Quote of the Day (Lee Bollinger, on How Authoritarian Threats to Higher Education Developed)

“You would have to go back to the McCarthy period in the 1950s to see something comparable to what’s happening today. For many decades we lived free from government efforts to seize control of universities and suppress criticism and independent thought. And in this time, we forged individualistic identities. We want our students and our faculty to think of themselves as loyal to our particular institution, and at the same time, we’re competing for students and faculty against other schools. So we’ve set up a system in which institutions have individual identities and compete with one another, and this makes us more vulnerable to authoritarian efforts to undermine us.”—Former Columbia University President Lee Bollinger interviewed by Paul Hond, “Defending the Fifth Branch: A Response to Authoritarian Attacks on Universities,” Columbia Magazine, Spring/Summer 2026

With the academic year in full swing now, new threats are sure to develop against America's colleges and universities, even beyond the wide-ranging war aged by the Trump Administration outlined in Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder's US News article from earlier this month. 

In the face of all of this, Bollinger advocates “the equivalent of a NATO charter, with an Article 5 for universities in the US: If any institution among us is attacked, all of us will come to its defense.”

That may be not just the best way, but the only way to proceed now. Following President Trump’s ban on CNN, Politico and MS NOW, the White House TV pool, which includes CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox, responded by not covering him last night. (Predictably, the President counterattacked with—what else?—“Trump TV.”)

If the pool’s strategy works, other American institutions—like higher education and prominent law firms—should follow with a similar resort to collective action.

(The image of Lee Bollinger that accompanies this post was taken on Oct. 11, 2007, by Daniella Zalcman.)