxer figures they should at least try to tell their own story, a positive story, and give people a better way to see them.

[Becky Milligan]

And why is it that we haven't seen a greater resistance movement from university leaders this year?

[Ilya Merritz]

A few Weeks ago, Hillary and I had the chance to interview Christopher Eisgruber, the president of Princeton. He is also the outgoing chair of the association of American Universities.

[Hilary Burns]

Well, look, I have found it very.

[Mae Mailman]

Important, important to speak up about these issues and began doing so in April of last year.

[Ilya Merritz]

I do wish I had more company in doing that.

[Hilary Burns]

I have great admiration for Alan Garber.

[Mae Mailman]

For example, at Harvard, who has, I think, rightly taken important stands around academic freedom.

[Ilya Merritz]

More than pretty much any other leader, Eisgruber has stuck out his neck in a magazine piece. He wrote that the Trump administration's bureaucratic assault on Columbia amounted to, quote, unquote, the greatest threat to American universities since the Red scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.

[Michael Olinger]

I worried a lot about how my own community would react when I spoke.

[Mae Mailman]

Out last April because I thought, you.

[Michael Olinger]

Know, there are risks here that I'm taking for myself. There are also risks that I'm taking for my community.

[Ilya Merritz]

He says he was buoyed by an outpouring of support and has continued to speak out since then. But when I pressed him on the idea of trying to achieve solidarity among schools, almost like the NATO style alliance that Paul Boxer wanted to create, he dismissed it as some kind of social science rational choice fantasy. Don't look for grand statements, he told me. Look at the litigation. This year, the association of American Universities has filed five lawsuits against the Trump administration. One over student visas, four over cuts to research funding after never having filed.

[Mae Mailman]

A lawsuit in its history previously.

[Hilary Burns]

And to get that level of agreement.

[Mae Mailman]

Among universities that they're going to take.

[Michael Olinger]

A step as serious as suing the government, I think has been underestimated by folks.

[Ilya Merritz]

Eisgruber told us the Trump administration's compact is concerning to lots of university presidents. Many of the provisions might appear common sense or reasonable, like a tuition cap, but in reality, he says, they could be a backdoor to more government intrusions. Ditto with what's sometimes called viewpoint diversity. Conservative views are in the minority on many campuses, which is a key point in the compact.

[Hilary Burns]

That doesn't mean the government should be in there monitoring whom we hire, how we treat particular departments, or what the distribution of viewpoints are.

[Michael Olinger]

In fact, I think that's an intrusion on free speech.

[Ilya Merritz]

The aau, the group Eisgruber chaired, is a consortium of schools that get big government research dollars. Harvard and Princeton are there, but so are schools outside the Northeast, like Vanderbilt in Nashville, and state schools like Mizzou, the University of Missouri.

[Becky Milligan]

It's a big sports school. They have massive Football games, big tailgate culture.

[Ilya Merritz]

All this year, my Globe colleague, higher education reporter Hilary Burns, has been working on a big multi part series which the Globe is running next month. Everyone should check it out. Her reporting has taken her all over the country, including to Columbia, Missouri.

[Becky Milligan]

It's kind of a fun school. A lot of school spirit, A lot of people wearing their Mizzou gear around campus.

[Ilya Merritz]

On the south side of campus, between a golf course and the Mizzou arena, there's a 10 megawatt nuclear reactor, which was the real reason for Hillary's visit. Christopher told you the ground rules, right? Of photos and everything? Yep. Okay. It was like entering the space age.

[Becky Milligan]

It really felt like I was in a science fiction movie from maybe the.

[Ilya Merritz]

1960S or the age of Vannevar Bush. The reactor was conceived in the 1950s and built in the 60s.

[Becky Milligan]

They told me before we went in, like don't expect a flashy, really tech savvy environment. Like this is old school. Levers, gadgets, very manual.

[Ilya Merritz]

The University of Missouri Research Reactor, everyone calls it mer, is the largest university operated reactor in the nation. Just real quick, sometimes people think a nuclear reactor and they think power.

[Mae Mailman]

Yes, Right.

[Ilya Merritz]

So we don't do any power at all. Hillary's guide, Uriah Orland, told us that at mer, it's the byproduct of the reaction that they're after. Radioisotopes with names like iodine131 or lutetium. This nuclear waste, it turns out, makes a very effective treatment for a variety of cancers, which means this facility is a pharma factory, a very busy one. Literally what we produce in the reactor today is in patients next week. So in fact, it's Thursday today. So last night or early this morning, we pulled samples from the reactor. Those will leave the facility tomorrow as an active pharmaceutical ingredient of Lutetium 1 7. That will go to the drug company, they'll package it, send it to a hospital, and it'll be administered to a patient early next week. Oh my gosh.

[Becky Milligan]

And the hospitals are all in Missouri?

[Ilya Merritz]

No, these are hospitals around the world. Around the world? Yes.

[Becky Milligan]

I went out there because they are taking on this massive project to build a second and new nuclear reactor on their campus.

[Ilya Merritz]

The current one is at capacity and showing its age.

[Becky Milligan]

And I just thought it was so interesting, the timing. They are launching, hosting celebratory kickoffs for this big project at a time where schools in the Northeast are entering a period of austerity and cutting and laying off people and accepting fewer PhD students and bracing for real financial turmoil.

[Ilya Merritz]

The price tag to build a new reactor looks to be a little over a billion dollars. And it may seem crazy in this moment, but Mizzou is looking to the government to help it raise the money to build it. Here's one reason it may actually work. What I'm concerned about is 2/3 of research dollars are funneled to four or five states, it looks like. At the confirmation hearing for Trump's appointee to lead the National Institutes of Health, Republican Senator Roger Marshall asked Just would like your commitment for US Flyover states to spread the love a little bit once confirmed. As NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya sounded convinced.

[Michael Olinger]

From the point of view of science.

[Hilary Burns]

Policy, it's absolutely vital that the NIH.

[Michael Olinger]

Investments are geographically dispersed.

[Ilya Merritz]

For Mizzou, the pitch is focused on national competitiveness, the need to have a secure domestic supply so that we're not reliant on international politics. A cancer patient needs the drug. Whether we're friends with a country or not, Mizzou is not messing around. Last spring, at exactly the time that other university presidents were feeling Trump's pressure campaign, Mizzou's President Moon Choi finagled an invitation to President Trump's estate in Florida. Hillary asked him about it.

[Becky Milligan]

How did you get the invitation to Mar A Lago?

[Ilya Merritz]

How did that go?

[Hilary Burns]

How did I get the invitation? I was invited by a close friend who was an alum of the university, and he's a very talented and well respected tax attorney.

[Ilya Merritz]

When he got there, Choi found the place was full of tax lawyers.

[Becky Milligan]

He was the only college president in attendance. So that caught my eye.

[Ilya Merritz]

Choi was wowed by Mar A Lago's history, which goes back to the serial heiress Marjorie Meriwether post. But he was there with a specific ask for the Trump administration the brilliant.

[Hilary Burns]

Idea of having tax credits for radioisotope production, given its critical importance to patients in the United States. And so I went there to discuss that opportunity as well as continued advocacy for funded research from federal agencies.

[Ilya Merritz]

And has it paid off the trip to Mar A Lago?

[Becky Milligan]

I would say yes. He's been able to successfully bring a few canceled research grants back online by having conversations with lawmakers.

[Ilya Merritz]

To be clear, the tax break idea has not been adopted. But Mizzou President Munchoi feels he's making headway.

[Becky Milligan]

He's still very optimistic that they will get this research funding. He told me that he believes he is on the right track and doing the right thing for the university.

[Ilya Merritz]

Last spring, when the Trump administration started cutting research grants And Princeton's Christopher Eisgruber was speaking out. There were some solidarity statements circulating. President Choi was not interested.

[Hilary Burns]

We made a conscious decision not to.

[Ilya Merritz]

Sign them, he said.

[Becky Milligan]

He really needs to focus on what is best for his institution. And right now, what is best for his institution is lobbying for the importance of this federal funding to build this nuclear reactor, to fund this cutting edge, rare cancer research.

[Hilary Burns]

My words and my action can have dramatic impact to this institution, and I have to be very careful in what I say and what I do.

[Ilya Merritz]

All research focused schools have faced funding cuts, including Mizzou, but those cuts are not spread equally. Hilary found. Schools in the Southeastern Conference, which includes the University of Missouri, have lost a significantly lower percentage of funding than the Ivies. SEC schools tend to be whiter and more American, with far fewer international students. When the Trump administration rolled out its compact in October, it shared the proposed agreement only with a small number of schools perceived to be potentially in line with Trump's thinking. Mizzou was not one of them, but another SEC school, Vanderbilt, was. It's led by a man named Daniel Dearmeyer, who went on Morning Joe to discuss.

[Hilary Burns]

It was very clear to us, both in the initial communication and throughout that, that this was something that the administration was interested in pursuing for sure, and they were interested in getting feedback and commentary.

[Ilya Merritz]

Many higher ed watchers saw the Trump compact as menacing or bullying. Dearmire talked about it more benignly as the start of a conversation.

[Hilary Burns]

So you didn't read it as some kind of a pressure campaign from the administration? Sign on and you'll get preferential treatment. There was. We never got any pressure on that. We got like initial conversation and then there were initial letter, and then there was a couple of conversations that followed afterwards. But it was always in the sense of like, this is our proposal. We'd like to move forward in that direction.

[Becky Milligan]

I talk with Dear Meyer fairly often, and when I asked him this summer about the narrative forming that university presidents are either reformers or resisters in this current moment, he was quick to tell me that college presidents don't despise each other. But there are different points of view.

[Ilya Merritz]

Dearmeyer has positioned himself as a leader on speech issues. That makes him an attractive figure to the Trump administration, even if other college leaders would prefer he stood with them.

[Becky Milligan]

Yeah, so Deirmeyer says that other college campuses need to get their ducks in a row. They need to make these reforms act with more urgency to fix their campus cultures. And that view, that criticism of other universities has made him quite unpopular in some higher education circles right now.

[Ilya Merritz]

Still, most schools that received the Trump compact found it unacceptable. About a dozen have rejected it. Vanderbilt and Arizona State say they're offering feedback. So far, a two year military college has said it will sign. And also New College, a state school in Sarasota, Florida. New College was not sent the compact, but after President Trump promoted it on social media, a spokesman said, when the president asks, we'll be first in line.

[Becky Milligan]

New College is really a case study for how a state used the power of the government to dictate a college campus's operations and trajectory.

[Ilya Merritz]

For decades, tiny New College had a reputation as a haven for artsy types. Then Governor Ron DeSantis attacked it as a woke institution and installed a majority of his own people on the board. A bunch of professors left. The student body started to change. Fewer weird kids, more athletes.

[Becky Milligan]

Christopher Ruffo, probably the most famous board member. The conservative activists said that this strategy was meant to balance the hormones on campus.

[Ilya Merritz]

New College has a culture problem. When they did a study, these consultants hired by the college, they said that.

[Michael Olinger]

The three phrases that most describe the.

[Ilya Merritz]

Culture here quote, politically correct, druggies, weirdos. The college is saying this. It's still early days, but the experiment is not going great. So far, the cost per student has risen sharply at New College, and graduation rates, which were low, have not improved. The school dropped 60 spots in its U.S. news ranking. A New College spokesman told us in a statement, the negative numbers you describe are inherited by previous failing administrations and said the school shouldn't be judged until the class of 2028. He noted that the endowment has grown. Quote, we are headed in the right direction.

[Michael Olinger]

Music plays 24. 7 there people just kind of chill.

[Hilary Burns]

Out at fun sitting up.

[Michael Olinger]

There's a fire pit there every night.

[Ilya Merritz]

On a tour, Hillary got a look at efforts to spiff up the campus.

[Michael Olinger]

We had our Charlie Kirk Memorial.

[Ilya Merritz]

That's where they had that service with about 100 students. After Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, was assassinated while visiting a college in Utah, New College announced it will build a statue of him. Kirk built a movement attacking liberalism on college campuses and spreading a blacklist of professors under the banner of free speech and open debate. In a lot of ways, New College wants to be the kind of place Charlie Kirk would have approved of. When we return, I'm going to put the questions raised by this series to the architect of Trump's pressure campaign. Stay with us.

[WNYC Announcer]

WNYC Studios is supported by Rippling. Is your business paying for 20 tools to do the job of one? That's not software as a service, that's sad. Software as a disservice. It's time to replace your stitched together tech stack with one platform for all your departments with Rippling. Rippling is the unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance. They've helped millions replace their massive cobbled together tools with one system designed to give leaders clarity, speed and control. By uniting your employees, teams and departments in one system, Rippling removes the bottlenecks, busy work and silos your software created. Rippling gives your company one source of truth for your people, their data and everything they touch. With Rippling you can run your entire hr, IT and finance operations as one. Or pick and choose the products that best fill the gaps in your software stack. And right now you can get six months free when you go to rippling.com wnyc learn more at r I p p l-I n g.com wnyc that's rippling.com wnyC for six months free terms and conditions apply. How does the brain process memories? Why is AI a SOL and a problem for our climate?

[Mae Mailman]

What is leadership in 2025 and beyond? The TED Radio Hour explores the biggest questions and the most complicated ideas of.

[WNYC Announcer]

Our time with the world's greatest thinkers. Listen now to the TED Radio Hour from npr.

[Ilya Merritz]

This is on the Media. I'm Ilya Maritz, host of the Harvard Plan, a miniseries from OTM and the Boston Globe about Trump's pressure campaign on higher education. This is the last segment of our last episode and I was really happy when just as we were putting this episode together, an email landed in my inbox from a Trump official who said, yes, I'm open to speaking with you. On the day I talked with May Mailman, she was expected to give birth to her third child at any moment. She reassured me there was enough time for an interview.

[Mae Mailman]

Due dates are fake. I switched doctors and my doctor switched my due date.

[Ilya Merritz]

She spoke to me from her home studio in the Houston Exurbs with a professional looking mic setup. But for most of the past year until she stepped down to have her baby, she was a senior policy strategist in the White House.

[Mae Mailman]

But the simpler way to describe that was Stephen Miller's deputy. Stephen Miller is the deputy chief of staff for policy. And so I was the deputy to the deputy for, you know, for the.

[Ilya Merritz]

Many, many people on campuses who are scared shitless by the policies that you did a lot to create and guide. I'm going to speak pretty directly like why should they not be scared shitless? Why do you think they might even one day be happy with the result? Or do you think they could ever be happy with the result?

[Mae Mailman]

So let's just say that the thing that will happen is Colombia, right? Like, worst case scenario, what happens is Colombia?

[Ilya Merritz]

I asked her versions of this question a few times, expecting her to offer an olive branch. There was no olive branch. She told me Colombia was already in a lot of trouble over how they handled the Gaza protests in the spring of 2024 and unrest on campus. By settling with the Trump administration, the school solved a lot of its problems. People should be happy.

[Mae Mailman]

So, like, okay, some less money, all right, Some transparency in admissions. A monitor who's like a guy in New York City who's super middle of the road. No one would ever challenge this person's political bias.

[Ilya Merritz]

Among other things, the monitor will examine whether Columbia is promoting, quote, unlawful DEI goals.

[Mae Mailman]

Some things that Columbia had already announced on what they're going to do for anti Semitism, including if you are wearing a mask to conceal your identity during a protest and you're asked for your ID that you are now required to give it some sort of public safety presence on campus, some sort of transparency in federal funds like these are. This is the ultimate scary thing, is the Columbia deal. That's it.

[Ilya Merritz]

Again and again, Mailman gave no ground. She knows the critics see creeping authoritarianism from the Trump White House telling colleges and universities what to do. She told me that is exactly backwards.

[Mae Mailman]

You know, sort of the. That Trump is a fascist or an authoritarian thing never strikes me as super thoughtful because when I think of what have I seen recently that feels authoritarian? The thing that I see is Joe Biden's Mar A Lago raid.

[Ilya Merritz]

The FBI searched Mar A Lago with a warrant approved by a judge. Joe Biden played no role.

[Mae Mailman]

Something like that is the thing that feels the most authoritarian.

[Ilya Merritz]

Mailman likewise dismissed the idea that setting policy to align so closely with one president's priorities will cause problems down the line if the shoe is ever on the other foot. I'm just curious, like, if you're worried about any negative repercussions. Oh, yeah.

[Mae Mailman]

So I think the, the general conserve, like the. Let's play devil's advocate. What if there is a President aoc? I. I think the reason that that doesn't necessarily concern me is a few things. One, a President AOC would do it anyway. And I think that's a lesson that conservatives learn this like, well, if you do, then they do. Thing is just. It's not a relevant talking point anymore because they will I think is just like the, the general understanding.

[Ilya Merritz]

It felt like Mailman is thinking in terms of endless partisan conflict. But she also describes the Trump compact as something that really should not be seen as partisan. She told me it's reminding schools of.

[Mae Mailman]

Their obligations so that universities don't feel like they are running into the unexpected. And I didn't know I was supposed to, you know, comply with civil rights laws and protect students from anti Semitic discrimination.

[Ilya Merritz]

Well, now, you know, obviously, like cancer research has, has little or nothing to do with anti Semitism, which was the stated reason for a lot of stuff. If you want to make a connection, please do. But tell me, what's the thinking behind that strategy?

[Mae Mailman]

I actually do think that there is a connection because I think, for example, if you don't have the best students or you don't have the best professors because you don't comply with civil rights laws in your hiring or in your admissions, then the likelihood that money to your program is going to have a high merit result is lower than if you're in an institution that rigorously pursues merit and truth at all times.

[Ilya Merritz]

In September, a judge sided with Harvard in its complaint against the government, saying the anti Semitism argument reeks of pretext and adding that the mass cancellation of grants endangered the decades long joint interest in doing research. We've talked in previous episodes about this case. When I pointed out that the court sided with Harvard specifically on the First Amendment portion of its complaint, Mailman said the judge's ruling was wrong on the law, that it should be in federal claims court, and wrong in the court of public opinion.

[Mae Mailman]

When you put it to the American people and you're like, Harvard thinks that they have a First Amendment right to federal money, to taxpayer money, it's like, that's kind of crazy. But that actually is ultimately, when you boil it down, what the claim is to a layperson, I think that that sounds crazy to people. So I, I, it is actually a contract claim, right? They're saying that this money is owed. And I think the First Amendment vibes of the suit that they think that they're being attacked because they're like, you're not actually the most liberal university. You're not the M.O. like that's not actually true.

[Ilya Merritz]

I came away from our conversation feeling disoriented. Mailman was friendly and engaged and generous with her time, but she seemed to be operating on a timeline where everything moves lightning fast. No patience for process, no time to think about the effect all this is having on America's edge. In Science. I asked her about the provision in the Trump Compact that would require schools to monitor ideological diversity of faculty, students, and staff. This is an element of the Trump Compact that really concerned Princeton's president, Christopher Eisgruber. She basically said, this is not a big deal. A few schools have already recognized the problem and are working on it.

[Mae Mailman]

This is not a new topic. And they have ideas of things that maybe wouldn't be mandates of who to hire or mandates of what to teach, but they have seen the policies that have resulted in the degradation of intellectual diversity, and they have ideas. So whether it's rules, rules like citation justice, where you have to cite a certain percentage of minority authors in order for your paper to be present, those are the sorts of things that hamper intellectual diversity because they say that, like, actually what matters is your aesthetic and not your idea. Like how. What are the rules that are currently in academia or on campus?

[Ilya Merritz]

Are there schools that do that?

[Mae Mailman]

So this is. So I am not a professor. You would have to actually ask a professor.

[Ilya Merritz]

Okay.

[Mae Mailman]

This is something that I've heard from schools.

[Ilya Merritz]

Okay. I found a handful of articles about citation justice. It is not clear that it's widely practiced anywhere. If you listened to the first season of the Harvard Plan, you know that I got started looking at how universities became so politically hot after Claudine Gay, Harvard's first black president, was ousted. It was a combustible mix of controversies that took her down. Gaza, race speech and questions about her own academic integrity. Gay has been pretty much silent since then. So I was very curious when I learned that she gave a talk just this past September.

[Mae Mailman]

The boundaries of permissible inquiry gradually contract as universities internalize donor sensitivities and limit themselves to lines of inquiry that won't strain important relationships.

[Ilya Merritz]

It was at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Gay took.

[Mae Mailman]

Questions when it comes to the independence of academia and how to deal with the Trump administration. So when the administration came with demands just after its beginning, what is Harvard doing?

[Ilya Merritz]

The questioner wanted to know. It's fighting the government in court. Yes. But also negotiating with it and also making changes on campus, like renaming the DEI office.

[Hilary Burns]

So.

[Mae Mailman]

You know, the posture of the institution seems to be one of compliance, and this is distressing.

[Ilya Merritz]

Without saying what she'd do differently, Gay said she's seeing the effects of the pressure campaign on campus.

[Mae Mailman]

There is a mix of zero tolerance and policy ambiguity that leaves faculty and students really unsure about what we can say, do and teach. So that's hard. Another hard question, maybe you might wonder if in the recent past whether the academia have navigated themselves well in very thorny discussions, think of claims that speaking of women might offend transgender and queer students. I was thinking, didn't that play right into the hands of Hartright?

[Becky Milligan]

No.

[Mae Mailman]

Academia is not to blame. The agenda Agenda here is about destroying knowledge institutions because they are centers of independent thought and information. That's what's going on here. That is the story. Nothing justifies that. Nothing explains that other than authoritarians don't like independent centers of thought and information.

[Ilya Merritz]

This is a pretty commonly held view at universities. But even some defenders of the academy will concede that maybe colleges brought this on themselves. They became, in the words of their detractors, too woke, too intolerant of conservative ideas. There were too many statements and trigger warnings, not enough robust exchange of ideas. Mae Mailman told me that's exactly why the Trump administration is promoting viewpoint diversity as a condition of the Trump Compact. And she said colleges should not be worried about it.

[Mae Mailman]

What type of authoritarian regime would be like I want want more debate. I want views explored, debated and challenged. Like fundamentally, what is being sought here is freedom and the lack of an orthodoxy rather than an implementation of 1.

[Ilya Merritz]

Freedom, lack of orthodoxy. Those are nice words. It is not quite how things went for Claudine Gay during her short stint as president of Harvard. It's interesting to listen to her today because the woman who sounded stiff and clinical when she was called before Congress in 2023 now sounds liberated.

[Mae Mailman]

Let me just say one more thing. I'll have to say here is it's.

[Ilya Merritz]

Like after watching Harvard come under attack by the Trump administration this year, she can now make sense of the firestorm that forced her to resign almost two years ago.

[Mae Mailman]

I would encourage us all to take note of the through line of misdirection that has been a central feature of this political moment, getting us to argue about supposed excesses of academic jargon and excesses of the progressive left. It's all about getting us to focus on that and not pay attention to the power grab that is underway. None of that matters. The truth here is that our government, the American government, is attacking higher ed and the university.

[Ilya Merritz]

I want to share one update since our last episode, we reported that no actions had been taken against National Institutes of Health staffers who signed a declaration spelling out their disagreements with how the science grants process has changed under President Trump and Director J. Bhattacharya, who says he supports free speech and dissent. This week, one of the signers of that declaration, Jenna Norton, was placed on Non disciplinary administrative leave from the NIH with full pay and benefits. She released this TikTok.

[Mae Mailman]

I was not given a reason for being put on leave, but I strongly suspect it is because I have been speaking up in my personal capacity.

[Ilya Merritz]

We reached out to the nih, an anonymous official there told us over email, quote. Instead of focusing on her actual job to promote gold standard science, radical leftist Jenna Norton chooses to constantly criticize this administration even when she is supposed to be working. Vannevar Bush imagined an equal partnership between the government and independent research universities. To produce great science, it had to be equal. This year the research universities upennial, Columbia, Brown and just this month Cornell have agreed to settlements with the government under great duress to preserve the science. They gave up some of that equality.

[Hilary Burns]

Right after the war. I said that I didn't believe that Russia would produce much in the way of science or technology.

[Ilya Merritz]

For Vannevar Bush, the connection between freedom of thought and quality of science was clear.

[Hilary Burns]

And the reason was that their laboratory were all commissar ridden. They were politically controlled.

[Ilya Merritz]

Then there was a thaw. Soviet scientists were allowed to direct their own inquiries.

[Hilary Burns]

They gave them their freedom. They gave them their entire opportunity to make their own programs. And the result was a great burst of scientific achievement and technological engineering achievement. It's the exuberance of newfound freedom. Perhaps.

[Ilya Merritz]

Right now that kind of exuberance is in short supply in America's research labs. But humans are a naturally curious and inconvenient species. Nothing is preordained. The Harvard Plan Season 2 is recorded and written by me, Ilya Merritz. The series is produced by OnTheMedia's Molly Rosen. It's edited by Kristen Nelson, head of audio for the Boston Globe and Katya Rogers. On the Media's executive producer. Mixing and original music by Jared Paul. Tom Colligan is the fact checker. Thanks to the Boston Globes editor Nancy Barnes and to Ryan Huttle for episode art. And thanks to Jasmine Aguilera, Valentina Powers, Allison McAdam, Julia Barton, the Reinhorn Family, Andrea Pitino and Will Moose, Kay Lazar, Tal Kapan, Eric Boodman and Mike Damiano. Thank you so much for listening to the Harvard Plan. Brooke and Michael will be back next week. This is on the media.

[WNYC Announcer]

Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. Since then, New York Public Radio's rigorous journalism has gone on to win a Peabody Award and a Dupont Columbia Award among others. In addition to this award winning reporting, Your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship wnyc. Org.