ASMA KHALID, HOST:
Last week, Princeton joined the growing list of Ivy League schools facing cuts to federal funding under the Trump administration. The move comes after the White House pulled funding from Harvard and Columbia after it determined the schools failed to combat antisemitism. The Trump administration also suspended funds to the University of Pennsylvania after it allowed a transgender athlete on the women's swim team. For more, we called up the president of Princeton University, Christopher Eisgruber.
CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER: Well, pleasure to be here.
KHALID: So you have called the Trump administration's funding freeze - funds to Columbia, the first now, I should point out, of several universities that have been targeted and the first, we should point out also, to have made some concessions - but you have called those threats to federal funds the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare. That sounds awfully ominous. Why so?
EISGRUBER: Yeah. So Asma, I think there are two aspects of the threats that universities are facing right now that lead me to the conclusion that you just described. One is that this compact between the government and universities where the government has, ever since World War II, asked universities to perform research on behalf of the American people that the government funds - it's been really important to America's preeminence in science and engineering. It has made the country stronger, and it has made our universities the best in the world. But even more fundamental than that, especially with regard to what happened at Columbia, is a threat to academic freedom.
And I say that about Columbia in particular because what happened there was that the government threatened to withdraw funding from things like medical science and biomedical research unless Columbia changed what it was doing with regard to things like admissions or utterly unrelated departments that studied, for example, the Middle East. That's a threat to academic freedom. And if the government starts using the clout it gets from the funding it provides to sciences and engineering to invade that academic freedom, it will compromise things that are fundamental to the excellence of American universities and that are really integral to the pursuit of knowledge and the strength of our society.
KHALID: So you first spoke up about what was going on at Columbia before Princeton had real dollars on the line. And now we have seen Columbia's concessions. You mentioned the Middle East Studies Department. It is now - that Columbia has agreed to be putting that under an administration overseer. Does it make it more difficult for you now to navigate - to stand and say, no, we're not going to make concessions - because we are looking at other universities willing to make some concessions?
EISGRUBER: We make our decisions at Princeton based on our values and our principles. You know, I don't want to pass judgment on what other universities do. These are extraordinarily difficult circumstances. But we're going to stand strong for our values at Princeton, and I think we have a community that is united behind those values.
KHALID: So you're not willing, at this point, to make any concessions?
EISGRUBER: We believe it's important to defend academic freedom, and that's not something that can be compromised.
KHALID: What impact will these potential cuts have to the research that goes on at the university? What, for example, were you all doing with these federal funds?
EISGRUBER: So a lot of these federal funds that were affected have to do with things that are actually priorities not only for Princeton University, but for the American government and indeed for this administration. So some of these grants have to do with things like machine learning. They have to do with quantum science. They have to do with fusion. And those are all identified priorities of the U.S. government and of the current administration in Washington. With regard to Princeton and with regard to other universities, as I said earlier, the reason that we have been able to be leaders on research that benefits the American people and makes this country stronger, more secure and healthier is because of this extraordinary partnership that the United States have developed over time between its government and its universities. If that partnership gets interrupted, if we can't pursue these particular grants on these subjects, it's going to diminish the kind of research that we can do that makes a difference in terms of these priorities that universities and the government have identified as urgent.
It also, Asma, creates a lot of uncertainty that is itself a problem. So if you think about young people, whether they're undergraduates or graduate students, thinking of pursuing careers in these research areas that are fundamental, they're making decisions that depend upon knowing that the support is going to be there that enables them to do that work, to get the graduate stipends that they need and to pursue research careers that depend upon the availability of this kind of funding. So one of the things that I'm especially worried about is a disruption of that talent pipeline that has been so important to the United States' leadership in the world.
KHALID: Have you gotten any clarity from the Trump administration about what they would like for Princeton to do? Do they want to have you change anything specifically?
EISGRUBER: At this point, we haven't gotten any instructions to change anything, all right? So - and again, when I talked about what happened at Columbia, one of the reasons that it made it such a fundamental threat to academic freedom was that the government effectively said, in order to get these funds back, you have to do these other things, which were inconsistent with the respect for academic freedom. We have not received any communication from the government that explains why these grants were suspended or any requests to do anything in response to the suspensions.
KHALID: Mr. Eisgruber, I think a lot of folks would presume that Ivy League universities have large endowments that they could tap into more readily than, say, public universities. Can you weather these cuts, and why not tap into these endowments?
EISGRUBER: So first of all, I appreciate the question because I think it's really important for folks to understand how it is that endowments work. Princeton and other universities that have endowments spend them at over 5% a year. So we have to spend 5% a year from an endowment, whether the markets are good or whether they're they are bad. And we do that in order to help pay for substantial portions of the costs of research in addition to what the government sponsors. We do that in order to pay our faculty. We do that in order to make our education affordable to students. At Princeton, for example, we have 71% of our students on financial aid, and our students graduate, most of them, with zero debt and the rest of them with the lowest debt in the nation. That's because we're tapping into our endowment all the time.
The endowment can help us to respond to, say, very short-term suspensions in research funding. But if you get to longer-term deprivation of grants at Princeton or elsewhere, what it's going to mean is that there are going to have to be choices to stop doing things that we're doing now, such as either research that is fundamental to addressing critical problems not only in the sciences and engineering, but across the fields at the university, or measures that we're taking in order to make sure that the university is affordable and accessible to students from all backgrounds.
KHALID: What might it mean for you all at Princeton to potentially stand alone? - because we don't hear a widespread chorus from other universities in this moment echoing the message that you are delivering, or at least publicly we are not hearing it.
EISGRUBER: Well, so let me say, first of all, you know, we are starting to see some statements from other universities. The board of the Association of American Universities, which I chair, put out a statement earlier this week reaffirming its support for academic freedom and noting the threats that result from the withdrawal of government funding to universities. I think other university presidents, I hope, will be speaking out in the future. But Asma, I - you know, I make the decisions for one university, and what I can say is that whether or not we have to stand alone in terms of when we're speaking out, it's essential that I speak out on behalf of this and that we stand up for these principles. I think those principles, I should say, though, they are widely shared at other universities. I think there is growing recognition of the need to stand firmly for them, and I expect there will be other presidents and other universities that are doing so alongside us.
KHALID: Christopher Eisgruber is the president of Princeton University. Thank you for taking the time.
EISGRUBER: Thank you, Asma. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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