Dartmouth professors and students say that President Donald Trump’s attack on higher education has impacted their work — despite the fact that Dartmouth has not been targeted by direct budget cuts.
Since April 22, more than 440 colleges, universities and scholarly institutions have signed an open letter through the American Association of Colleges and Universities in opposition to “ the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” In an email to campus on April 23, President Sian Leah Beilock defended her decision to not sign onto the open letter, arguing that open letters are “rarely effective tools to make change.”
Seven universities have faced lists of demands accompanied by threats and pauses to their federal budgets since March — including six Ivy League institutions. Columbia accepted a list of demands from the Trump administration in March with the aim of restoring $400 million in research grants.
Research is being impacted, according to Asian studies and history professor Edward Miller. Miller said a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that he received in 2022 had been cancelled as a result of the Trump administration “targeting” the agency.
“There’s this very broad-based assault on academic freedom in higher education that the Trump administration is orchestrating right now,” Miller said. “I think it already is affecting Dartmouth, even though Dartmouth hasn’t been targeted in the way that Columbia and Harvard and other Ivy League schools have been.”
Psychological and brain sciences professor Brad Duchaine said that his department “has not been affected at all,” but he “does not know” what will happen in the future.
The cuts “will certainly reduce scientific advances,” Duchaine said. “I think the broader goal is to kneecap the universities, because they’re seen as sort of a power center that is not aligning themselves with the Trump administration.”
Nardos Mengesha ’28 said she has had friends who lost internships due to federal funding cuts. Mengesha, who will be a part of the First-Year Fellows program this summer through the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, said the Fellows were told that a partnership between the College and the Department of Education — which historically provided an internship to First-Year Fellows — doesn’t exist in the way that it used to.
The cuts are “really concerning,” Mengesha said. “It sets a really bad precedent in terms of the government being able to use these public funds as threatening tactics to infringe on the free speech abilities of the university, which is really concerning for students, especially.”
The lists of demands several of the impacted universities received from the Trump administration cited concerns about antisemitism related to last year’s pro-Palestinian protests on campuses. The demands sent to Harvard University include a ban on face-masks, revisions on policy related to campus protests and oversight on academic departments which the Trump administration says “fuel antisemitic harassment,” according to the Associated Press.
Government professor Bernard Avishai said the College is “dodging” the antisemitism “bullet” by “promoting dialogue” between the Jewish Studies and Middle Eastern Studies departments and the decision to “immediately shut down the encampment” last spring. Avishai, who taught a course on the politics of Israel and Palestine with Middle Eastern studies professor Ezzedine Fishere for the past three years, highlighted the “cooperation” between the two departments.
However, Avishai said he believes that the antisemitism allegations are “just the beginning” of the “attacks” against higher education.
“It’s very important to see the threat against Harvard as a threat against Dartmouth,” Avishai said. “We should not say that we’re okay because we’ve had so much more dialogue.”
Andrew Serrano ’27 said a lot of students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests are “shocked” that “their actions are now being viewed as antisemitic.” Serrano added that he thinks the “tactic of framing [budget cuts]” around student protests aims to “further divide” the population.
Avishai said he believes the Trump administration is “using the myth of Ivy League antisemitism to go after Ivy League freedom.” He added that this reasoning “perpetrate[s] misinformation” about “historic and political issues.”
“We haven’t legislated the end of human nature, it goes with the friction,” Avishai said. “Once you have these kinds of frictions, you have oversimplifications and bigotry and rhetorical excess,
and that’s why you need a university to help people graduate from these ideas, to have a sense of history, a sense of tragedy.”
Serrano described the sanctions to peer institutions as “scary,” noting that students feel that they need to “restrict themselves” when it comes to “free speech” and “expression.”
The College declined to comment on the budget freezes and demands on other Ivy League institutions.
Ryantony Exuma ’26 said that it is “disappointing” that the College is not “standing up” for “things that need to be defended.”
“It relates to Dartmouth’s goal and Dartmouth’s motto, ‘Vox clamantis in deserto,’” Exuma said. “The voice crying out in the desert is supposed to be the voice — even if it’s standing alone — who is critical, who is thinking critically, who’s asking the tough questions and standing up for the things that need to truly be defended. I feel as though Dartmouth is not living up to that at all right now.”
Mengesha said that she was “not surprised” by the College’s decision not to sign onto the AACU letter, citing the institutional restraint policy released in January. However, she added that she found this decision “concerning” because of the “ethos” and “the point of a liberal arts college” is “intellectual diversity” and “free speech.”
Avishai said that despite the College’s decision “not to take a stance on things that are arguable in the public realm,” he believes the administration has “an inherent obligation” to comment on “the destruction of free speech” and “the undermining of the mission of the university.”
“Universities are not these neutral institutions that were rained down from heaven, and we don’t know how we got here,” Avishai said. “This is a university. It is the custodian of liberal freedom. The modern university is a place for the distillation of what the American Constitution claims for itself and is fragile, just like American democracy is, and has to defend the terms by which the university justifies itself.”
Update Appended (April 29, 10:58 a.m.): This article was updated to reflect the fact that Edward Miller received a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities in 2022.