Academic Capitulation to Fascism: From Nazi Germany to the Present Day

One might have imagined Columbia University would be aware that academic capitulation to fascism never pays.  Yielding to Donald Trump’s demands, administrators recently agreed to allow security officers to remove or arrest individuals, overhaul campus rules dealing with protests and student discipline, and place the Columbia Middle Eastern Studies Department under a new official while shunting aside traditional faculty control.  The White House had insisted Columbia enact the changes or suffer the indignity of having federal funding cut to the tune of $400 million.  Shocked and dismayed by Columbia’s crass and shameless cave-in to extortion, academics have excoriated the university.

Harvard University, on the other hand, has provided a stark counterpoint by refusing to relent to White House pressure.  Unless Harvard agreed to report international students accused of misconduct to the federal government and end recruitment of any such students holding views deemed “hostile to American values” — whatever that means — Trump threatened to cut off billions in federal research funding and take away the university’s tax-exempt status.  In another ominous sign, Trump insisted that Harvard appoint an overseer who would ensure academic departments were “viewpoint diverse.”  Flatly rejecting such demands, Harvard has sued the government and claims the White House is seeking to gain leverage in an effort to control university decision-making.

Hopefully, other academic institutions will follow Harvard’s example as opposed to Columbia, which has succumbed and debased itself.  As history has shown, acquiescing to authoritarian rule does not end well: though German universities and professors by and large embraced conservative nationalism during the Weimar period, they might have regarded Hitler warily: the Führer only had the equivalent of an eighth-grade education, and the Nazis were disdainful of ivory tower intellectuals.

Hitler’s first target was Frankfurt University, known for its Institute for Social Research staffed by left-leaning Jewish-Marxist scholars.  The Nazis sought to make an example of the university, whose faculty prided itself on freedom of conscience and democracy.  At a Nazi-led faculty meeting, Hitler’s new commissar declared that Jews would be prohibited from entering campus and fired without compensation.  The commissar then proceeded to curse and heap abuse on department chairs, remarking “you either do what I tell you or we’ll put you into a concentration camp.”  A few scholars were courageous enough to walk out with their Jewish colleagues, but most failed to stand up for academic freedom.

The Nazis proceeded to close the Institute for Social Research, which packed up and moved — ironically enough — to Columbia University.  In truth, however, the Nazis need not have bothered with wholesale repression, since universities were enthusiastic supporters of national socialism, including students and most faculty members.  Indeed, we could almost search in vain for evidence of anti-Nazi resistance to Hitler.  Universities never recanted their support and complicity, and even when resistance did occur, such elements were more likely condemned rather than congratulated.  With the rare exception of, say, small and ineffectual “White Rose” student protesters at the University of Munich, the overarching story is one of whole-hearted Nazi acceptance.

Once Hitler took power in 1933, universities fell in line by embracing a policy of “self-coordination.”  The Nazis weren’t interested so much in ripping down institutions but rather ensuring absolute loyalty.  University authority was transferred from local and state officials to the Reich Minister of Education, who had control over appointing deans, as well as heads of student and faculty unions.  Within short order, most professors were fired for their political beliefs or simply for being Jewish.  University of Frankfurt was singled out, with almost one third of academics and students dismissed.  Though the Ministry of Education initiated reforms, it was local Nazi organizations and student activists who pushed the ideals of national socialism on campus.

Indeed, students were even encouraged to inform on their peers as well as professors.  Under new requirements, students were also obliged to attend mandatory lectures and assemblies.  Since German universities were state institutions, professors were vulnerable to the whims of the Nazis, and those students or faculty who failed to follow ideological constraints risked being denounced.  It would not be long before professors started and ended each lecture with “Heil Hitler,” and students led book burnings of works containing “corrupt foreign influences.”

Given this stark history, it is to be hoped that American universities will resist outside pressure.  However, the Jewish Daily Forward writes that recent events display ominous parallels to the past.  “The best word to describe Columbia’s concession of its academic freedom and autonomy,” notes the paper, “originated in that frightful era: Gleichschaltung, which combines the German gleich (meaning “same”) and Schaltung (meaning “circuit”).  That term explained how German institutions were brought into line with the demands of Adolf Hitler’s regime — or, literally, how they synchronized or standardized their activities with those requirements in the immediate aftermath of the Führer’s election in 1933.”

Columbia is a textbook case in capitulation.  Despite Trump’s seemingly illegal demands, the university never sued to halt White House overreach, preferring instead to negotiate.  It’s unclear whether the cave-in will pay off, since Columbia hasn’t gotten its funding back in return, but rather just won the highly prized right to such negotiation.  For all its brown-nosing, Columbia hasn’t received a respite, since Trump is reportedly contemplating the idea of placing the university under direct government oversight, that is to say, a takeover.

Consider too that Columbia voluntarily allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to enter a privately-owned university residence, where they abducted a student activist.  Writing in the New Republic, CUNY professor Jonathan Gray declares that the Trump administration “is looking for cowards that they can bully; for institutions whose first instinct is to apologize and comply rather than defending themselves and their students in the public square.”  Other CUNY professors have gone so far as to boycott Columbia altogether, arguing that the university is “actively colluding with the U.S. government’s project to destroy higher education and criminalize dissent.”

Some have suggested Columbia wasn’t so much a victim as an active participant.  In this scenario, the university “welcomed the opportunity and political cover that Trump’s order provided—to get rid of ‘unruly’ students, increase the university’s capacity to limit protest and discipline students, staff, and faculty, and (bonus!) gain control over a department that by its very subject matter might prove troublesome.”  Reportedly, university administrators believed campus protests “had gone too far and needed to be reined in.”  The Nation writes that Columbia’s board of trustees is a “risk-averse, business-oriented group.”  In general, writes Vox, “people become university administrators by building consensus and avoiding political controversies, not creating them.”

But given that Columbia has close to $15 billion in its endowment, why didn’t the university fight back?  “If universities start eating into their endowments,” writes Vox, “long-term earnings and payouts decline, and nobody wants that.”  Moreover, “endowments have become the single biggest signifier of excellence in higher education leadership, and college leaders can’t imagine making them smaller, even in the face of existential threat.”

By contrast, perhaps Harvard’s example will inspire other academic institutions to fight back.  However, though America’s oldest university ultimately resisted Trump, Harvard reacted belatedly: initially, president Alan Garber remarked that he would be pleased to work with the White House, notwithstanding outcries from faculty and alumni.  Professors had also been alarmed by administration moves forcing out leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.  Outrage towards the university administration led hundreds of demonstrators to protest Garber, who in their eyes was “complying with fascism.”

Steven Striffler, a professor of anthropology at University of Massachusetts, Boston, argues that it might be unrealistic to expect much from academia.  University administrations, he writes, “…have a very thin track record” of standing up for free speech and dissent.  “The reality is that most have worked overtime, often at the behest of the trustees that control them, to limit or crush our freedoms with such consistency, and over such a long period of time, that it is baffling that anyone would expect anything different as we race towards authoritarianism.”  Will the center hold?  In the coming months, we shall see whether higher learning fends off outside attacks or crumbles in the face of adversity, as exemplified by the case of Germany in 1933.