My colleagues on the editorial page board have described Brown’s agreement with the Trump administration as a “win” for pragmatism and preservation, on the basis that Brown has “traded little in exchange for the restoration of its research funding.” This outlook mirrors the framing offered by President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 in her message to the community — that the agreement allows Brown to return to how things were before.
I sympathize with the desire to reclaim a sense of normalcy. But the version of Brown invoked by Paxson — the one we “have known for generations” — existed in a political landscape where the American president knew tolerance, respect and restraint. That landscape was left at the polls in 2016. To long for the restoration of that order is to confuse the architecture of the University with the stability of the administration under which it once operated. If this decision was truly pragmatic, as my colleagues suggest, it would not rely on a fantasy of equilibrium but instead acknowledge that such an agreement opens the door to deeper erosion of institutional independence.
Political theorists Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan warned that democracies collapse when institutions fail to resist authoritarian pressures. This concept is fundamental to the political theory of well-functioning democratic societies and dates back to Alexis de Tocqueville, who warned that democratic freedom cannot survive without autonomous civic bodies. This is a concept that any Brown student who has taken a political science, history or international affairs class is familiar with.
Even if much of the agreement reiterates existing regulations, the fact that Brown accepted those “other aspects of the agreement” confirms that Trump has succeeded in leveraging the federal purse to bend elite universities toward his agenda. This, in principle, undermines the stability that private institutions like Brown are meant to provide in a democracy. Even though Brown’s agreement does not go as far as implementing a third-party monitor similar to that imposed on Columbia, Brown’s capitulation still marks a surrender of institutional independence.
The consequences of Brown’s decision will snowball. As universities caught in Trump’s executive flexing accept their fate and take the path of least resistance, it becomes harder and harder for any one institution to stand alone. What began as a series of isolated deals — with Penn, then Columbia and now Brown — risks becoming a normalized relationship of subservience between the federal government and America’s elite universities. And quickly, we find ourselves with precisely the kind of captured institutions that Linz and Stepan warn enable democratic backsliding.
Even if the agreement had been a benign reiteration of existing regulations, it would still be a dubious path forward for the University. The settlement explicitly states that “the government can open new compliance reviews if Brown fails to honor the terms of the agreement.” Such an open door to investigation provides the Trump administration with a ready-made lever for future political coercion. It validates the tactic of threatening federal funding to extract ideological compliance. And there is every reason to believe that threat will be used again.
Trump has already launched multiple politically motivated investigations into Brown, thinly veiled as concerns about antisemitism, discriminatory admissions and the University’s financial aid practices. Without sufficient evidence to support the allegations, these inquiries have amounted to empty pressure campaigns intended to curtail the authority of higher education. Why would Trump not use this agreement — which grants federal investigators a permanent foothold — as a legal pretext for more of the same? Brown has now institutionalized the very vulnerability that Trump has repeatedly exploited.
Brown did not lack the resources to fight back. It lacked the will. While Brown has the smallest endowment in the Ivy League, it still exceeds $6 billion. Former Harvard President Larry Summers emphasized in his New York Times essay that when it comes to deploying restricted parts of universities’ endowments, “ways can be found.” And that sum would be exponentially more powerful if pooled in solidarity with peer institutions also under pressure. Yes, Brown’s endowment must be nurtured. But if we do not see that today is a rainy day, then we’ll be facing storms in the days to come.
A truly pragmatic strategy would have recognized that compliance under coercion does not buy safety: It invites escalation. It would have anticipated that without coordinated resistance, these attacks will not subside. Pragmatism, properly understood, would have meant investing now — financially, legally and politically — to stave off deeper compromise in the future.
Paul Hudes ’27 can be reached at paul_hudes@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Dissenting Opinions: When The Herald’s editorial page board disagrees on a staff editorial, members have the opportunity to publish a dissent to explain why they did not sign on. Editorials — and dissents, if any — are written by members of The Herald’s editorial page board, which is separate from those of The Herald’s newsroom and the 135th Editorial Board, which leads the paper.
Paul Hudes is an opinions editor and head of editorial page board for The Brown Daily Herald, where he also serves the paper's games editor. Paul studies Applied Math Economics and English Literature.
