College President Sian Leah Beilock is the only Ivy League president to abstain from signing an April 22 letter condemning the Trump administration’s revocations of federal funding from universities.
Six of the eight Ivy League universities have had funding revoked, with the exclusion of Dartmouth and Yale University. The letter, from the American Association of Colleges and Universities, has been co-signed by 320 public and private university presidents.
“President Beilock does not believe that signing open form letters like this one is an effective way to defend Dartmouth’s mission and values,” College spokesperson Kathryn Kennedy wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth.
“She would prefer to focus on the work we are doing and the actions we are taking. For instance, Dartmouth is involved in the lawsuits that have paused the NIH and Department of Energy caps on indirect costs for research, brought through our affiliations with Association of American Universities and the Association of American Medical Colleges,” Kennedy continued.
Last month, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University in retaliation to its response to pro-Palestinian protests and $1 billion in funds to Cornell University for alleged civil rights violations, according to the Associated Press.
While Columbia agreed to implement the Trump administration’s demanded policy changes, including banning face masks for the purpose of concealing identities and putting the Middle Eastern studies department under supervision, Harvard University refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demands last week. The administration froze over $2 billion in grants and contracts to Harvard hours later, which was met in turn with a lawsuit from Harvard.
“As leaders of America’s colleges, universities and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,” the April 22 letter wrote.
History professor Bethany Moreton said that it is “embarrassing” that Dartmouth is the sole Ivy League university to not engage.
“You have to willfully blind yourself to the playbook in order to think that this is something other than a very recognizable, ideologically-based assault on the very notion of truth,” she said.
Emphasizing that she does not speak for all faculty members, Moreton said that the College is the “lone holdout” that believes “it does not have a broader responsibility.”
The Trump administration’s actions are “a declared effort to destroy education and intellectual life and democratic access to intellectual life more generally,” she said. “Dartmouth is alone in failing to have our institutional representatives acknowledge that.”
Kennedy referred The Dartmouth to a message Beilock wrote to campus on April 7.
“Dartmouth is a fiercely independent educational institution, not a political one, and disagreement is a feature of our system, not a bug,” Beilock wrote in the letter to campus weeks ago.
While Beilock has not publicly signed on to any letters in response to the Trump administration, former College President Phil Hanlon co-signed an April 15 letter in Fortune Magazine from more than 80 current and former university presidents in support of Harvard’s defiance of the Trump administration. This letter was separate from the one Beilock declined to sign.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Hanlon declined to comment on the approach of Dartmouth’s current administration. However, he stressed the importance of defending the relationship between the federal government and higher education.
“This is a moment when I think all of those who care about higher education and what its partnership with the federal government has brought to the U.S. should be speaking out,” Hanlon told The Dartmouth.
Hanlon has also spoken to media outlets about the Trump administration’s actions and co-authored an April 19 op-ed in Time Magazine that expressed further support for Harvard and characterized the Trump administration’s actions as an “authoritarian creep.”
In an interview with The Dartmouth, he harkened back to the partnership between the federal government and universities established at the end of World War II.
“The outcome has been phenomenal,” Hanlon said. “Research discoveries and education that has been the foundation for U.S. economic dominance and a flourishing society in this country.”
Kelsey Wang is a reporter and editor for The Dartmouth from the greater Seattle area, majoring in history and government. Outside of The D, she likes to crochet, do jigsaw puzzles and paint.
Charlotte Hampton is the editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth. She hails from New York, N.Y., and is studying government and philosophy at the College.
She can be reached at editor@thedartmouth.com or on Signal at 9176831832.
