PROVIDENCE — President Trump’s first 100 days back in the White House have been indelibly marked by a crusade against higher education , freezing billions in federal funding to the nation’s oldest institutions, and encroaching on the central academic principle of free inquiry. After mounting attacks on Columbia and Harvard resulted in respective showdowns, with the former capitulating and the latter resisting , the Trump administration informed Brown University on April 3 that it was next. Despite no formal letter spelling out demands that could prevent a $510 million freeze, news of the threat traveled fast on campus and within hours, students — trickling out of class, the gym, or the dining hall — began to mobilize. Simon Aron, a freshman at Brown majoring in religious studies and international and public affairs, said he and other co-founders of the Brown Do Not Comply campaign worked quickly to spread the message to students. By that night, dozens of students gathered in a historic building on the college’s Main Green to outline a plan. Within a few minutes, students poured out into the hallway and the group relocated to an auditorium with greater capacity. Aron said he could feel the energy in the room. Brown Do Not Comply is a loose coalition of hundreds of students united in their opposition to Trump’s overhaul of academic institutions and the conviction that their university must fight back. Aron described its inception as the result of “60 angry students in a room.” More than 600 students signed the group’s petition in its first four days. Anticipating a list of demands from the Trump administration, similar to those received by peer institutions also caught in funding limbo, Brown Do Not Comply has preemptively taken a stance on how the university should respond. “We hope [Brown] sends a letter to the Trump administration and to campus being really explicit about exactly what they are going to do, and not do,” Aron said. “We want to ensure that they don’t give student records to the Trump administration. That they don’t allow ICE on campus. That they support international students.” On April 14, Harvard‘s legal team sent an email response to the Trump administration, and announced it will not comply with “demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court.” The communication came two weeks after the White House launched a review of $9 billion of the university’s federal funding. On April 21, the university announced it was suing the Trump administration for leveraging a federal audit to “gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard.” Brown President Christina H. Paxson joined over 200 American college presidents in signing a statement released on April 23 articulating a unified stance against the federal government’s “unprecedented … overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education." Right now, “the Brown administration is at a crossroads,” Aron said. “They are trying to decide whether they’re going to stand up to Trump like Harvard and be clear about their stance on protecting students, or go down the path of Columbia, banning masks and increasing militarized police presence on campus and allowing a fascist takeover of American universities.” At least 300 international students nationwide risk deportation after Trump revoked their visas, and students like Mahmoud Khalil of Columbia University, Badar Khan Suri of Georgetown University, and Rümeysa Öztürk of Tufts University have been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and remain in custody. Last month, Brown Medical School Professor Rasha Alawieh was deported after being detained by ICE in Boston. This month, the federal government has revoked the visas of at least one current Brown student and several recent graduates. Protests on the college’s central greenery are one way these students are spreading their message, singing or delivering speeches into megaphones as organizers pound rhythmically on buckets and engage in call-and-response chants. Percy Unger, a leader of Brown Do Not Comply’s rally sub-group, said she’s seeing a broader mobilization now than in other recent protest movements on campus because “it feels like they are coming for you in your own backyard.” “This issue is … for most people and most people’s families, more black and white,” she said. “It’s like, soon they will send us a letter, and that letter will be full of demands that we do not like the sound of.” Unger and Aron reject the premise of the Trump administration’s funding freeze — accusations of a rampantly antisemitic environment created on campus. “They’re trying to tell us, ‘We’re doing this to protect [Jews], it’s for your own good,” Unger said. “But you’re defunding my Jewish education.” “We’re caught up in this war that was never our choice,” Aron said. “Now that we’re here, we have to fight.” Ariel Shifrin, a sophomore studying applied mathematics-computer science and international and public affairs, spoke into a microphone at Brown Do Not Comply’s first rally on April 18. “Less than a mile from where we stand, the Rhode Island State House is inscribed with the words, ‘Rare felicity of the times when it is permitted to think what you like and say what you think.’ Not think what is written in a redacted textbook and say what Trump approves of,” he said. Shifrin was one of more than 200 student participants, many of whom held signs with slogans like “Stand Up to Fascism,” “Fight for Students!” and “Defend Free Speech,” painted in red, blue, and black brushstrokes. Unger said she believes people who remain silent believe that Trump is “just a bumbling fool … and we can weather this storm.” But after “zooming out” and seeing Trump’s onslaught as “a cascade of fascist maneuvers, it becomes a different story.” “There’s a really human instinct to not be able to see how bad things are getting before your eyes,” she said. “There are studies about rooms filling up with smoke and everyone just kind of acting like it’s fine because everyone else is acting like it’s fine, and rooms don’t usually catch on fire, but sometimes they do catch on fire.” “All of us now need to be like, ‘Hey, this room is about to be on fire.” Aron also emphasized the importance of working in large numbers so Brown’s administration knows the position of its students. Brown has already ceded territory in Trump’s battle against DEI, he noted, waiving the annual reading of the Slavery and Justice Report, which was previously required of all incoming freshmen. “This is a moment where universities have to self-reflect: Are we a bastion of free inquiry, or are we not?” Unger said.
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