Trump signs order on college free speech
Action a response to concerns that campuses have become too liberal
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at ensuring colleges uphold free speech by threatening to withhold billions in research funding. It’s not entirely clear how the order will work.
Trump issued the order in response to concerns from conservatives, including those in his voting base, that college campuses have become too liberal. Colleges and their faculty have been leery of conservative speakers and have unfairly labeled some of their ideas as bigoted, conservatives say. Protests surrounding conservative speakers on campus have sometimes turned violent.
“My administration seeks to promote free and open debate on college and university campuses,” the executive order reads. “Free inquiry is an essential feature of our nation’s democracy.”
At the signing, Trump said the executive order was just the first in a “series of steps” the administration would take to defend the free speech of students. He didn’t say what those future steps would be.
He was joined on stage by college students, who he said “stood up to the forces of political indoctrination,” because they loved their country.
“Now you have a president that is fighting for you,” he said. “I am with you all the way. “Universities that want taxpayer dollars should promote free speech, not silence free speech.”
The president’s remarks didn’t offer more clarity about how the program would work, but he did threaten to pull “billions and billions” of federal research funding from universities if they didn’t comply with the concept of free speech.
“All of that money is now at stake,” he said. “That’s a lot of money.”
The order doesn’t make clear, and neither did Trump’s comments, what criteria would bar a university from getting federal money – and how many colleges risk violating those criteria.
The executive order would direct 12 federal agencies that give money to colleges via grants to build in conditions that direct universities to uphold free speech on their campuses. Those agencies include the Departments of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation.
The order doesn’t make clear how it differs from the protections already demanded of public universities by the First Amendment.
A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the order Thursday morning did not offer more details about how the order would work. Rather, the official said the Office of Management and Budget would work with the agencies to figure how the program will work over the next few weeks and months.