Former president Barack Obama called on universities and law firms to
stand up to intimidation from President Donald Trump’s administration
and urged Americans to prepare to “possibly sacrifice” in support of democratic values.
In a speech Thursday night at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York,
Obama also accused Trump’s government of working to destroy the
international order created after World War II.
Obama painted a picture of a postwar political environment in which disagreements happened within a shared respect for certain rules and
norms, such as free speech and an independent judiciary, which he said
was now eroding. “It is up to all of us to fix this,” he said, including “the citizen, the ordinary person who says, no, that’s not right.”
The former president said that he disagreed with some of Trump’s
economic policies such as widespread new tariffs, but that he is “more
deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities
if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech.”
Obama called for universities to be prepared to lose government funding
to defend academic freedom and other core values, or dip into their
endowments — though endowments are sometimes funded with restrictions
from donors on how that money can be spent.
The Trump administration last month stripped $400 million in federal
grants and funding from Columbia University. The administration said it
may reinstitute the money after Columbia made policy changes related to
last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests, such as bringing in new
security officers with arrest powers, banning protests in academic
buildings and reviewing educational programs that focus on the Middle East.
The Trump administration has also deported or is attempting to deport
some students and scholars who participated in pro-Palestinian advocacy
who do not hold U.S. citizenship. The Education Department has demanded
that some schools hand over names and nationalities of students
suspected of antisemitism, a highly unusual step in civil rights investigations.
Obama did not specifically mention the campus protests or conflicts in
the Middle East in his remarks, but said, “It has been easy during most
of our lifetimes to say you are a progressive or say you are for social
justice or say you’re for free speech and not have to pay a price for it.”
“Now we’re at one of those moments where, you know what? It’s not enough just to say you’re for something; you may actually have to do
something,” he added.
Obama said that there would have been an outcry from Republicans if he
had sought to punish law firms that disliked the Affordable Care Act.
Trump has used executive orders to financially target law firms
connected to attorneys involved in investigations and cases against him
or who have represented his political enemies such as Hillary Clinton. “It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me or a whole bunch of my
predecessors,” Obama said.
He concluded his remarks by advocating for values such as resilience and respect for others regardless of skin color, gender, sexual orientation
and religion. “I know that these days, the idea of inclusion has somehow
been deemed illegal, but you know what? I believe in it,” he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/05/obama-trump-universities-intimidation/
Always a joy to read what Obama thinks.
--
“We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him. We shouldn’t have listened to him, and we can’t let that happen ever again”.
-- Nikki Haley
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)