Described by historian Frederick Rudolph as “the first American university,” Cornell pioneered a transformative vision of higher education in the United States. It was the first in many respects: the first coeducational university, the first nonsectarian institution and among the earliest land-grant colleges. Cornell helped “free” different subjects from their previously strict constraints, allowing them — and their students and faculty — to become more specialized. This was a wonderful development in education in many ways, but it came at a price: “Cornell University forced utility into the minds of American Educators,” which some might consider the greatest advancement in higher education, or a great misstep.
Although the research university is not the only model of higher education in America, it currently has the most power and influence in American academia and beyond. This is due, in large part, to the volume and significance of the research that it produces, particularly in the realms of STEM. That research is often groundbreaking and socially valuable. But the model built around it has significant flaws.
Research universities have become machines for producing grant-funded knowledge and advanced degrees, sidelining the undergraduate experience in the process. Faculty are evaluated on publications not pedagogy. Graduate students are trained to conduct research not teach. The result is a mismatch: graduate students who want to teach but must publish, and researchers who are obligated to teach but unprepared (or worse yet uninclined) to teach, with undergraduates caught in between, receiving a fragmented and inconsistent education.
President Donald Trump’s interference with the federal grants for American research universities (including Cornell) has exposed some of the greatest weaknesses of the American research university model. Research must be paid for by someone, and that someone will only pay for research that they deem valuable. The government pays for things like medical, agricultural and military-related research because that is what it has [historically] deemed necessary for the survival of our country. This is all well and good, until there comes an administration which decides that many of those research expenditures don’t contribute to his envisioned future for the country, for example, pure capital gains for the uber-wealthy.
And so, President Trump has effectively demonstrated that the government and the projects, agencies and initiatives it funds, which, while not necessarily fickle, is subject to constant upheaval and change with every new administration that passes through the white house. This dependence of the research university on federal funding has led to a halting of that very utilitarian research, in particular medical and public health research, previously deemed absolutely necessary (and which still is) to the literal health of American and global society.
In a strange way, President Trump’s budget cuts could be a gift. Maybe universities can find a way to divorce themselves from the government and pursue whatever research will contribute to the advancement of knowledge. Until now, federally funded research universities have acted as an extension of the government. The American university’s role in advancing the U.S. industrial military complex, for instance, is evidenced by projects like the infamous Manhattan Project, CIA-related research performed in the Human Ecology school as well as ongoing Department of Defense projects. Now, President Trump has effectively severed those relationships with DOD stop-work orders. As I stated in an article on President Trump’s funding cuts for research universities, to uphold the integrity of the university means to keep it separate from the political whims of whatever administration is currently in office.
However, now that Cornell and other universities might choose to settle with the President Trump administration, the hope of independence President Trump’s obstinate will has been squashed. Yes, funding for crucial ongoing research will be momentarily restored, but at what greater cost? By agreeing to President Trump’s terms, Cornell would accept the premise of his authority and grant some legitimacy to the administration’s action. Much of what his administration does would likely collapse under any real legal scrutiny. It is arbitrary, inconsistent and arguably illegal. However, if Cornell submits, then the fiction might materialize into fact.
What happens next? The greatest problem is that we do not, and cannot know, because the rules of the game keep changing, the goalposts keep moving. Maybe after the settlement, the President will find Cornell out of compliance with some other fine print term, and the school will be shaken down again. This is what happens when we choose to follow President Trump’s rules and not the rule of the law. What I can be almost certain of in the future is further censorship and pressure from the administration; in other words, executive control over the university.
If that’s the trajectory, what is left of the American university? What remains of its purpose and of the people who work within it? What trust can the public place in its research, its teaching, its role in society? Somewhere along the way to the present day university, there was a misstep to allow for this disaster of finance and dependance. Maybe the real crisis isn’t that President Trump withdrew funding. Maybe it’s that our academic and scientific institutions — like Cornell — didn’t band together and pull away themselves.
Sophie Gross '27 is an opinion columnist and a Comparative Literature student in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her fortnightly column Observing aims to analyze popular and academic culture at Cornell in an attempt to understand current social and political trends sweeping the country. She can be reached at sgross@cornellsun.com
