Penn Faculty Criticize Trump’s Attacks on Higher Education
In a recent piece, Ezekiel Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives at Penn, criticized President Trump’s (1968 Wharton graduate) administration’s actions against higher education.
Penn professors David Asch and Jonathan Zimmerman, Penn Associate Vice Provost for Global Initiatives Amy Gadsden, and Dean Katharine Strunk of the Penn Graduate School of Education were among the nearly two dozen faculty members who co-signed the March 27 guest essay that was published in The New Republic. The essay was written in partnership with Princeton professor Julian Zelizer.
The piece said that Trump’s “myriad” attacks will “undercut their funding and trample their independence” and referred to the Trump administration’s efforts as “a war on all higher education.” Emanuel and Zelizer said that for higher education to continue to make “important, ongoing contributions to the economy, science, knowledge, and citizenship,” its institutions must “collaborate” with the government.
“America’s colleges and universities make America great. They drive innovation, prosperity, national security, and social mobility,” the article read.
The op-ed also called on university instructors to do a “better job” of expressing that higher education is a public good, as the public “often forgets” the benefits of college outside of raising individuals’ incomes, Strunk said in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
“If I could ask my colleagues in higher education across the country to do one thing, it would be to spend more time explaining why colleges and universities are important for our society, our democracy, and for the world,” Strunk wrote.
Emanuel and the other Penn faculty members co-signed the piece were contacted for comment.
The piece outlined a series of arguments asserting that Trump’s “war” on colleges and universities would affect “every sector of our economy in every state, every American regardless of their politics or whether they work for a university, and the very fabric of our society.”
According to Emanuel and Zelizer, there would be “vast” repercussions if higher education “falters” because researchers, investors, and businesses will relocate their capital and expertise. The two also contended that higher education is the “eighth-largest” export from the United States and that American colleges “attract” brilliant students from around the globe.
“Through operations, employee payroll, capital improvements, student, alumni, and visitor spending, the University of Pennsylvania contributes over $37 billion to the southeastern Pennsylvania economy, including $547 million in tax revenue to Philadelphia,” the article read.
The article also claimed that civic engagement and higher education are directly related, pointing out that college graduates are more likely than their non-college-educated peers to vote, be involved in volunteer and community organizations, and donate “three times more to charity.”
Emanuel and Zelizer claim that students can gain far more from a college education than financial success.
“College fosters a transition to adulthood. By exposing students to new ideas and information, colleges challenge them to deeply self-reflect on their identities and inherited values and expand their sense of the world and its possibilities. Sharing this process with their peers fosters lifelong friendships, essential to a healthy and fulfilling life,” they wrote.
The authors acknowledged that colleges and universities are “far from perfect. ” They stated that universities needed to “dismantle restrictions” on free speech and consider ways to “adapt education to twenty-first-century technologies.”
However, they insisted that the “denigration and destruction” of American colleges is not the path to success.
“It’s vital that the public does not lose sight of our important, ongoing contributions to the economy, science, knowledge, and citizenship. This is no time to sit silently as these cherished institutions, the envy of the world, are under dire threat,” Strunk wrote.
