Alma Mater, by Daniel Chester French (1903) – Public Domain
That great slumbering beast, the Columbia University alumni, has finally awakened. Over 4,000 graduates from all the many schools of the institution, including Law and Medicine, the Teachers College, General Studies and Business have signed a petition that calls on the university to defend academic freedom in the wake of the recent attacks by the Trump administration and the abrupt cancellation of grants for research on cancer treatments, Alzheimer’s disease and more.
The petition reads “The Trump administration has already initiated similar attacks against other universities as part of a larger strategy to quell dissent and undermine core freedoms foundational to democracy.” It adds, “As Columbia alumni we cannot tolerate the thought that our alma mater is the first domino to fall. In the strongest terms, we urge the Columbia board of trustees, the University’s new acting president, and all university leaders to resist capitulation to demands that would erode the University’s academic freedom and independence.”
The petition touts the history of the institution that changed its name from King’s College to Columbia College and notes that Alexander Hamilton and John Jay wrote the character for the new university. It boasts that “Over more than two centuries, Columbia has contributed four U.S. presidents, 87 Nobel laureates and countless leaders in the sciences, government, the law, literature, business and the arts.” The story is more complicated than that.
Over the course of more than two centuries the University has stood on the side of big business, segregation, racism, war, jingoism and the patriarchy. One doesn’t expect that story to be told in a petition denouncing the Trump Administration and demanding academic freedom. A graduate of Columbia College, I’m number 4,069 on the list of signatures. More alumni are sure to add their names.
When 5,000 individuals sign, the organizers, the Columbia Alumni for Academic Freedom, plan to deliver the petition to the acting president of Columbia University, Claire Shipman, a veteran of American TV news organizations, including AMC’s Good Morning America. C. Wright Mills, the author of The Power Elite and a long time professor of sociology at Columbia College might wonder which side she’ll be on when push comes to shove. On April 22, 2025 Shipman and 200 other university presidents signed a public statement calling on the Trump administration to stop “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” Is it too much to ask that they also denounce the assault on democracy?
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jonah Raskin.