No Secret Settlement or Appeasement with Trump's DOJ: Yale Must Defend Academic Freedom, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

No Secret Settlement or Appeasement with Trump's DOJ: Yale Must Defend Academic Freedom

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 6, 2026

Bravo to the Yale College Council for speaking with moral clarity at a moment when it is so urgently needed. President Maurie McInnis and Yale University should not capitulate to the Trump administration through a closed-door settlement with the Department of Justice (Nyberg & Lynn-Skov, 2026). To do so would not merely be a legal or administrative decision. It would be an act of appeasement with national consequences.

Yale need only look to Harvard to understand what is at stake. Harvard’s situation shows that resistance and capitulation can coexist uneasily within the same institution: even as Harvard sued the Trump administration and won important legal victories, it also renamed its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging as federal officials demanded the dismantling of DEI programs (Giordano & Patel, 2025). 

That concession did not end the pressure. Soon after, Harvard College and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences replaced several diversity offices, a move The Harvard Crimson described as a “major concession” to a central demand of the Trump administration (Scharf & Patel, 2025). Reports also followed that Harvard and the Trump administration were nearing a settlement framework involving a $500 million payment to restore access to federal funding and end investigations (Binkley, 2025; also see Berbenes, 2025). 

Students, faculty, alumni, and public officials warned that such a settlement would not protect Harvard’s independence; it would teach the Trump administration that intimidation works. Yale must not repeat that mistake. A university cannot bargain away lawful holistic admissions, diversity commitments, faculty governance, student rights, or institutional autonomy and still claim to be defending academic freedom. If Harvard’s experience teaches us anything, it is that appeasement does not satisfy authoritarian power. It feeds it.

Harvard students, faculty, and alumni have repeatedly warned that so-called “settlements” with the Trump administration are not neutral acts of institutional pragmatism. They are forms of political surrender that invite more demands, not fewer. As Harvard student writers argued in The Harvard Crimson, a bad deal with the Trump administration would not protect students, faculty, or the university. It would hand the administration a political victory and encourage the same strategy against other institutions (Gerdén, Kaplan & Molden, 2025).

Their critique is devastating because it comes from those most vulnerable to institutional compromise: international students, students of color, Jewish students, pro-Palestine students, researchers dependent on federal funding, and students whose speech, safety, and belonging have been placed in the crosshairs of federal power. 

Harvard students have rightly understood that capitulation does not end the assault. It widens it. It teaches the federal government that threats work. It tells other universities that the path of least resistance is to trade away institutional autonomy, student rights, faculty governance, and academic freedom for temporary relief.

This is precisely what Yale must refuse. The Trump administration’s pressure campaign against elite universities has not been limited to one issue or one campus. At Harvard, federal demands reportedly reached into hiring, admissions, student discipline, protest restrictions, international student scrutiny, and oversight of academic programs. 

The Harvard Crimson’s reporting described demands that would have disempowered faculty leaders, punished student groups, imposed ideological screening, and subjected academic units to external review (Mao & Paulus, 2025). These are not ordinary compliance matters. They are efforts to make universities govern themselves according to the political preferences of the state.

Harvard students and faculty have also named the deeper danger: appeasement does not work. As Harvard professors Ryan Enos and Steven Levitsky (2025) argued, the reward for capitulation is more extortion. Universities that concede do not buy peace; they make themselves and others more vulnerable (Enos & Levitsky, 2025). 

That lesson should be etched into Yale’s decision-making. Any settlement that restricts lawful holistic admissions, compromises institutional independence, chills political speech, weakens faculty governance, or allows federal officials to dictate university policy would not protect Yale. It would implicate Yale in the broader dismantling of higher education as a democratic institution.

Nor can Yale claim neutrality by calling such a deal “prudent” or “strategic.” There are moments when caution becomes complicity. There are moments when institutional self-protection becomes betrayal. A university cannot teach students to pursue truth, defend democracy, and act with courage while its own leadership quietly bargains away the conditions that make those commitments possible.

Yale’s students understand this. So do many faculty and alumni. They know that the issue is not whether universities are above criticism or beyond reform. They are not. Universities must confront antisemitism, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Blackness, anti-Latinx exclusion, anti-Asian racism, attacks on Indigenous sovereignty, anti-immigrant hostility, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of discrimination with seriousness and integrity. But that work must be done through democratic, educational, legally sound, and community-accountable processes—not through coercive settlements designed to place university life under partisan control.

President McInnis should listen to the students. The Yale College Council’s statement reflects precisely what democratic education is supposed to cultivate: young people who can recognize authoritarian overreach, name the stakes, and call institutions back to their highest principles (Yale College Council, 2026). Yale should be proud of them. More importantly, Yale should heed their moral and ethical clarity as you can hear for yourself in this video and follow their lead.

Yale has the resources, stature, alumni base, faculty strength, legal capacity, and moral obligation to resist. If Yale bends, less-resourced institutions will be placed in an even more precarious position. If Yale concedes behind closed doors, the consequences will reverberate across public and private higher education alike.

But if Yale refuses to capitulate, it can help establish a different precedent: that universities are not instruments of the state, that students are not bargaining chips, that admissions cannot be dictated by political intimidation, and that academic freedom—meaning the right to teach and learn—is not for sale.

This is also a test of President McInnis herself. Before leading Yale, Maurie McInnis served as executive vice president and provost at The University of Texas at Austin, beginning July 1, 2016, and remaining in that role until May 2020, when she left to become president of Stony Brook University (Canizales, 2020). President McInnis should not meet this moment with managerial caution or elite institutional self-protection. 

Courtesy of UT Austin

She should meet it with courage. No secret settlement. No abandonment of lawful holistic admissions. No surrender of institutional independence. No chilling of student speech. No weakening of faculty governance. No appeasement of authoritarian power.

Yale must not do what Harvard students have warned against. It must not mistake capitulation for peace. It must not confuse compliance with leadership. It must not teach the next generation that even the most powerful universities fold when democracy needs them to stand.

References

Berbenes, M. (2025, May 2). Tracking Trump’s war on elite universities: Which schools have lost funding and what they're doing about it, Yahoo News. https://www.yahoo.com/news/tracking-trumps-war-on-elite-universities-which-schools-have-lost-funding-and-what-theyre-doing-about-it-200621655.html

Binkley, C. (2025, August 13). Harvard and the Trump administration are nearing a settlement including a $500 million payment, Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/harvard-trump-agreement-antisemitism-ivy-a84b88a8136a852aa305e508d012afb6

Canizales, A. (2020, March 26). Executive Vice President and Provost Maurie McInnis leaving UT-Austin, The Daily Texan. https://thedailytexan.com/2020/03/26/executive-vice-president-and-provost-maurie-mcinnis-leaving-ut-austin/

Enos, R. D., & Levitsky, S. (2025, June 26). This isn’t negotiation. It’s authoritarian extortion, The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/6/26/enos-levitsky-harvard-trump-negotiation-extortion/

Gerdén, L. Kaplan, T. L. & Molden, K. N. (2025, July 2). President Garber, a bad deal with Trump will not protect us, The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/7/2/harvard-negotiation-trump-garber/

Giordano, J. J., & Patel, D. T. (2025, April 29). Harvard renames diversity office as Trump demands dismantling of DEI, The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/29/harvard-oedib-renamed/

Mao, W. C. & Paulus, V. H. (2025, April 15). Trump’s demands to Harvard, analyzed, The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/15/trump-demands-analysis/

Nyberg, L., & Lynn-Skov, A. (2026, June 28). Yale seeks Trump deal as admissions inquiry reaches College, NYT reports. Yale Daily News. https://yaledailynews.com/articles/yale-seeks-trump-deal-as-admissions-inquiry-reaches-college-nyt-reports 

Scharf, A., & Patel, D. T. (2025, July 10). Harvard College, Faculty of Arts and Sciences replace diversity offices. The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/7/10/college-fas-end-diversity-offices/

Yale College Council. (2026, July 4). Public statement on behalf of the Yale undergraduate student body regarding Yale’s ongoing settlement negotiations with the Trump administration [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwX1FqqaqjY

SEAT and the Student Bill of Rights: Texas Youth Shaping the Democratic Present, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

SEAT and the Student Bill of Rights: Texas Youth Shaping the Democratic Present

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

February 24, 2026

It’s time for another shout-out to the extraordinary young people of SEAT (Students Engaged in Advancing Texas) and their powerful Student Bill of Rights. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: people need to know about this work. 

In my 25 years as a policy analyst and advocate at the Texas Legislature, I have never witnessed youth activism at the scale and intensity that I see today. 

I would even venture to say that we are living through a historic high point of youth engagement in our state. 

This level of organizing did not happen overnight. It reflects decades of groundwork, mentorship, courage, and persistence—and SEAT is just one of many remarkable youth formations. It does not even include the powerful activism of young leaders connected to LULAC, the NAACP, the Texas Freedom Network, and other organizations across Texas.

Congratulations to SEAT for developing what is arguably one of the most important democratic documents to emerge from Texas youth in recent years.

Crafted by students, for students, the Student Bill of Rights reminds us of something too often forgotten in public education debates: young people are not passive recipients of policy. They are primary stakeholders in their own futures.

In a political climate marked by book bans, attacks on truthful curriculum, punitive discipline practices, and the narrowing of student voice, this declaration reframes education as a site of agency, dignity, and collective care. It calls for high-quality public education, holistic well-being, freedom of expression, and truthful, critical curriculum—not as partisan demands, but as democratic necessities.

By linking student agency to public accountability and insisting that all students be served regardless of identity, history, or circumstance, SEAT articulates a vision of education rooted in belonging rather than exclusion. This Bill of Rights does more than outline aspirations; it models civic leadership in real time, reminding Texas that students are not merely the leaders of tomorrow—they are shaping the democratic present.

Follow them on Twitter and Instagram @studentsengaged 

Sending y’all much love. 🩷🩷🩷

Student Bill of Rights

SEAT (Students Engaged in Advancing Texas) | Adopted Jan. 6, 2025

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Students Deserve:

1. Agency to make decisions in education

2. High quality public education for all

3. Safe and welcoming school environments conducive to growth

4. Freedom of expression in a pluralistic, multicultural democracy

5. Holistic student care to support health and well-being

6. Truthful, critical, and substantive curriculum

7. To be leaders of today, not only of tomorrow

8. Streamlined and personalized pathways for lifelong learning

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SEAT believes all students and children shall be served under this bill, no matter their identity, lived experiences, disciplinary histories, or present interactions with public and educational institutions. All students deserve equal and positive treatment under the rule of law and this declaration of rights.

This Bill of Rights was crafted by the SEAT Roundtable Collective in Aug. 2024 - Jan. 2025 as a declaration for students, by students. We deserve a seat at the table.

View online: studentsengaged.org/bill-of-rights

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1. Agency to make decisions in education.

Having a seat at the table means students reclaiming ownership of our education, giving us power and freedom in the everyday social situations that impact our school experiences, and thus, our futures. We shall not be tokenized as an outsider or subjugated as political pawns in decisions most impacting us. Our voices have power.

Students are the primary stakeholders in education, but we are traditionally excluded from policy-making decisions in school boards and the state legislature. Officials cannot best represent students when they cultivate a "power over" relationship instead of "power with" students.

School boards directly influence education policy about students, often without us. These governing bodies should sufficiently include students in conversations, roundtables, workshops, committees, and most importantly, on the same dais where they legislate.

2. High quality public education for all.

Education is a cornerstone of community and democracy. Students spend a significant portion of our childhood and adolescence in a classroom, and we want it to mean something for us. We want education to be a highlight of our youth and fulfill our sense of confidence.

Public schools must serve everyone to the fullest extent, throughout rural and urban communities, regardless of socioeconomic disparities. Students should face no entry barriers to accessing a quality education meant to help us learn and grow alongside peers. We can address chronic absenteeism by taking measures to uphold quality education.

Strong teachers help shape strong students. Our student experiences are defined by educators’ working experiences. We must invest in a workforce of educators who are duly committed to students, highly competent, and sufficiently compensated for teaching demands.

Trust is critical to students’ relationships with adults at school. Students should feel that our educators and administrators care about our needs as individuals, not merely as numbers or written records. Retention of educators and cultivating a school community of joy serves everyone.

The quality of facilities significantly influences students’ desire to attend and thrive at school. Students deserve functioning facilities with prime infrastructure, free from dangers to student health, including excessive temperatures, harmful substances, or biohazards.

Students deserve the right to school libraries that provide access to resources and knowledge, in the form of books, the Internet, guidance by librarians, and more. Libraries and classrooms shall be boundless for fostering exploration, imagination, and possibility.

Schools should be a support system meant to break cycles of marginalization. Not all families can or want to be involved in fostering a student’s educational trajectory. Education systems must be accountable to helping first-generation or dropout-prone students thrive, despite any potential barriers like wealth or citizenship status.

3. Safe and welcoming school environments conducive to growth.

When students enter school each day, we should not fear gun violence, bullying, harassment, or a prison sentence. School should support students coming as we are, with limited English proficiency or in proximity to the impact of substance abuse. Schools can make a difference in a student’s life if it becomes a central goal for education.

Gun violence is a public health epidemic and a reality for Generation Z and Alpha. These cycles of violence do not need to be a broken record. We are ready to turn the page toward safe storage measures and preventing guns from ending up in the hands of anyone in crisis or who has made threats of violence toward themself or others.

Let’s educate, not incarcerate. Student discipline must improve situations, not worsen them. School officials have the subconscious power to permanently affect a student’s life trajectory. Instead of punitive alternative programs, racially biased to involve students of color, restorative practices can help shatter the school-to-prison pipeline.

The carceral state disproportionately harms marginalized youth and establishes no accountability. Incarceration costs excessive public dollars and too often repeats with recidivism. We must invest in students’ future as leaders, not victims of a broken juvenile system.

Education systems should enforce contemporary, comprehensive anti-discrimination policies that protect all students. We can cultivate compassion in school culture for students to best learn and grow skills needed in adulthood.

Ensuring schools take proactive measures to prevent drug abuse and support affected students is essential for fostering overall student well-being. Actions by school and public officials, instead of complicity or roundabout attempts at solutions, can contribute to safer educational environments.

Bilingual education should serve students from a variety of language backgrounds. Texas is a multilingual state. Our education system should empower, not shame, native tongues and language learning.

Children are one of the most disabled groups of people. Disabled and neurodivergent students should not be unfairly punished or judged for behavioral actions considered outside of normative societal standards.

When environments are not safe, students should be aware of processes for reporting issues or talking to trusted adults who will advocate for us. School professionals should hold responsibility toward protecting students with utmost integrity regardless of school pressures.

4. Freedom of expression in a pluralistic,
   multicultural democracy.

To freely express ourselves is core to shaping our lives and bettering the future. Texas is an enormous state with rich culture. Our diversity makes us great. Schools must empower students to be the best of ourselves.

Discriminatory dress codes, targeting students across gender norms and ethnic-cultural styles, distract from education and harm self-esteem. The right to our own bodies is critical, and the State belongs away.

Generation Z is the most openly LGBTQ+ generation in history. Names and pronouns are centermost in our lives. Regardless of what we call ourselves, it matters more that others refer to us in affirming ways. To support student well-being and social confidence, we must embolden inclusive community values of respect that do not give power to deadnaming and misgendering.

As lawmakers seek to blur the separation of Church and State, public schools must support students secularly and without enforcing religious customs. We should, however, learn of diverse world faiths and defend students’ individual right to religious liberty. Nationalism, especially bolstering religious doctrine, undermines faith and education.

Students clubs, organizations, and athletics should be spaces for us to explore interests, engage in social causes, and create community. Students should have equal access to lead or participate in clubs. School publications should respect student voices without censorship.

When power structures aren’t right, students deserve the unfettered ability to challenge oppression, especially when imposed by authority. Our right to assemble and petition must be protected, not trampled.

5. Holistic student care to support health and well-being.

Entering school each day, students bring a reflection of our personal lives into the classroom. Regardless of socioeconomic status, wraparound services fulfill student needs and steer us on a track to success, fostering better social and learning environments for all.

From food to healthcare, including breakfast and menstrual products, schools must fulfill our basic needs before expecting us to perform socially and academically. These services should be provided to students at no individual cost and without stipulations.

Schools should have nurses, sufficiently equipped with inhalers, epipens, insulin, overdose medication, and other necessary, potentially life-saving measures for students. All students should be generally knowledgeable of resource locations and how we can access them in an emergency.

Amid a youth mental health crisis, school counseling and seamless pathways to additional services are vital for vulnerable students to navigate trauma, substance abuse, adverse experiences, and everyday dilemmas.

Neighborhood transportation between home and school is necessary to ensure student safety and breaking barriers for students and families on financial, physical, or workplace bases.

After-school tutoring and programs, both social and extracurricular, are vital to narrowing the gap between student performance, well-being, learning loss, and at-home factors contributing to a student’s situation at school. Schools should be a community of care for students.

6. Truthful, critical, and substantive curriculum.

Students must hold agency to indiscriminately access and utilize our education in ways that affirm our identities and help us discover the unfamiliar. Teaching to an unjust status quo is a disservice to the youngest generation of Texans.

Students deserve the right to educate ourselves about sensitive topics, especially when politically contentious. To foster a love for reading and learning, no one should decide for students what we can or cannot read. We must hold the individual agency to decide which books we read.

We should trust the expertise of librarians and educators to curate age-relevant and educationally-suitable collections. Interest groups and politicians with ulterior motives should not hold greater authority over the autonomy of all families in a school system.

Curricula should represent Texas’ vast diversity in culture and ideas. We must teach the truth, with fact-based evidence and critical perspectives. Commonplace myths and false narratives make dangerous impressions on students and hold no educational suitability. If we are to act as critical thinkers, we must not lie to students. Truth must be the norm.

Education should be liberating and life-giving. To facilitate freedom, we must teach standards, not standardization. Rote memorization for heavy testing and data collection treats students homogeneously. Instead, we must give life to each students’ uniqueness, curiosity, and passion.

7. To be leaders of today, not only of tomorrow.

To best navigate the complexities of today’s Texas, students must be equipped with the education necessary for becoming a generation of success, impact, and excellence. We must be prepared for our futures so we determine and shape our trajectories. Critical thinking is crucial to becoming an active member of society.

Our 13 years in K-12 schools must adequately prepare us with resources and curriculum for financial and medical literacy. Learning to file taxes, buy a car or home, and understand legal contracts instills confidence in our socioeconomic lives. Comprehensive fact-based sex ed curriculum, with an emphasis on consent, is necessary to reduce domestic violence and STDs. This is how we build a society with competency and respect for one another.

With the integral presence of the Internet in contemporary life, we must learn responsible digital citizenship. Social media is a valuable tool in which we must safeguard our rights for free use. Big Tech should be held accountable for dangers posed to youth. Empowering students with multimedia literacy and judgment of reality facilitates a more informed, cooperative, and engaged society.

We must actualize power for civic leadership, navigating interpersonal conflict, and building professional relationships. We must be aware of our elected officials at all levels of government and understand that we play a critical role as a Fourth Branch of government. Learning how to engage in civic institutions through voting and public engagement will help us shape, not merely inherit, the world we wish to live in.

8. Streamlined and personalized pathways
   for lifelong learning.

Education is a life-long endeavor. Opportunities for Higher Education must be affordable, accessible, and student-oriented.

There is no singular or correct path for students. Education should challenge us to be the best of ourselves while simultaneously handing us the keys to our own academic, social, and professional journeys.

Districts should provide classroom instruction and hands-on experiences for learning Career and Technical Education.

K-12 education should prepare us for post-school opportunities that empower and encourage excellence. We should have opportunities to explore Higher Education through online research and firsthand experiences. Academic advising should be available to all students.

University finances should hold students in their best interest. We should be given an educational experience worth our investment and be spared from malicious billing practices. Financial aid should ensure any student with the interest of pursuing higher education is guaranteed such opportunity.