Letter calls on Carnegie Mellon to denounce higher-ed actions by Trump administration

A letter signed by more than 150 Carnegie Mellon University faculty, staff, alumni and students calls on the university to denounce what it calls the Trump administration’s “punitive withholding of federal funding and detainment and deportation of international scholars.”

The letter also asks Carnegie Mellon not to comply with federal government requests for information about students, faculty and staff unless required to by law. CMU President Farnam Jahanian said last week the university was one of six to receive a letter from the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party requesting information about its international students and ties with China-based research institutions.

The letter, directed to Jahanian and Provost James H. Garrett Jr., also wants assurances that Carnegie Mellon will protect the university community’s right to free speech and provide stopgap funding in cases where terminated or frozen federal grants could prevent students or staff from being paid as anticipated.

“The U.S. leads the world in innovation. This is due in no small part to our excellent and independent universities. These institutions cannot foster new technologies and generate new knowledge without freedom of thought and expression,” the letter says. “By threatening to withhold federal funds, the Trump administration hopes to silence universities and end academic freedom as we know it.”

The letter’s release comes as universities across the country have been dealing with increased pressure from the Trump administration to comply with aspects of his agenda. The administration has pulled hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to universities, at least temporarily, while threatening to review billions more.

Further, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the government has revoked at least 300 students’ visas in cases where he said they were suspected of “vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings (or) creating a ruckus,” Reuters reported.

An Associated Press analysis looked at federal funding for nearly 100 colleges currently under investigation for programs the administration has deemed as illegally pushing diversity, equity and inclusion or for not doing enough to combat antisemitism. Those schools took in over $33 billion in federal revenue in the 2022-23 academic year. That’s before taking into account federal student aid, which represents billions more in tuition and room-and-board payments.

For most of the schools, around 10% to 13% of their revenue came from federal contracts or research funding, according to the analysis. For some prestigious universities, federal money represented up to half of their revenue.

The federal government’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System shows that 15.1% of Carnegie Mellon’s revenue came from federal grants and contracts in the 2022-23 academic year. The database listed CMU’s total revenues and investment returns at nearly $1.8 billion for that year.

“This is about more than just the funding,” said Carrie McDonough, an assistant professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon who authored the letter to university administrators, referring to the detainment and deportation of international students and the chilling effect all of this has had on faculty, staff, current and prospective students, and university decision-makers who must decide how to navigate the shifting landscape.

As of mid-afternoon Tuesday, the letter had been signed by 54 named faculty, staff and alumni as well as 79 unidentified graduate students and 29 undergrads.

Cassia Crogan, Carnegie Mellon’s interim director of media relations, did not specifically address the letter but said, “We expect to hear from our CMU community on these important matters and will continue to evaluate input as we receive it.”

She referred TribLive to Jahanian’s recent statement to members of the Carnegie Mellon community, which addressed many of the issues facing CMU and universities across the country. TribLive reported on that statement last week.

“The potential harm to our national research and innovation enterprise is real,” Jahanian said in the statement.

Jahanian said the university was working with its peers to find ways to “amplify the impact of our research on societal well-being and our national security and to convey this value to our elected officials.”

The CMU president added that the university is not pausing Ph.D. admissions, as other universities have announced or said they are considering. He said CMU would not “compromise our values,” adding, “Even as the societal context evolves and legal changes require us to adapt, our commitment to fostering an inclusive and engaged community — one where freedom of speech and academic freedom are protected — remains unshakable.”

The Associated Press contributed.