LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: The Trump administration is threatening hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for schools like Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern, after accusations like this one from President Trump back when he was preparing to run for office again.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We spend more money on higher education than any other country, and yet, they're turning our students into communists and terrorists and sympathizers of many, many different dimensions.
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FADEL: The administration is investigating dozens of universities for programs that support minorities and for alleged failures to stop antisemitism on campuses. And it's trying to deport international students, almost all of whom were involved in pro-Palestinian protests or advocacy. Taken together, the question is, is the administration moving to protect Jewish students' right to study, or is it using the pretext of discrimination to bully the nation's top universities into compliance? Today, in our MORNING EDITION series The State Of The First Amendment: The Right From Which All Rights Flow, is academic freedom on university campuses fading?
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FADEL: So what does it feel like on college campuses these days for students and professors? Well, it kind of depends on what you believe and how you express that publicly.
MARTIN BERTAO: This is Martin (ph) here. I'm 19-years-old. Right now, I go to UC Berkeley.
MIGUEL MUNIZ: My name's Miguel (ph). I'm also at the University of California Berkeley.
FADEL: These two say Berkeley, known as a liberal campus, hasn't always felt that welcoming to Trump supporters like them. Martin Bertao (ph) and Miguel Muniz (ph) are the incoming and outgoing presidents of the College Republicans on campus. Here's Miguel.
MUNIZ: At times, it means you don't get representation from the school. It means that the school doesn't put out rhetoric defending you, your beliefs or your own safety. It means that it's going to be difficult to have friends sometimes.
FADEL: A UC Berkeley spokesperson says this just isn't true - that they defend all student perspectives. And Muniz and Bertao say things do feel different for them on campus and among their peers with President Trump back in office.
BERTAO: College Republican chapters in California and across the country are seeing, you know, really record growth right now.
MUNIZ: Certainly, a few of our students individually are more comfortable, I guess, publicly outing themselves.
FADEL: Now, they say it's not a sea change. People still curse at them, they say, or spit on them when they're handing out flyers on campus. They say what's protected their ability as a student organization to bring speakers and hold events at this public university is the First Amendment.
MUNIZ: The main thing that's allowed us to be free in our speech is the legal action that the university knows that we will take if we're not treated fairly.
FADEL: Even those who don't identify as conservatives have worried about being shunned for certain beliefs. Nicholas (ph), a West Virginia-based professor, describes himself as generally progressive. He's only going by his first name because he worries about blowback over his views. And Nicholas is a gun owner and...
NICHOLAS: Although I'm fully supportive of transgender rights, I do think that there's a difference that needs to be considered more carefully when it comes to sports, for example.
FADEL: He works on a progressive campus and runs in progressive circles. So for years, he'd kept these beliefs quiet.
NICHOLAS: Like, I didn't think I would be fired, but, you know, did I think I would lose friends or - yeah, or be diminished in some way in the eyes of colleagues? Yes. And I was concerned that there could be lost opportunities.
FADEL: He's not sure if it's because of the election, but recently he's felt freer to tell friends and colleagues what he really thinks. Nicholas says his fear, though, of being shunned over a belief or two he holds is different than...
NICHOLAS: Someone, for example, exercising free speech, their right to protest someone here legally, then being arrested. That's more of a very literal policing function, and we are very much in frightening territory.
FADEL: He's referring to all the visa revocations, detentions and planned deportations of international students on college campuses. There are also those threats to funding over accusations of alleged rampant antisemitism on campuses or that universities are running racially exclusionary programs - programs that support Black, Latino and Native American students.
Ibram X. Kendi is a historian of race and racism, an area of study that's been a particular focus of the administration's wrath.
IBRAM X KENDI: I don't imagine there being free speech, you know, currently, because free speech isn't just the ability to speak freely and share your opinions. It's also the confidence that you're not going to be targeted.
FADEL: The only way to protect free speech on campuses, he says, is unity among academics and university leaders.
KENDI: No matter what we study, we should all collectively be seeking to defend us all so that we can continue to produce scholarship based on our expertise.
FADEL: Is academic freedom under threat, or is it being corrected as the administration looks at it?
KENDI: If anything, this administration is trying to eliminate academic freedom. And frankly, the first order of business is convincing and threatening professors and administrators and students to essentially shackle themselves. To not speak out. To not research particular issues. To not use even words that they think this administration will have issue with. And I think that's what makes it incredibly chilling in this moment.
FADEL: I ask Kendi about the administration's allegations that diversity, equity and inclusion programs are used as a tool to divide, rather than unite Americans of different races - that opponents to DEI charge that these programs prioritize diversity over merit. And he says he sees this as a dangerous trope now coming from the government.
KENDI: It came from white supremacist thought. One of their most important talking points was this notion that diversity or anti-racism or equity work wasn't about bringing people together. It wasn't about creating a level playing field - that somehow it was about harming white people, even seeking to carry out a genocide of white people. And unfortunately, that white supremacist talking point went mainstream. And people largely don't know the origins of that talking point.
FADEL: How is academic freedom important and connected to freedom of speech?
KENDI: Academic freedom is the child of free speech. We need to freely study the problems of society to be able to come up with evidence-based solutions that can be presented to elected officials that can actually help humanity. And instead, we'll have elected officials creating solutions that satiate constituents and tell them this solution is going to help them when, in fact, it ultimately harms them.
FADEL: That was Ibram X. Kendi, an American author, professor and historian of race on the status of free speech on college campuses. You also heard from a West Virginia professor named Nicholas and two College Republicans at UC Berkeley, Miguel Muniz and Martin Bertao.
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