It’s March Madness. Our University Leaders Must Speak Out Against the Madness

For college basketball fans, this week is the start of the most wonderful time of the year. Over the next month, 136 teams will compete in the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments. This is one of (if not) the greatest of America’s sporting events. For one shining moment, our collective attention will be focused on the excitement, excellence, and effort of over 2000 student-athletes, representing colleges and universities across the country, including many of America’s top research universities, where much of the nation’s pathbreaking research in the physical, biological, and social sciences occurs, along with vital research in medicine, the humanities, engineering, agriculture, computer science, business, law, and dozens of other fields.

Yet this year, “March Madness” takes place under the darkest of clouds for America’s colleges and universities. The Trump administration has declared an unprecedented war on the institutions and finances of higher education. In the last two weeks, it has cancelled billions of dollars in federal funding for some of America’s leading research universities, including $400 million to Columbia University and $800 million to Johns Hopkins. Today, it has frozen $175 million in federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania, citing the university’s failure to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports.

It has also gutted the Department of Education, laying off nearly half of it employees and closing entire offices, such as the Institute for International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE), which funds programs to strengthen foreign language and area studies, including Fulbright-Hays and FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) fellowships. These programs, for decades, have trained American students to work in the global economy and have strengthened US national security by developing citizens who are experts in the languages and regions of the world.

The Department of Education has also launched investigations into 60 universities – including most of the countries’ elite research institutions – over politicized allegations of antisemitism, and it is now threatening to cut funding from each of them. And the Trump administration has now arrested, detained, and revoked the green card of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate who played a prominent role in campus Gaza protests. The administration has said that Mr. Khalil’s case is “the first arrest of many to come,” threatening a full-scale assault on free speech on college campuses for legal residents (and perhaps American citizens) in the months ahead.  Whatever one’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or any other political issue, this assault on the first amendment rights of a legal US resident should be a five-alarm fire for anyone concerned with democracy and the rule of law.

In addition, the Trump administration has made draconian cuts to federal research funding and initiated mass layoffs at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is no exaggeration to say that these budget cuts pose an existential crisis for American universities and scientific research. At my own institution, the University of Wisconsin – Madison, federal grants are the single largest source of funding. In 2023, 25% of our total campus budget came from the federal government – more than tuition (21%), private gifts and grants (17%), and even the state of Wisconsin, which was once our largest funder but now provides only a small share (14%) of overall funding for what is nominally a state-supported public university.

In this regard, UW – Madison is not unique. Federal grants are a primary source of funding at every major US research university. Cutting off this money poses an existential crisis to universities as currently organized. If the cuts persist, universities will be forced to lay off staff, close research laboratories, freeze faculty hiring, drastically reduce the number of students in graduate programs, and perhaps even permanently end entire degree programs and courses of study. This will be disastrous not only for scientific research and graduate training, but also for undergraduate teaching. Without these programs and personnel, undergraduate students at universities nationwide will find themselves unable to complete the courses and majors they have gone to college to study.

Put simply, the foundations of American higher education will crumble if these policies continue. And yet, university presidents and chancellors of major research universities have been shockingly absent from the public square on these issues. As a result, the public remains largely unaware of the magnitude of the existential threat to our universities.

The reason for this is clear. University leaders face a classic collective action problem. Every president is afraid of their institution being targeted next by the administration. No one wants to speak first and be singled out for punishment. But the budget cuts and assaults on academic freedom are existential threats to all colleges and universities. This is why we need our leaders to speak out, loudly and collectively, in our shared mutual interest. We need the presidents of the Ivy League, the Big Ten, the ACC, the SEC, and every other conference with teams in the NCAA basketball tournaments to get in front of microphones, together, and defend our institutions and explain to the public how serious the threats are.

I am not a university president or chancellor. But, as a political scientist who understands collective action problems and how public opinion shapes politics and public policy, here is some free advice for our leaders:

We're about to hold the most watched college athletics event of the year. Every one of you should be on national television, at every game, cheering our athletes, but also explaining on CBS, TNT, ESPN, and every other media outlet why the March Madness of federal budget cuts is an existential crisis for America's colleges & universities:

"You love Wisconsin basketball? Yes, so do I. But our student-athletes play for a world-ranked university that won't exist anymore in its current form if the Trump administration’s extreme budget cuts happen. The courses & majors & degrees you want your kids to pursue will disappear. This is an existential crisis. Call Congress now & help us stop this."

"You love the fact that our university hospital is one of the best in the country? Yes, so do I. But its facilities and services and reputation will be destroyed if these cuts persist. Half of what happens there will simply disappear. And it will take decades & billions of dollars to rebuild it once it's gone. Call Congress now & tell them to stop destroying our state's most important institutions."

"I'm here to cheer on our student-athletes, but the core mission of every college and university in the country is education, not basketball. Without that, nothing else, including basketball, really matters. So please get out & call Congress & tell them to stop destroying America’s universities."

The current silence is deafening. For those of us in Wisconsin, it is like watching a bad movie all over again. For a decade, under Governor Scott Walker, multiple UW – Madison chancellors & UW System presidents tried to stem attacks on our universities by avoiding public confrontations, working quiet channels to state officials, & adopting a strategy of reactive defense. This failed to stem massive budget cuts, failed to moderate the state Republican Party’s attacks on professors, university programs, and campus leaders, and failed to stop the gutting of faculty tenure at UW campuses. The same strategy has failed equally in other states. There is no reason to believe it will be effective now to stop an assault on universities coming from the federal government.

March Madness is here. It’s time for our university leaders to speak out against the Madness that threatens to destroy our country’s world-leading universities and colleges.