With the subject line “Navigating financial headwinds,” President Rebecca Cunningham sent a lengthy letter to all faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota on June 3. It refers to “unprecedented challenges,” but the letter is notably almost entirely about money.

Deep in the text I found this: “For nearly a thousand years, universities have brought together scholars and teachers to challenge assumptions, exchange ideas and share knowledge with the world.” 

But elsewhere, there is scant reference to that proud tradition, which is not based on how many research grants those institutions garnered, but mainly on their record of upholding free inquiry and communication between scholars, students and the public in many lands. 

While part of Cunningham’s job is certainly to look after the budget, it is very distressing, to say the least, that she has been missing in action, apparently by design, in defending that

part of our institution’s welfare. 

There are several indications that that is not an oversight, but a strategy.

A particular and outstanding example is her decision not to sign a letter signed by hundreds of college presidents from institutions including most of the Ivy League and Big Ten and about a dozen in Minnesota. The letter to President Donald Trump protests the infringements on academic freedom that his administration is trying to impose on higher education throughout the country. The faculty Senate here at the University has repeatedly voted overwhelmingly in favor of policies in strong support of academic freedom during ongoing debates about the details over the last year. The Senate continues to be in conflict with the more restrictive current Board of Regents policy.   

Defenders of Cunningham’s choices in this regard may characterize them as “cautious” and “prudent.” How you respond to that may depend in part on how seriously you take the Trump administration’s attacks. 

But many academic historians, among others, see the present federal administration following a path previously trod by fascist movements in which silencing dissent in universities was an early step in establishing authoritarian rule. Trying to appease groups with that authoritarian mindset tends to be taken as a sign of weakness and exacerbates the problem. 

This is not everyday politics as the United States has been fortunate to enjoy for more than a century, and it calls for courageous, as well as prudent, leadership, as the hundreds of signers of the letter to Trump seem to have understood. 

The faculty and staff at the University need leadership that defends the spirit, as well as the wherewithal of the enterprise, and Cunningham needs to do a lot better with the former.

Professor James Woods Halley has been teaching in the physics department since 1968. This Op-Ed contains personal opinions and does not necessarily represent those of the physics department or the University as a whole.