Barack Obama has urged US citizens, colleges, and law firms to oppose Donald Trump’s political agenda, warning Americans to be prepared to “possibly sacrifice” in defense of democratic values.
“It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are progressive, you are for social justice, or you are for free speech and not have to pay a price for it,” Obama said during a speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, on Thursday.
The two-term former Democratic president painted a picture of a Trump White House seeking to upend the post-World War II international order, as well as a domestic political reconfiguration in which ideological disagreements are balanced by mutual respect for free speech and the rule of law.
“It is up to all of us to fix this,” said Obama. That includes “the citizen, the ordinary person who says: ‘No, that is not right.'”
Obama expressed disagreement with some of the president’s economic policies, including widespread new tariffs. However, the previous president stated that he was “more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they do not give up students who are exercising their right to free speech” .
That referred to the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw federal funding from top universities unless they agreed to abandon student diversity programs and implement guidelines on what it considered to be the line between legitimate protest in support of Palestinians and anti-Semitism.
Obama also advised schools and students to review campus environments regarding academic freedom and be prepared to lose government funding in their defense.
“If you are a university, you may have to figure out: ‘Are we, in fact, doing things right?'” he stated during the conversation at Hamilton College. “Have we, in fact, violated our own values, code, or the law in some way?
“If not, and you are just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say: ‘That is why we got this big endowment.'”
Columbia University in New York has become the focal point of the administration’s efforts to use federal funding to quell what it claims were antisemitic campus protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Federal immigration agents arrested and attempted to deport one graduate student, claiming he violated immigration rules by participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Another student sued after immigration agents attempted to arrest and deport her after she participated in similar demonstrations.
After the Trump administration withdrew $400 million in federal grants, the university agreed to make policy changes such as hiring security officers with arrest powers and prohibiting protests in academic buildings. The administration says it may now reinstate the funds.
Harvard, Princeton University, and other institutions are also under federal funding review for their policies on the subject.
“Now we have reached one of those points where, you know what? “It is not enough to say you are for something; you might have to do something,” Obama stated.
The former president went on to question deals between corporate law firms and the administration after they were targeted by executive orders due to their ties to attorneys involved in Trump’s prosecution during Joe Biden’s presidency, or for representing the current administration’s political opponents.
“It is unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me or a whole bunch of my predecessors,” Obama said, questioning the White House’s decision to restrict the Associated Press’s access to official events over the news agency’s decision to reject Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
