Universities Should Resist, Set Own Restrictions

President Eisgruber, we appreciate your important message standing firm for academic and intellectual freedom of faculty and students in the face of autocracy.
Stable programs of government partnerships and grants are important. However, they come with drawbacks: It is often the government which decides or influences the focus of the research; and there is, as we have seen, the real potential of government blackmail.

Now, particularly since the government is trying to change university policies and behavior, universities should not only resist blackmail but should consider countering with more of their own restrictions as to specific types of research they will or will not undertake with government funding.

In the meantime, we stand firmly behind your courageous response to a regime of petty tyrants.